As I was going to St Ives

While it feels like an old English rhyme, its origins are much older and likely mathematical. This structure, involving multiplication (7 wives, 7x7 sacks, 7x7x7 cats, etc.), echoes mathematical puzzles found in ancient texts, perhaps most famously in the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus from over 3,500 years ago, which includes a similar problem using powers of seven. The rhyme seems to be a neat, memorable package for this age-old brain teaser, turning abstract numbers into a curious encounter. We know it was circulating in England by the early 18th century, as versions appeared in print around 1730, showing it's been part of folklore for centuries.