In May 2002 Sharon A wrote: The question also makes its way into the song "Birmingham Sunday" by Richard Farina, as this verse (slightly altered from the above version):

The men in the forest, they asked it of me
How many blackberries grew in the blue sea
And I asked them right with a tear in my eye
How many dark ships in the forest

As I know it, the words were sung - and explained as:-

The men in the forest, they once asked of me
How many black berries grow in the salt sea ?

'The men in the forest' are that group of people who supported the segregationist cause but did not want to be individually identified – and who use the riddle to ask whether it was natural for black people to live in the white community.

And I asked them right with a tear in my eye
How many dark trees in the forest ?

And the sijnger comes right back by asking whether anyone can or should identify individual trees in a forest – with the added overtone of 'dark trees'. But then, I was brought up in South Africa and was eventually banned for ridiculing the previous government and its apartheid laws in a series of songs.