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The Original Nursery Rhyme:
Old Woman, Old Woman
There was an old woman tossed in a basket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
But where she was going no mortal could tell,
For under her arms she carried a broom.
"Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I,
"Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?"
"To sweep the cobwebs from the sky;
And I'll be with you by-and-by."
Old Woman, Old Woman by Scott Gustafson
A Noiseless Patient Spider
by Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Spider Nebula from Nasa
For Fools
They say, love is for fools. My compassion
pulses, mourning, with a veil of pity
drawn loose across its face for the estranged
strangle their hearts must have endured to bleed
the bitter poison of lavender wounds.
I say, then, I must be the most foolish
of all for the blue tick and red tock of
my purple heart knocks for that universal
soul all the same. The stars glide listlessly
along her dark pupils as if they are
the dim rings, and that quick flash of color,
Saturn – stars stuck, aimlessly, in orbit,
pulled in by that inescapable gaze.
I know that temptation – I have felt its
lilac allure for far too long to be wise.
You may have heard of the Old Woman
"tossed in a basket... as high as the moon"
but that is not all to the tale of wonder and balloons
for we are born young, gathering adventures,
before we grow old, handing out stories.
Before tongues knew only of the wrinkles on her face,
she was bountiful and grace,
a young maiden born of Now-utset and Utset
who brought light into the worlds of their father,
the great spider Sussistinnako
who weaved the universe.
Granddaughter to the Spider of Creation,
she sweeps across the sky with a broom of wool
from the softest sheep jumping through dreams
her son Hypnos weaves, as Erebus draws
the thin sheet of silver stars over the blue sky.
In youth, she had hair made of mist
a black veil floating about her
curling down to her waist, spilling from her head,
in the shape of ocean foam --
endless.
Call her Old Woman,
yell to the golden straw of her basket,
but she is born Nyx, named for the Night
she cleans so stars shine all-so bright.
Nyx from Tumblr
Man in the Moon by Aimee Stewart
Bibliography:
- The Real Mother Goose. Blanche Fisher Wright. Project Gutenberg.
- Spider's Creation. Katharine Berry Judson. Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest. 1912.
- A Noiseless Patient Spider. Whitman, Walt.
- http://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/nyx.html
Author's Note:
This story is personal for the Man in the Moon, as it is about his lover, Nyx. Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night, but for my purposes, she is also the Old Woman in the nursery rhyme.
Sussistannako is apart of Native American myths and since he is a spider it works really well with the original nursery rhyme as the Old Woman sweeps cobwebs away. For my storybook, he is the grandfather of the Old Woman or Nyx. The poem by Whitman felt as if it is about the Spider's Creation, but it also makes the headcanon of my favorite poet as the Man in the Moon. It was the inspiration for adding in Sussistannako.
There is actually a nebula in space that looks like a spider! If you're interested, click this link to learn more!
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