It should be of no surprise that the bow used in musical instruments is hypothesized to have derived from the hunting bow that is used to shoot arrows. It would not be surprising if this were true. Visually, they are very similar, both with fiber joining the ends of a length of flexible material. The biggest difference in this oversimplification is where the fiber joins the end of the musical bow: the frog. The introduction of the frog is as mysterious as when, perhaps, the hunting bow and the musical bow diverged. Or so one would think!
The other day I came across a first hand account, the earliest first hand account, of the creation of the frog. Sometime before the 15th century (the account was undated), an archetier's apprentice by the name of Daniel was finishing five bows his master had recently completed, as his master was away. The bows were to be sent to a local musician later that day and his master made the best of bows. Unfortunately, excitement as to the end of his apprenticeship preoccupied poor Daniel's mind and with a careless stroke, his hand slipped and snapped the end of one of his master's bow where the hair attached to the stick. There were no suitable replacements and there was no time to make a replacement it!
Frightened over the prospects of his future, as his master and the musician were influential people, Daniel scrambled to patch the broken bow, hoping the musician would find this to be a new style of bow. Hurriedly, he delivered the bows to the musician before his master returned and saw his misdeed. A few days later, the musician showed up at the work shop with the patched bow and demanded to speak to Daniel's master. With fear in his heart, Daniel called his master. To his surprise, the musician enjoyed the patched bow the most and declared that all bows he ordered be made this way. Never had Daniel achieved greater success. The frog was Dan's best mend.
What I enjoy most about your pieces, Gantic, is how they are just whimsical enough to seem fantastic, while still maintaining a firm root in reality. And so something that might at first seem ordinary or even boring is now something enjoyable to read. Well done.
This isn't exactly a writing thread. It's closer to a joke and there's the rub! If a hidden joke is pointed out, the punchline has less impact, but if it is not known at face to be a joke, will it fly unnoticed overhead?
On second read, it's actually not that great. I was afraid I obscured it too much. Oh well. Obligatory TVTropes link.
Not sure if this is original I found it on a website.
Prof San Holo was busy at his lab. He was experimenting with splicing genetic material from rams into eggs of bees, thereby creating bees with useful traits of the ram. With global warming, Â certain species of flowering plants flourish while others perish. The idea was to give the bee the ability to digest leaves and grass to make honey and thereby reduce the need to be reliant on nectar and pollen from flowers.
The first splicing was a disaster. The bee digestive system became dysfunctional. The second attempt disrupted the honey production with lactose contaminant The bee grew tiny horns in the third!
He then tried DNA from a sheep and Eureka! Yes indeed. It worked because he Made the Fourth Bee with Ewe.
Little do people know, their fates are controlled by sheep. They bear great resemblance to the Fates of Greek mythology, with the only difference being that they are sheep. The sheep spin lifeyarns from the wool of the mother sheep, measure them, and cut them. As with handspun wool (or hoofspun), lifeyarns are lumpy in varying degrees. These are the lumps of life, so to say. It is these lumps that make one life different from another. Small lumps are little moments. Big lumps are momentous changes. Some yarns came with bigger lumps and more lumps, as some lives are fraught with more fret and fray, though not all lumps were bad because one man's trash is another man's treasure.
Like humans, like all creatures, these yarns are not spun to be alone. These lumpy yarns are woven together into tapestries of communities. Where lines crossed, people crossed. Where lines twined, people twined. Where lumps clustered, the community changed, the human spirit rose above in a monumental and sometimes unbelievable historical events. But these clusters of lumps exist in an unstable equilibrium and with time, the conditions may shift and change the position of clusters in such a way that, like a memory or a tear in the fabric, it isn't the initial conditions that shepherds the future (though it is the seed), but the effect of an effect that steers the course of future events. And it propagates from phenomenon to phenomenon. Indeed, people's futures are greatly controlled by the ewe-knitted states of a miracle.
