The Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket

The Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket

          Here’s a Mother Goose rhyme to a tune that I wrote for it.

          I never head this rhyme as a child, only shortly after becoming a father; so I heard it fresh with adult ears. I love this nursery rhyme, it’s so dreamlike. And it was indeed with me... by and by.

Many of its lines come in two or three varieties. This is a rhyme that you have to co-create.

          Who is this old woman? A maid? A witch? An angel?  A goddess? An astronaut? All of the above? I like to think of the web-sweeping as the clearing of the mind during sleep.

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          There was an old woman tossed up in a basket,
          Ninety-nine times as high as the moon;
          And whither she went I just had to ask,
          Because in her hands she carried a broom.
          “Old woman, old woman, old woman,” said I,
          “Whither, O whither, O whither so high?”
          “To sweep the cobwebs off the sky.”
          “May I come with you?”
          “Aye, by-and-by.”

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