The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

Historical Conjectures - Opportunities to Consider the Shoe in History

There are a number of interesting conjectures about the historical meanings of “There Was an Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe.” The Opies refer to the symbolic importance of a shoe as representative of that which is personal to a woman before she is married. This interpretation leads to fascinating speculations as to the meanings of the custom of dragging old shoes from the back of the car as the bride and groom leave their wedding. A better-known view of the custom points to the shoe as a symbol of fertility and thus is directly connected to the “many children” of the nursery rhyme.

Other conjectures tie the old woman of this rhyme to specific historical figures such as Caroline, wife of George II, who had eight children or Elizabeth Vergoose of Boston who had sixteen children and a number of grandchildren.

The Baring-Goulds mention another interpretation in which the British Parliament is the old woman, her home the shoe-shaped British Isles, and her children all the subjects of the British empire. They go on to refer to the ‘disliked person’ of James VI of Scotland (James I of England) as a “bitter cup of broth ‘without any bread’” who “having ‘whipped them all soundly,’ Parliament then ‘put them to bed’ to sleep on the matter and digest it as best they could.” It is interesting to note that this last interpretation occurs in a poem, The Big Shoe, published in 1882 in Boston that clearly supports the notion of the shoe as Britannia.