This is a local story from Gloucester, England, that somehow never made it into Mother Goose, but perhaps that’s for the best.
It’s the tale of an ancient street that in medieval times became so narrow at one end that an ox being driven to market got stuck fast between the houses on either side and couldn’t be moved in either direction.
The image above, copied from a history sign, shows the street, variously known as Mitre Street or Oxbode Lane in the 1920s, shortly before the buildings on the right side of the street were torn down to create the wide modern street called The Oxebode (a little fancy, that?).
But back to the unfortunate ox and his owner:
There’s an ox lying dead at the end of the lane;
His head in the pathway, his feet in the drain.
The lane is so narrow, his back was so wide,
He got stuck in the road ‘twixt a house on each side.
He couldn’t go forward, he couldn’t go back,
He was stuck just as fast as a nail in a crack.
And the people all shouted, ‘So tightly he fits,
We must kill him and carve him and move him in bits.”
So a butcher dispatched him and then had a sale
Of his ribs and his sirloin, his rump and his tail;
And the farmer he told me, ‘I’ll never again
Drive cattle to market down Oxbode Lane.’
