Cracking eggs into the mix for a fruit-cake yesterday morning, my thoughts turned to the current situation of a young friend. Suddenly I found myself thinking: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ So appropriate did the old saying seem to the circumstances I was considering that, as I added the flour to the mix, I began to remind myself of the story behind the adage.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket:

On a lovely Spring day, a lovely young country girl is tripping down the lane towards her local town, a basket full of eggs on her arm. And as she goes she is thinking. When she’s sold the eggs at the market – and she’s bound to sell them for they’re lovely fresh eggs – she’ll have enough money to spend, just enough, to buy a pretty new ribbon for her hair.

And when that pretty new ribbon is in her hair, she dreams,  she’s sure it will please the boy that she fancies. The boy likes her already, she’s quite sure of that, but when her hair is bedecked with that pretty new ribbon, she’s sure he’ll like her even more. In fact, he’s bound to ask her out for a walk and, when he does, he’ll surely want to see her again and before long, she’s  certain, he’ll be asking her to marry him. She knows she’ll say yes and she also knows that when they’re married, they’ll make a cosy home and have lots of children.

But it’s just here in her thoughts that this young girl trips. Oh no! It’s that tree-root sticking up out of the path that does it. Her basket goes flying, the eggs go flying and after she’s picked herself up, she is horrified to see that every one of the eggs is broken. So that’s it: no market, no sales, no ribbon, no lover, no marriage, no children.

Another view:

That’s the story. But at this stage of my life at any rate, the story makes me think more deeply than it used to. Yes, in one sense it’s a sensible moral. All kinds of things can go wrong. Don’t build towers without foundations. In another sense, however, does that know-all ending have to be the end of the tale? Won’t there be another day, another week, another batch of eggs, when the girl in the story could buy that ribbon? And even if all her eggs are broken, is there anything to prevent her going on to the market and telling her friends what happened? And might that not make  the young man of her dreams feel such sympathy for her that he asks her to come for a walk even without that pretty new ribbon in her hair?

Two more snippets:

A story certainly can make you think. Here are  two more that came to mind when I was deciding to focus on eggs as the subject of this week’s blog.

1. Blackbird eggs:

When visiting the Natural History Museum a few days ago to see their very amazing Wildlife Photography of the Year exhibition, my attention was caught by a small glass case just outside the ticket desk. In the case was a mock-up of  little bush with a male and female blackbird perched on either side of a nest. In the nest were four eggs and underneath was the caption which said – did you know this? – that blackbirds often have more than one batch of eggs during the course of a season. Sometimes, the young birds from the first batch can afterwards be seen helping their parents to feed the young ones of the next batch.

2. Human eggs:

Once on a train to Wales, my husband listened with increasing astonishment to a young woman who, if her accent was anything to go by, was from the South Wales valleys. While her little toddler ran riot up and down the carriage, she talked ever more loudly on her mobile phone. The subject of her talk was about getting the right price for her eggs. And after a while, it became apparent to all around that the eggs she was talking about selling were (in every sense) her own.

PS: My photos this week are both of eggs from our collection of eggs. Sometimes I pop one or two into my story-bag to show at a storytelling session.  

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 16th, 2016 at 10:19 am and is filed under All ages, Folktales, Personal experience, Props and Resources, Riddles, rhymes, sayings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.