The Man in the Wilderness Lyrics
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. The man in the wilderness wants to know how many strawberries grow in the sea, and the reply is just as impossible.
The Man in the Wilderness
The man in the wilderness
Asked me
How many strawberries
Grew in the sea.
I answered him
As I thought good,
As many as red herrings
Grew in the wood.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/the-man-in-the-wilderness/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken rhyme
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does The Man in the Wilderness Mean?
Strawberries do not grow in the sea, so the question has no answer. The reply matches it perfectly: as many as there are red herrings growing in the wood. Herrings are fish, and they certainly do not grow on trees. It is a way of saying "that is a nonsense question" without being rude.
A red herring was a smoked herring, which turns reddish-brown. Today the phrase also means something that distracts you from the real point, which fits the rhyme nicely.
History and Origin
This is one of the older rhymes in Mother Goose. James Orchard Halliwell noted in the 1840s that he had found it in a manuscript from the 1600s in the Sloane Collection, the library that later helped found the British Museum.
Learning Activities
- Silly questions: take turns asking impossible questions ("How many shoes do fish wear?") and answering with something equally impossible.
- Where does it grow? Sort pictures of foods into things that grow on land and things that come from the sea.
- Strawberry hunt: in summer, visit a strawberry field or look at how strawberries grow in a garden.