"Go Tell Aunt Rhody", also known as "Go Tell Aunt Abbie/Mandy/Nancy/etc.", "The Old Grey Goose" or simply "Aunt Abbie/Mandy/Nancy/etc." may have originated as a play-party song during New England’s colonial days (Most Protestant communities had restrictions against dancing and playing musical instruments and play parties were designed to sidestep those restrictions by using only handclaps for accompaniment and the simple patterns of children’s games to replace the intricate patterns of country dances) or it have been derived from an air composed for a 1752 opera by the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau which was extracted as a song and printed in many settings, including shape note tunebooks where “Aunt Rhody” later appeared. The simplicity of the tune and the wide dispersal of variants would indicate that traditional processes operated ton the Rousseau tune. The simplicity of the tune makes it a good starting tune for learning dulcimer. It was recorded by The Pickard Family (The Old Grey Goose Is Dead), Jean Ritchie (The Old Grey Goose Is Dead), Pete Seeger (The Gray Goose), The Carolina Tar Heels (The Old Grey Goose), Woody Guthrie (Go Tell Aunt Rhody), Ella Jenkins ( Go Tell Aunt Rhodie), Phil Campos And Paul Hansen (Go Tell Aunt Rhody) and Burl Ives (Aunt Rhody). It has been printed in many books of children's songs and in Jean Ritchie's The Dulcimer Book (1963).