Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers.
"As I was going to St Ives" is a traditional nursery rhyme. The earliest known published version of it dates to around 1730. The words are, in one version, as follows:
- As I was going to St. Ives
- I met a man with seven wives
- And every wife had seven sacks
- And every sack had seven cats
- And every cat had seven kits
- Kits, cats, sacks, wives
- How many were going to St. Ives?
Going away from St. Ives were: one (1) man, seven (7) wives, seven times seven (49) sacks, seven times seven times seven (343) cats, and seven times seven times seven times seven (2,401) kits, making a total of 8 humans, 49 sacks, and a slightly implausible 2,744 felines; a grand total of 2,801 kits, cats, sacks, wives, and man.
St. Ives is a village in Cornwall.
A very similar riddle has been found in an old manuscript dated to around 1650 BC:
- There are seven houses,
- each with seven cats;
- each cat kills seven mice;
- each mouse would have eaten seven heads of wheat,
- each of which would have produced seven hekat measures of grain.
- How many hekat measures of grain were saved by the cats' actions?
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