As I was going to St Ives

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"As I was going to St Ives" Roud #19772
Written by	Traditional
Published	c. 1730
Written	England
Language	English
Form	Nursery Rhyme

"As I was going to St Ives" is a traditional English language nursery rhyme which is generally thought to be a riddle. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19772.

Contents 1 Lyrics 2 Origins 3 Answers 4 Mathematical answer 5 Rhind mathematical papyrus 6 Use in popular culture 7 Notes 8 References 9 See also

[edit] Lyrics

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, wives

How many were going to St Ives?^[1]

[edit] Origins

A similar problem appears in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Problem 79), dated to around 1650 BC. The earliest known published version of it comes from a manuscript dated to around 1730 (but it differs in referring to "nine" rather than "seven" wives).^[1] The modern form was first printed around 1825.^[1]

There are a number of places called St Ives in England and elsewhere. It is generally thought that the rhyme refers to St Ives, Cornwall although some people argue it was St Ives, Cambridgeshire as this is an ancient market town and therefore an equally plausible destination.^[2][3][4]

[edit] Answers

All potential answers to this riddle, other than simply summing up the various animals and humans, are based on the ambiguous language of the riddle. In any of the assumptions made in answering, the rhyme only tells us that the group has been "met" on the journey and gives no further information about the intentions of the group, only that of the narrator. It is only a simple reading of the riddle that assumes that the party is likewise traveling to St Ives and has been overtaken by the narrator.^[1]

The traditional answer to the riddle is that only one person is going to St Ives: the narrator. The narrator, while heading to St Ives, has met the large party because they are going away from St Ives; this is the most common assumption.^[1]

An alternative answer, based on the above logic is zero, because the question asks how many kits, cats, sacks, and wives are going to St Ives, thereby excluding the narrator, and none in the four stated categories is going there.

Alternatively, the group encountered is neither traveling to nor from St Ives. They could be going anywhere else, or nowhere at all— perhaps they are at home. These solutions would still give answers of one or zero.

[edit] Mathematical answer

The mathematical answer to the total number of people, sacks, and felines involved, is 2,802, calculated as follows:

• Narrator: 1
• The man met: 1
• Wives: 7
• Sacks: 49 (7 wives times 7 sacks per wife)
• Adult cats: 343 (49 sacks times 7 cats per sack)
• Kittens: 2,401 (343 cats times 7 kittens per cat)

[edit] Rhind mathematical papyrus

A similar problem is found in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Problem 79), dated to around 1650 BC. The papyrus is translated as follows:^[5]

A house inventory:

			houses	7
1	2,801		cats	49
2	5,602		mice	343
4	11,204		spelt	2,301 [sic]
			hekat	16,807
Total	19,607		Total	19,607

The problem appears to be an illustration of an algorithm for multiplying numbers. The sequence 7, 7 × 7, 7 × 7 × 7, ..., appears in the right-hand column, and the terms 2,801, 2 × 2,801, 4 × 2,801 appear in the left; the sum on the left is 7 × 2,801 = 19,607, the same as the sum of the terms on the right. Note that the author of the papyrus miscalculated the fourth power of 7; it should be 2,401, not 2,301. However, the sum of the powers (19,607) is correct.

The problem has been paraphrased by modern commentators as a story problem involving houses, cats, mice, and grain, although in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus there is no discussion beyond the bare outline stated above. The hekat was 1/30 of a cubic cubit (approximately 4.8 litre).

[edit] Use in popular culture

• The rhyme was used as a riddle by Jeremy Irons' villain character Simon Gruber in the movie Die Hard With A Vengeance. Gruber gives Zeus Carver and John McClane thirty seconds to call him back on the number "555 plus the answer" or a bomb would go off. After several guesses, Carver eventually solves the riddle and they call the number 555-0001 which turns out to be correct.

• The rhyme was also the basis of a Sesame Street Muppet skit from the show's first season, in which the boy Muppet holding a numeral 7 sings the rhyme as a song to the girl Muppet twice (the second time, the girl is busy writing down the calculations) and finally, in keeping true to the spirit of the riddle, reveals the answer as 1 (the traditional answer), because he was going to St. Ives and the kits, cats, sacks and wives were going the other way. Then the girl turns the tables on the boy and asks how many were going the other way. She then reveals the mathematical answer from her calculations: 1 man + 7 wives + 49 sacks + 343 cats + 2,401 kittens, which comes to 2,801. Astonished, the boy responds, "How about that?!"

• The rhyme was also featured in a Pogo comic story, "More Mother Goosery Rinds" in which Albert Alligator himself portrays Mother Goose and Pogo a traveling musician. After going over several Mother Goose rhymes they get to the St. Ives riddle, albeit replacing "seven" with "forty" and while Albert (Mother Goose) keeps trying to cogitate the answer, Pogo boasts he knows it...and he answers "one", which baffles "Mother Goose" (Albert Alligator). Pogo says that if the kits, cats, sacks and wives weren't going to St. Ives, maybe they were going somewhere else, such as Altoona, Pennsylvania. So Albert again recites the riddle, this time ending with "Kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to...ALTOONA??" But by this time, Pogo has already gone upon his way.

• MAD magazine used in one of its articles the following parody:

As I was going to St Ives

I met a man with seven wives

Of course, the seven wives weren't his

But here in France, that's how it is

• British poet and humorist Colin West wrote a satire on "As I was going to St Ives", called "As I Went Down To Milton Keynes". The items listed are "a king with seven queens", and for every queen a prince, for every prince a princess, for every princess an earl, for every earl a lady, for every lady a baby, and for every baby a cat.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

Oystein Ore, "Number Theory and its History", McGraw- Hill Book Co, 1944

[edit] See also

• Ancient Egyptian weights and measures