At 10:22 15-12-2003 -0500, Ed Margerum wrote: >At 9:57 PM -0800 12/14/03, Vance Wood wrote: >> >>> Hi Bill: >>> >>> Freud said it best: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". I was once told >>> that the rose was to keep rats from nesting in the Lute. I suppose that >>> makes about as much sense or nonsense depending on which side of the >>debate >> > you happen to stand. > >A rat in a lute isn't impossible. A brass instrument repairman I >know was recently asked to repair a tuba. He found the problem, a >blockage caused by a desiccated rat. > >Ed Margerum
Rats can be useful to musicology. A few years ago, a pulpit was being repaired in a church in Elsinore. Inside it, a rat's nest was discovered, containing various scraps of paper, some with music on them - 17th C. Latin church music. Also, there was a letter to Buxtehude from his father, then organist at the church. The rat obviously took a big bite out of this, before deciding that this fare was too dry, and better left to posterity and musical science. Still, we can't help denoting this as "Gefundenes Fressen"!! Culinarically, Arne.
