One for sorrow, Two for joy,
I’ve always loved the magpie rhyme. It has the sort of melancholy cadence English folklore specialises in. Slightly ominous. Slightly theatrical. The kind of thing that makes childhood feel haunted in a manageable way.
I loved it as a weird kid in Liverpool. I remember the mission I made of trying to track down a written version when access to the internet wasn’t easy. It felt important that I knew the correct words, as though getting the rhyme wrong might somehow interfere with the magic of it.
A librarian eventually found a version for me and, in this romanticised retelling of events, noticed the level of emotional investment I had attached to this little poem, gently explained that the poem wasn’t really as sad as it sounded.
Magpies, she told me, are rarely alone. And like any good librarian, provided the dewy decimal number where I might go and find further evidence to confirm her unproved statement.
I like to think that reassurance settled somewhere deep inside me before I fully understood why I needed it.
Because sorrow, when you’re young, often feels singular. Like standing slightly apart from everyone else and assuming that distance is permanent. And somehow, strangely, part of my childhood identity.
But magpies, helpfully, refuse the premise almost immediately.
Three for a girl, Four for a boy,
Even when you only spot one initially, there’s usually another nearby. On a fence a few gardens over. On the chimney of the terrace. In the tree behind you. Hopping several steps after the first one like it got distracted halfway through arriving.
You notice it once you start paying attention. The second bird appearing moments later, as though the universe is quietly correcting the count.
And there’s joy in that, I think. Not dramatic joy. Not fireworks or declarations. Just the quiet relief of discovering that someone remained nearby after all.
The older I get, the more I think joy often arrives like that. Slightly late. A little awkward. Emerging from behind the hedge after you’d already convinced yourself you were alone. They were just there, in case things went wrong.
Five for silver, Six for gold,
I know there’s a whole mythology around magpies stealing shiny things. Tiny black-and-white thieves making off with jewellery and glittering little treasures for reasons known only to themselves.
This isn’t actually true.
Magpies suffer from neophobia, which is a fear of new or unfamiliar things. Researchers testing the “shiny object” theory found they were often actively cautious around unfamiliar objects, including jewellery. Which is deeply disappointing information to learn about a creature you’ve spent years imagining as a tiny gothic dragon.
It feels like a key part of their personality is a lie. But honestly, that’s also very relatable.
Because magpies still look fearless. They strut around gardens like they own them. Loud. Sharp-eyed. Bold enough to argue with cats. They have the energy of creatures entirely confident in themselves.
And yet underneath all that apparent swagger, they’re cautious. Vigilant. Constantly assessing unfamiliar things before deciding whether they’re safe to approach.
I know that dance.
The performance of confidence covering a much more careful internal reality. Learning how to look socially effortless while quietly monitoring everything around you for risk, discomfort, or the possibility of getting it wrong.
The magpie mythology survives because the surface version is more entertaining. We prefer the image of the unapologetic little thief collecting shiny treasures to the reality of a highly intelligent creature nervously evaluating its environment before engaging with it.
But I think the truth is more interesting.
Still, they do seem like creatures built around curiosity. Sharp-eyed little avian goblins, strutting around suburban gardens with the confidence of beings entirely aware they are smarter than most things nearby.
Which, honestly, they probably are.
Seven for a secret never to be told,
I think one of my oldest secrets was how thoroughly I expected to be alone.
Not consciously, perhaps. Not dramatically. Just a quiet assumption running underneath everything else. That closeness was temporary. That eventually everyone drifted far enough away to become anecdotal. That the poem of my youth was truth, and there was no fully outgrowing the shape of that interpretation once it settled into you.
I suspect a lot of my life was organised around preparing for absence before it arrived.
Keeping one foot slightly outside things. Noticing exits instinctively. Treating permanence as something other people managed to believe in more convincingly than I ever could.
But over and over again, I keep discovering presence instead.
People returning.
Messages arriving.
Someone remembering something small about you months later.
A familiar voice checking in.
Not permanence, exactly. But persistence.
The second magpie in the tree.
Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss,
I think all superstitions are wishes in disguise.
Tiny negotiations with uncertainty. Little rituals designed to make the world feel briefly legible. As though if we count correctly, say the right words, notice the right signs, perhaps loneliness and grief and change will become slightly more manageable.
I don’t really believe the rhyme literally.
But I do believe in the strange comfort of repeated things. Familiar words. Shared folklore. The quiet tenderness of humans handing each other small rituals for surviving uncertainty.
And perhaps that’s what I love most about magpies in the end.
Not the omen.
Not the superstition.
Just the repeated evidence that companionship keeps appearing anyway.
Ten for a surprise you should be careful not to miss,
The surprise, I think, was realising how often I was wrong about my own predictions.
Wrong about being abandoned.
Wrong about being too much.
Wrong about solitude being inevitable.
Not always. Not entirely.
But often enough that I’ve started distrusting my own pessimism a little.
That feels important.
Eleven for health, Twelve for wealth,
A younger version of me would probably have imagined health and wealth as obvious things. Tangible things. Savings accounts. Stability. A future arranged neatly enough that nobody had to worry too much.
Something collectable.
Something you could point at and say: there. Proof.
But magpies, it turns out, don’t actually hoard shiny objects after all. The mythology survives because we like the idea of visible treasure. Little glittering trophies gathered into a nest.
The older I get, the less convincing that version of wealth feels to me.
Now, honestly, it looks more like this:
The strange little coven of friends that lives inside my phone.
Messages arriving from different cities, different time zones, different versions of life.
People who stayed long enough to become part of the architecture of things. People who welcome you back when you though you were alone.
And increasingly, I’m stepping out from behind the screen and back into physical space with them again. Coffee shops. Concerts. Conventions Shared meals. Small adventures. Presence becoming tangible.
And, perhaps most surprisingly, discovering that intimacy can feel calm instead of catastrophic.
That feels like wealth to me now.
And health, perhaps, looks like this:
Conversations with my children that no longer feel one-sided. Watching them become adults slowly enough that I almost miss it happening. Realising, somewhere along the line, we became people who genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
A life that still surprises you gently.
Enough energy to enjoy the day you’re currently inside.
The second magpie arriving a few moments later.
There are worse forms of abundance than that.
Thirteen?
For a poem built around counting carefully and taking stock of what’s actually there, the final line took me a long time to understand.
As a child, I thought the rhyme was about omens. About correctly identifying danger before it arrived.
Now I think it’s more complicated than that.
Because over and over again, my life has contradicted the story I expected to be true. I kept preparing for isolation and repeatedly found companionship instead. I kept assuming absence while people quietly continued showing up.
The message arriving unexpectedly.
The friend who stayed.
The children becoming adults beside me.
The small accumulated evidence that perhaps my internal narrator is not always entirely reliable.
The second magpie in the tree.
Maybe the real danger was never sorrow itself.
Maybe it was stopping the count too early.