Wild Herrings and Strawberries Sing

A few days ago I wrote a short piece on my favourite nursery rhyme 'The Man in the Wilderness'.

A friend sent me the link to a fuller, three quatrain version of that rhyme with a slightly different wording which gives it a more authentically folkish flavour. Here is how it goes:

The man in the wilderness asked of me,
‘How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?’
I answered him, as I thought good,
As many a ship as sails in the wood.

The man in the wilderness asked me why
His hen could swim and his pig could fly.
I answered him as I thought best,
‘They were both born in a cuckoo's nest.’

The man in the wilderness asked me to tell
All the sands in the sea and I counted them well.
He said he with a grin, ‘And not one more?’
I answered him, ‘Now you go make sure.’

The text is from Natalie Merchant's web-site. I am glad I've discovered her wonderful adult interpretation of the poem and the beautiful music that accompanies it. I'll be listening more, hopefully together with my children who have grown out of nursery rhymes, but, I know, have kept the warm feeling of excitement and discovery that reading and reciting them with my wife and me gave them.


'The Man in the Wilderness' is included in Merchant's  'Leave Your Sleep' album, 2010. Enjoy:

Red Herrings in Strawberry Sea

Strawberry seas

A man in the wilderness asked me, 

How many strawberries grew in the sea. 

I answered him, as I  thought good, 

As many red herrings as swim in the wood.

(The Puffin Book of Nursery Rhymes, Iona and Peter Opie.)

This is one my favourite nursery rhymes. I read it to the children, both in Russian and in English when I found it in the Opies' anthology. 


Here is how it goes in Russian:

Кто-то спросил меня в дикой стране, 

"Сколько клубники в море на дне?"

Я постарался ответить попроще:

"Сколько селедок в дубравах и рощах". 

The translator has changed the metre slightly, but the rhyme and the rhythm are retained. 


There are two clever finds in the Russian version.


First, instead of one word 'wood' two rarer and poetic Russian synonyms are used, 'дубравы и рощи' roughly meaning 'groves and copses', which gives a nice rhyme, проще – роща, and also accentuates the absurdist element in the rhyme. With just the 'wood' it may not be immediately clear how impossible it is for herrings to swim on dry land. 


Then, in the second and fourth lines the verb (grew and swim) in the sentence is dropped. Russian sentence structure allows this, the meaning is implied – it is clear what is going on without actually using the word for it. Russian words are generally longer than English, so applying this trick helped to preserve the metre.

'Red herrings' in the rhyme is not just tit for tat, you throw something silly at me, I throw even sillier something at you. The idiom in reply is also a clue: I understand that you are trying to pull my leg and showing that to you. It is not easy, maybe impossible to find a corresponding Russian idiom without losing the original imagery. Here the translator decided to keep the herrings in literal sense and drop 'red' altogether. 'Red herring' would mean nothing to a Russian reader, herrings in the woods is hilarious as it is.


The Russian anthology with the rhyme was published in the 90s, when sloppiness in publishing was wide-spread. While many other entries have attributions, this one doesn't. I couldn't find the name of the translator anywhere on the internet. Please let me know if you are familiar with it.


The Russian-language version of this post is on "Тетрадки".


Update: And a friend sent me a link to Natalie Merhant's song version of that rhyme.