Mother Goose (song)

I can go back to the very early songs of Jethro Tull on the Aqualung album; things like "Mother Goose", for example; it's a visual reference.

[3]The lyrics are a pastiche of surreal figures based on images that Ian Anderson wrote with the same abstract ideas as "Cross-Eyed Mary".

[5] Anderson would return to the Mother Goose character on Jethro Tull's 1973 album A Passion Play.

AllMusic noted how "the fable imagery of 'Mother Goose' ... serve[s] notice of Anderson's willful iconoclasm.

[8] Anderson made a similar point in an interview, noting the combination of the "amusing surreal moments" of acoustic songs like "Mother Goose" and "Up to Me" balanced with the album's more "dramatic" material.