When I was up at my senior school, my headmaster had an oft'-used mantra that was known as his 3 C's.
He never missed an opportunity to tell us the importance of Christianity, Classics, and Cricket. To him these were the three things that would see us through life on a clear and open path. I always embraced No's 2 and 3, but No 1 never really appealed. Amazingly I had been my intake year's Classics Scholar.
Also at school, my Music Appreciation tutor stressed the importance of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Stockhausen. His 3 S's.
I still think in terms of 3's. When driving to the shops in France, if I have encountered two cars coming my way, I always expect to meet a third, and pay careful attention (our roads are very narrow). It's amazing how often it happens.
I recently wrote of 'Three Memorable Encounters'; another example of how things in 3's just seem to happen naturally. I also have 3 children.
The 'Rule of Three' applies to the planting of trees. It is the number of Cricket stumps. Goldilocks met three Bears. How many coins in a fountain? The 'tricolore'. The Three wise Monkeys. Three French Hens. And finally The Three Graces.
Three is a very useful, and oft'-used number. It makes an aesthetic 'group'. And it is an important member of my theory that 12 is a far more useful number than 10.
Celebrity deaths. How they arrange it that way, I'll never know.
ReplyDeleteTiming darling; timing!
DeleteI never gave any thought to the importance of threes apart from knowing bad things always happen in threes and of course the three wise monkeys.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure a lot more happens in different numerical groups, but it's the 3's that one notices.
DeleteIt's definitely food for thought. very interesting. My association was immediately the Holy Trinity.
ReplyDeleteAlso in Judaism, the three patriarchs from the Bible Abraham, Yitzchak, and Yakov.
ReplyDeleteAre they what I might call the 'Three wise men'? The three kings who brought gifts to the new born Jesus? I'd forgotten about them.
DeleteThe Holy Trinity is a basic principle in Christianity according to which God has three faces. The Father, the Son who is Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
DeleteRight; I should have known that.
DeleteThere are also three signs that you may be suffering from memory loss. 1: you forget what you have just said. 2: you forget what you have just said ... and ... oh, I don't remember the third ...
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, but I don't remember.
DeleteAnd number three child is different from all the others..
ReplyDeleteAll of mine are quite different. But the third probably more different than the other two.
DeleteThe three wise monkeys was the one most often quoted when I was young, as I think it was to many young children.
ReplyDeleteI can think of several instances, personally, where the rule of three has applied.
I was always fascinated by the Monkeys when I was small. We had a small ceramic figure of them which I found curious.
DeleteDon't forget The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Robin Reliant motor vehicle. I suspect you had one of the latter and used it shamelessly to woo Lady Magnon.
ReplyDeleteI would rather forget the Reliant, but the goats rock!
DeleteI'm a believer of bad things come on 3s. When one thing happens I wait for the next 2 and breathe a sigh of relief when the 3rd comes and goes, as it usually does.
ReplyDeleteI've not thought of 3's as being good or bad; usually they're indifferent.
DeleteIn my neck of the woods, it is said if one deer passes in front of your car, slow down because there are 2 more to come.
ReplyDeleteAnd usually in France they'd be two little ones!
DeleteThird time is the charm,
ReplyDeleteThird time lucky.
DeleteI've always heard bad luck happens in threes. It seems to be an almost universal superstition.
ReplyDeleteNothing happens in fives or sevens; it's always threes. Once is of no importance, twice is just too common, so three times is the first number to be of interest.
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