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Concept
As I was going to St Ives
Summary
"As I was going to St Ives" (Roud 19772) is a traditional English-language nursery rhyme in the form of a riddle.
The most common modern version is:
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
The following version is found in a manuscript (Harley MS 7316) dating from approximately 1730:
As I went to St Ives
I met Nine Wives
And every Wife had nine Sacs,
And every Sac had nine Cats
And every Cat had nine Kittens
A version very similar to that accepted today was published in the Weekly Magazine of August 4, 1779:
As I was going to St. Ives,
Upon the road I met seven wives;
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?
The earliest known published versions omit the words "a man with" immediately preceding the seven (or nine) wives, but he is present in the rhyme by 1837.
There were a number of places called St Ives in England when the rhyme was first published. It is generally thought that the rhyme refers to St Ives, Cornwall, when it was a busy fishing port and had many cats to stop the rats and mice destroying the fishing gear, although some people argue it was St Ives, Cambridgeshire, as this is an ancient market town and therefore an equally plausible destination.
The traditional understanding of this rhyme is that only one is going to St Ives—the narrator. All of the others are coming from St Ives. The trick is that the listener assumes that all of the others must be totaled up, forgetting that only the narrator is said to be going to St. Ives. If everyone mentioned in the riddle were bound for St Ives, then the number would be 2,802: the narrator, the man and his seven wives, 49 sacks, 343 cats, and 2,401 kits.
Official source
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