By the Numbers
by Robert Rodriquez

uestion: What do Kal-El (a.k.a. Superman), Tom Lehrer, Gilbert and Sullivan, and the substance known as kryptonite have in common? Answer: the number 82.

It goes something like this: Way back during the halcyon days of the Great American Folk Scare, a.k.a. the 1960s, a rather brilliant but very unorthodox Harvard mathematician named Tom Lehrer found that he had a unique talent for writing clever, unusual, and sometimes very way-out musical parodies, to the delight of a growing number of fans in the musical and artistic world. One of his more bizarre compositions, using the melody of the Gilbert and Sullivan patter song "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," was nothing less than a listing of the complete table of atomic elements, at that time numbering 104. Number 82 on that list is the element lead. Now as every comic book fan knows, the only element that can shield Kal-El, the last survivor of the planet Krypton, from the only substance that can destroy him is common, everyday lead. It is really quite simple when the whole thing comes together.

The world of folk tales, myths, and traditional stories is so replete with the concept of numbers of all sorts that it is hard to know where to begin to survey them. Some numbers can be said to be culture specific, as in the case of numerous Arabic tales from the middle East, North Africa, even as far away as Central Asia and the Philippines or Indonesia. Ali Baba encountered and outwitted forty thieves. Kelloglan, the bald-headed hero of many Turkish tales, once stayed in a magical palace where he could visit any of thirty-nine rooms, but, under the penalty of horrid consequences, was forbidden to enter the mysterious fortieth. When the hero or heroine has successfully completed his or her series of trials and adventures, a wedding or celebration will often last forty days and forty nights, and the fortieth day will be as wondrous as the first. In many tales from the fabled Thousand and One Nights, a hero may journey for nine years, nine months, nine days, nine hours, and nine minutes, but when he looks behind himself, he has traveled little more distance than the length of a barley straw. Even the realm of other-world inhabitants seems to have a set of rules about its set-up. Djinn are organized into forty troops or courts reflecting their functions, locales, and composition (whether they be of fire, earth, air, or water.)

If the number forty is culture specific to the Middle East, then it is equally true that forty-one is an important number to the traditions and tales of the Fon people of Benin in West Africa. In Fon tales, the king always has forty-one wives, forty-one advisors, and forty-one captains in his army. In one tale, the trickster-glutton known as Yogbo once demanded forty-one meals for his bottomless stomach in exchange for telling a friend the secret names of four princesses who would marry no man who could not guess their hidden names.

In tales from Siberia, Mongolia, and the Far East, nine seems to be a prevalent number, especial where certain animal tails are concerned. In Japan, Korea, and China, a fox possessing nine tails is often an animal representation of a much higher being, usually a blessed celestial from the heavenly realms come to Earth to assist humans. In Mongolia and Siberia, the magical flying horse of epic tradition is often said to possess nine tails. Among Mongolian musicians the instrument know as the huur, counterpart to the western fiddle, is said to be made from parts of these wondrous horses.

In European and related western traditions, such numbers as three, seven, and twelve are so central and familiar as to be almost taken for granted. In folk and fairy tales, a king and queen may have three, seven, or twelve sons or daughters. A hero must endure three quests; Heracles had to complete twelve labors, and a Hungarian prince had to obtain seven magical treasures in order to win the Faerie Helena to wife. There are the seven sisters of stellar lore, while numerous dragons and other mythical creatures from Russian and Slavic lore often possess seven heads. In a story from Bulgaria, seven men named Simon combined their powers to rescue a princess, only to come to blows as to which of them would win her to wife. A Spanish soldier may discover the secret of twelve dancing princesses; a Norwegian heroine must journey seven years in order to regain her lost husband and finally break his enchantment; Ilya Murometz, the great hero of Russia, must travel to the realm of the hated Tartars to endure three horrific trials in order to win his invincible sword and his lovely bride.

As long as anyone can remember the number thirteen has always been considered unlucky and a number of ill omen. The fear of Friday the Thirteenth, the thirteen steps to climb to the top of the gallows, the sinister thirteenth floor of a building often found in literary tales are but a few of the grim associations with this number. On the American frontier, it was considered a bad omen to sign up thirteen wranglers for a cattle drive, and a number of stories hinge around various and clever ways to get around this unlucky set of circumstances. There is an anecdote of a Texas rancher who once even included an old Mexican cook on his active payroll so as to not list thirteen drovers. Of course, thirteen has a secondary association, the "baker's dozen." This may derive from a legend from colonial New York in which a baker, to avoid being cursed by a local witch, gave her thirteen Christmas cookies, counting them as a dozen. Ever since, the "baker's dozen," thirteen of anything, has been a part of cultural lore. In a legend from Somerset in Britain, when Saturday midnight rolled around during a wedding celebration, the clock mysteriously struck thirteen times, announcing the arrival of a strangely clad fiddler. He turned out to be the devil himself, come to punish the merrymakers for dancing and making music on the Sabbath. He changed the entire party into a circle of standing stones, which can still be found in Stanton Drew to this very day.

The number four has a wide-ranging and diverse series of images and associations: four seasons, four elements, four of a kind in poker, the four Gospel writers of the New Testament, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Fantastic Four of comic book fame, the four cardinal directions so prevalent in native American tales. The great, central epic of Wales, the Mabinogion, has four distinct narrative branches to its telling. According to a tale from the Irish mythological cycle, when the Tuatha de Danaan first came to Ireland, they brought with them their four greatest treasures: the food-giving cauldron of the Dagda, the mystical stone of destiny, the magical spear of the sun god Lugh, and the invincible sword of Nuada. Journeys to the Faerie realm may often involve lengthy periods of time, from seven to twenty to one hundred to three hundred years of actual elapsed time. In the well known Scottish ballad bearing his name, Thomas the Rhymer journeyed to Elf-land with the Faerie queen. The year spent with her was actually seven when he returned to his native Scotland. Oisin, son of Fin Mac Coumhal, journeyed to Tir Na N'og, Land of Eternal Youth, and spent three years with his beloved princess, but when he returned to Ireland, he found three hundred years had gone by, and all that he knew and loved was now but a distant memory. In a tale from ancient Britain, a king named Herla attended the wedding of a strange, little man. When he emerged the following day, he discovered that two hundred years had elapsed and that he and his retainers were condemned to ride forever across the land, following their ghostly hounds.

Perhaps the best way to complete this survey of numbers in traditional and other tales is to relate the modern anecdote of the journalist who has been asked to write about a new maximum-security prison outside of a large urban center. He is invited to stay for dinner, and while eating, he observes a peculiar ritual. Every so often, one of the inmates will leap to his feet and shout a certain number. Peals of laughter follow from the assembled prisoners. Finally, after one inmate yells "forty-six!" and everybody laughs as if it were the end of the world, the reporter asks one of the guards to explain what is going on. He is told that since these poor incarcerated fellows know every one of their jokes by heart, they figure, why bother telling the whole joke? Why not shorten the process by simply giving them all numbers? The reporter figures that he, too, might as well get into the act, so he jumps to his feet and yells out the number twenty-seven. To his consternation, no laughter follows. When the reporter inquires as to what happened, the guard replies, "Some folks know how to tell a joke, and some don't."

—posted Winter 2001

Back to top.