From the Trivia File
Many composers have written variations on the name BACH. How is that done?
Well, the first thing that one must bear in mind is that the German musical notation system is different from the rest of the world. In the German system, the letters B, A, C, H represent the tones B-flat, A-natural, C-natural, B-natural.
The Trials of St. Placidus, the Roman General
Placidus was very rich, and high in the favor of Trajan, the Roman emperor; but after his miraculous conversion, he was tried like Job. A Pestilence carried off all his menservants and maidservants, and all his sheep, horses, and cattle. Robbers despoiled him of his goods, and, for fear of the plague, he, with his wife and two sons, fled towards the sea. Here they found a vessel in which they intended to embark, but the captain, struck with the beauty of the woman, determined to make her his mistress; so, beckoning to his crew, they seized her, carried her aboard, and set sail, leaving Placidus and the boys behind. The general, finding all hopeless, took the boys, and wandered about till they came to a river. One he carried across, and as he was going back to fetch the other, he saw a wolf snatch up the child, and a lion the other. Having now lost everything, he hired himself to a farmer as a keeper of sheep, in which servile capacity he continued for fifteen years. In the meantime Rome was beset with foes, and the emperor sent messengers in all directions to hunt up Placidus. Two of the messengers arrived at the village where he lived as a hired laborer, recognized him, and told him the emperor desired him to lead his army to battle. So the shepherd was arrayed in the robes of a Roman general, returned to Rome, and once more headed the Roman legions.
His two sons were not devoured by the wild beasts, for certain husbandmen, who saw them, so alarmed the beasts that they dropped their prey to secure their flight, and the boys were brought up by the men who had rescued them.
Placidus, finding the army under his command too small, had a new levy made, and his own two sons were amongst the recruits. After routing the foe, Placidus halted for three days in a town where his wife was living. She had been carried off by the sea captain, but, as she resolutely resisted all his advances, he put her ashore, and she earned her living as a poor peasant woman. The two young men happened to be billeted in her cottage. Here a sort of good fellowship sprang up between the two young soldiers, who were entire strangers to each other, and the elder told the younger the story of his life. When he came to the adventure at the river, the younger instantly discovered they were brothers. The woman, their mother, overheard the tale, went to the general, revealed herself, and introduced to him his two sons, who were thus marvelously lost, and as marvelously found.
… Gesta Romanorum
What’s in a Name?
Geuzukuchukian: Turkish in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, geuzukuchuk is defined as one with small or deep set eyes.
CK Garabed
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