St. Ives

"As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had..." I should have started this blog entry with "Stop me if you have heard this one before", so let's just assume that I did, which is why I stopped.

St. Ives was one of those children's riddles/rhymes that almost all of us have heard as children. This St. Ives one was one that I simply hated. I guess I learned to hate at an early age. The question at the end of the riddle: How many were going to St. Ives? And the answer? One - I, as in "As 'I' was going to St. Ives." Why did I hate it so? It doesn't state the initial direction of the man and his wives with all of their kids and kits and such. Surely a group as large as this man's would be moving much slower than I as a solitary traveler, so it is likely that group was also on the road going towards St. Ives. But the claim of the adults telling this woeful tale stated that I was the only one explicitly mentioned in the story, we therefore assume the other people were not going there. Rubbish!

I think, if it started out: As I was going to St. Ives, I saw the flames in the distance - St. Ives was a wall of fire and ash. The apocalypse had started and I was too late to stop it. I had rescued the Sacred Middle Finger of St. Ives and was going to return it to its rightful place, on the entombed body of St Ives in the center of the town square that bears his name. The road was packed with endless people fleeing with all of their belongings, which is how I happened upon this man with his seven wives. Each wife had....

So, the above start to the riddle would make it clear what was going on, and still retain that mystery of not explicitly stating that I was the only one going to St. Ives. This would have built a child's mind, let him or her think through that anyone encountered on the road who wasn't a flame or dead was probably leaving St Ives, whilst I, the sole person able to save this haven for bigamists, was going towards my eternal peril in a place once called St. Ives.

Maybe I will write my own set of children's riddles, stories, and rhymes. They will be grim, so I could call them Stories of a Grimm Nature by a Singular Person, Not in Association with his Brother or Anyone Else. Catchy, eh?

The Edward