Thanks, Q --

While I disagree with Vikki Harris's opening statement that nursery rhymes are remnants of ancient belief (Matter of fact, I doubt any are much older that 500 years, which hardly goes back to Pagan times), the paragraphs at the end about both "queen Berthas" being linked to geese (One, with a goose's foot, and the other giving birth to a boy with a goose's head -- microcephaly, perhaps?) is the kind of thing I'm looking for.

I guess I will have to look up Andrew Lang's book, and hope he gives a fuller account of these mythical storytellers.

The problem is, most modern critiques (and by modern, I mean written after 1850) on the origin of legendary figures (Aesop and Homer, along with M. Goose) seem content to either verify or discount the legend at hand, without considering the value of the legend itself, independent of any factual truth. I blame the Victorian obsession with Reason and Prudence.

The reason this intrigues me is the origin of the word "Monster," which comes from the Latin Monstrum -- "sign" or "portent" and it originally meant a person or creature born with a deformity, which was interpreted as a sign of impending punishment from the Gods.

...So the figure of the storyteller as a "monster" gives a new meaning (for me) to both monsters and storytellers.