Puddle it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be all right, because this World was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. When Walter Raleigh met Queen Elizabeth I, Raleigh is reputed to have thrown his coat over
There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe as she leaves for her honeymoon, or tying shoes to the departing couple's car. Archaeologist Ralph Merifield has pointed out that in Lancashire it was the custom for females who wished to conceive to try on the shoes of a woman who had just given birth. Debates over the meaning of the rhyme have largely revolved around matching the old woman with historical figures, as Peter Opie observed "for little reason other than the size of their families". Candidates include Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II (1683–1760), who had eight children, and Elizabeth Vergoose of Boston, who had