A Question for the Group Mind

[rolanni]

Now, I Understand Perfectly why it is that you don't want to pay the ferryman before you get to the other side. After all, if the fee were paid at the outset, the old fella might very well get tired of you half-way across and leave you to sleep with the fishes.

What I Don't Understand, though, is why you mustn't even fix a price.

Anybody?



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Comments

[sraun]

I'd guess - for the same reason. If you agree on a price, what happens when you get half-way across and he decides he wants more? Your choices are 'pay more or get taken back'.

[damara.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing here, but maybe ... cause then he's entitled to take his pay off your corpse?

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

But that's a flat rate: the two coins on your eyes.

So the question is, is your passage worth more if you're dead or alive?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

The dead weigh heavier than the living. (Mary Renault told me that, and I must believe her.)

I figure that if you annoy the ferryman while bargaining, he throws you overboard on general principle.

Me, I'm waiting until they build a bridge.

[(Anonymous)]

Sort of rhymes with side?

[barsukthom.livejournal.com]

Well, if you don't decide on a price, he may try harder to give you a decent voyage, & thereby benefit from a sizeable tip.

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

Because it has enough syllables and "price" almost rhymes with "side."

[planetalyx.livejournal.com]

In BC, because the government's sure to privatize him halfway across and the fee will go up three times in that last half-voyage anyway, so why waste the energy.

[baggette.livejournal.com]

Ask a ferry man?

A lifetime spent preparing for the journey

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think it's because you don't want to raise the question of price and bargaining until you're across, because you only have those two coins, after all.

[kimuro.livejournal.com]

If the crossing is difficult, then the ferryman may feel himself justified to ask for more, but if you don't set the price until you get to the other side, the two of you can haggle to an acceptable price and, possibly, neither feel shorted in the end.

And besides, you never know what will happen in the middle of the journey.

[tapetum.livejournal.com]

I always figured it was because then the ferryman would know how much you had on you. He might then decide to cosh you over the head halfway across and simply take it.