Storytelling Week 1: The Empty Wagon

Did you see my wife, did you see, did you see,


Did you see my wife looking for me?


She wears a straw bonnet, with white ribbands on it,


And dimity petticoats over her knee.






(traditional nursery rhyme)


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There once was a happily married couple in a small mountain village. The man was a tall, skinny fur trader whose wife was a petite and jolly woman. The woman usually wore thick fur coats and boots while braving the harsh, cold winds of the mountains with her husband while he was on business, but when they went into town to trade and purchase goods she dressed in her finest dimity petticoats.






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She wears a straw bonnet, with white ribbands on it,


And dimity petticoats over her knee.





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(coal scuttle bonnet)










One day, they were making their weekly trip to town. The woman loved to stare out the back window of the wagon while they passed the big, beautiful lake. She was leaning out the window to get a closer look at the ducks playing in the water when their wagon hit a bump and the woman fell from her seat and was left behind as her husband never realized she was gone. She got up and ran after the wagon, but she was not fast enough to catch it. She began to walk in the direction of the town hoping to get there before the shops closed.






As the man pulled the wagon into town he called back to his wife. When there was no answer, he figured she had fallen asleep on the long ride from their cabin and continued to the place in the town square where they usually sat up their trade post. He parked the wagon and hopped down and began to unload the pelts. One of his usual customers, a man who owned a fabric shop in town, came by asking if he would trade some of his furs for fabric for his wife to make a dress. The fur trader told him he would if his wife found something she liked and agreed to it. So he went to the wagon and knocked on the back.






KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!






“Sweetheart!? The man from the fabric shop down the road wants to trade you some fabric for some of the furs! …Honey?”






He peered inside the wagon. As he looks around he realizes that his wife is no where to be found. He thinks back to the last time he spoke to her.






“THE LAKE!” he realizes, “she must have leaned to far this time and fallen out!”






He was hoping she was able to walk her way into town and had possibly started shopping already. He took off running through the town asking everyone he could find if they had seen her.






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Did you see my wife, did you see, did you see,


Did you see my wife looking for me?






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But no one had seen her. Finally, he walked into the last store next to the entrance to the forest on the outskirts of town.






“Hello! Have you seen my wife?”






“You know, I think I have. There was a woman who just left about five minutes ago wearing a straw bonnet and a dimity petticoat who was mumbling something about needing to find her husband!” revealed the store clerk.






“That’s her! Thank you!”






The man ran back to the wagon and found his wife sitting on the edge of it with new fabric in hand.






“I traded with the fabric shop owner, I hope that’s okay.” she said.






“Of course! I was coming to wake you up to pick out some fabric when I realized you were gone!”






The couple loaded up after trading all their furs for the week and headed back into the mountains to do it all again. Though this time, the woman kept her hands and feet inside the wagon at all times.






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Author's Note. This story is based on the nursery rhyme "Did you see my wife?". You can see the original nursery rhyme at the beginning of the story. You can find the rhyme in the The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang (1897). In the nursery rhyme, the man was going around looking for his wife. He described what she looked like and the rhyme never mentions if he finds her or not, so my inspiration for writing this story was to give the couple a happy ending. Nursery rhymes always seem to take place in my mind in small mountain villages (I am not sure why), and fur traders seemed to be a worthy occupation of a couple who lived up in the mountains.






I chose the title based off of one of my favorite BBC Sherlock episodes, The Empty Hearse.