As I was strolling through Yeovil town centre today, on my way for a lunchtime sandwich, I was stopped in my tracks. The old lady in front of me had stooped to pick up a penny on the floor, quoting some olde rhyme as she did: “find a penny pick it up, all day long have good luck”.
Notwithstanding that a small piece of metal, pressed into a circular shape with an image of our sovereign on it, has scant discernable influence over the space time continuum, and is, I suspect, completely lacking in any ability to deliver on the luck bounty promised in the rhyme, I thought it was rather sweet. Then my cynical side kicked in and I started wondering where such a rhyme might have originated.
Perhaps it was from a time when finding a penny would open up whole worlds of spending opportunity, that would literally bring rays of proverbial sunshine into any down-at-heel street urchin’s day. Or maybe it’s just that voicing a sweet little rhyme conceals the obvious truth that you are in fact bending over in a busy high street to grasp at a single dirty penny on the floor, like some sort of pecuniarily challenged scab.
I think I’m far too cynical these days.
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