A Riddle Known to Shakespeare

the talkative child and the silent man, would always be less strange than the others. Thoughts of them comforted her while she prepared for bed. She did not fall asleep for a long time. Pictures from her long strong day crowded over her. It seemed as if she had lived, not one, but many days since the morning. Yesterday and all the days before yesterday when she had lived in Lexington and gone to school were too long gone to be measured by time alone. The muskmelon eater in the square, the ugly forefinger, Cumberland, the huddle of houses on the river, the little faded woman , they too, though clear and sharp and colorful, lay in the background. The nearest tiling was a tall man walking slowly up a ridge side, his head bowed a little and shining in the sunlight. He came closer and she saw that the sunlight had not touched his eyes; they lay in a band of shadow that struggle as she would she could not push away with her hand. A RIDDLE KNOWN TO SHAKESPEARE Below are two of the ways one may find a riddle and story referred to by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Scene I. People who remember this riddle usually know that there is a story behind it, but they just as usually don't know the story. The "sly fox" was a villain who enticed women to their doom, but this woman was also sly in a different way and watched him digging her grave and so escaped. 2. O where I stayed last Friday night The wind did blow The cock did crow It made my poor heart ache To see what a hole That sly fox did make. Riddle to my riddle to my right, Where was I last Saturday night? AU that time in a lonesome pine, He was high and I was low, The cock did crow, the wind did blow, The tree did shake, my heart did ache, To see what a hole that fox did make 57 ...