“Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor dog a bone;
But when she came there
The cupboard was bare
And so the poor dog had none.”
Recognizable and familiar to most, but was it entirely original on Sarah Catherine Martin’s part? Was it she who had created a fictional nursery rhyme character that appeared to be based on old French martyr? It would appear the answer to the question is big ol’ negatory, Big Ben. Roughly one year before Martin’s verse was composed, there had appeared in print in an English book a poem titled Dame Trot that went a little like this:
“Old Dame Trot,
Some cold fish had got,
Which for pussy,
She kept in store,
When she looked there was none
The cold fish had gone,
For puss had been there before.”
Not exactly the same, but in most courtrooms Sarah Catherine Martin might have some trouble convincing a jury that she had at least not been “influenced” by Dame Trot. Making matters all the worse is that Dame Trot had not actually been written the year before. In fact, the funny little poem about the humorous little cat is thought to have been written some 100 years earlier and there is much evidence to suggest that Sarah Catherine Martin, the inventor of Old Mother Hubbard, might have been read the adventures of Dame Trot and her cat when she was a child. As such, it is entirely possible that it had entered into her subconscious and lay there dormant, just waiting to be plucked out Martin ran off to write one of her stupid little rhymes.
The upshot is that though Sarah Catherine Martin may have first written some verse using the name Old Mother Hubbard it would be a tragically misguided mistake to assume that she actually created her.