The present day bedtime story of the young girl who disrupts the home life of an anthropomorphic bear family dates in print back to 19th century Great Britain. In 1831 a woman named Eleanor Mure printed a small, homemade booklet written in verse and called “The Story of the Three Bears Metrically Related with Illustrations.” Mure had created the work as a present for her nephew. Its subtitle, “The Celebrated Nursery Tale” implies that it was probably based on an earlier oral story.
Robert Southey Creates the Story of the Three Bears
Six years after Mure‘s work, British poet laureate Robert Southey wrote the “Story of the Three Bears” which appeared in his work, The Doctor. Over the course of time, this small chapter became one of the most beloved story books for children.
Although his tale was extremely similar to the Mure work, it is unlikely that Southey knew of it. Instead, he claimed that he had first heard the story from his uncle who, according to some folklorists, may have been aware of either Mure, the old oral version, or an old English folk tale called Scrapefoot, a story in which the protagonist is a fox.
Eleanor Mure and Robert Southey’s Three Bears
In both stories, the main character is not a young girl, but a nameless, homeless and ill-tempered old woman who intentionally breaks into the bears’ home looking for food and shelter. Those who believe that Southey, and probably Mure, were influenced by the tale of Scrapefoot contend that the two authors simply substituted the fox (vixen) for a shrewish woman (also sometimes known as a vixen).
One major difference between Mure and Southey’s versions is the ending. Southey’s tale has the old woman jumping out a window and disappearing forever, leaving her fate up to the reader’s imagination. In Mure’s telling of the story, the bears, after unsuccessful attempts to burn her alive and drown her, impale the poor creature on a church steeple.
Later Development of the Goldilocks Story
Later children story books have transformed the original tales. In 1849 the British writer Joseph Cundall retold the story in his Treasury of Pleasure Books for Young Children. Claiming that there were too many stories that featured old women, Cundall changed the Mure-Southey character to a young girl that he named “Silver Hair.” A decade later, in Aunt Mavor's Nursery Tales, she was renamed “Silver-Locks.” By the time that the young intruder appeared in Aunt Friendly's Nursery Book (1868), she had become “Golden Hair.”
Finally, the character, who like Benjamin Button went from being old to being young, had her final identity crisis resolved in 1904. That year, in Old Nursery Stories and Rhymes, she became known as "Goldilocks." The name stuck and has been the one most frequently used ever since.
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