Mother Goose Lyrics

Lyric discussion by Tidycat 

Cover art for Mother Goose lyrics by Jethro Tull

I could be all wrong on this, but I've always heard it as a story of a kid who's leaving little kid things behind (Mother Goose) and entering into the world of his own imagination. Sort of a coming of age story, but the only one I know of that talks about the little kid --> bigger kid transition instead of the kid --> adult transition.

A mack is a raincoat.

4 and 20 is a number that appears often in English folk songs and folk tales, where JT gets a lot of their musical and lyrical inspiration. The association with weed is unrelated and wasn't invented until the 70s at UC Berkeley or Santa Barabara, if I remember correctly.

But yeah, in general it's just a fun song. It also happens to be a great song to learn to play for an intermediate acoustic guitarist.

My Interpretation

@Tidycat Santa Barbara