4
The Pied Piper of Hamllyn
"Did you know that 'B' and 'F' are two pillars supporting the octave of musical tones?" asked Joachim, as he watched the placid glass-green waters of the mountain lake for signs of the mighty afanc fabled to reside somewhere in its bottomless depths.
"No-o-o-o," tremulated the fat ewe at his side, dressed in a coat of mud clotted cream that here and there was broken by browns, blotched in black and raddled in red. In truth she cared not for music, not tonal interval nor rhythmic beat; the only sound which musicked her ears being the bleat of her lamb not a large stone's throw away. Not that sheep throw stones; the concept was actually one of several which idly flitted through Joachim's mind on that late spring afternoon. The concept was that both very small stones and very large stones could not be thrown very far but very middle sized stones could be. And in the arena the very next day, a man would, under Joachim's instruction, throw a series of stones of regularly increasing weight, taking one pace between each throw. Today, Joachim, that diminutive man of great grey straggly beard, could envisage the pattern that he and his thrower would create; somehow it rang a bell - but, no, perhaps not, for such patterns of stone were not normally distributed about the arena.
"Yes," said Joachim. "It's the Babylonians who discovered it."
"Ba-a-a-bylonians?" the ewe queried, turning towards him in interest, having just satisfied herself that her lamb, jumping about on the small rocky outcrop above the broad lakeside track, was currently safe from all manner of wolves.
"They wanted to do it in sixtieths - the octave," he added, realizing that the ewe had forgotten what he was on about. "The Babylonians seem to have had a great time with sixtieths. But it didn't work out very well for music. A full tone interval is nine eighths, you see. Powers of two and three. They had to go into three-digit numbers to get it right. 'B' and 'F' are eight cubed and nine cubed, the two pillars, fire and water. Which is which doesn't really matter because you can regard the numbers as meaning either frequency or wavelength. It's all relative."
The ewe wasn't listening. Again. What little attention she could scrape up in the simple connections of her scrapied ovine brain was entirely directed to her lamb. "Ra-a-a-ts!" she said. The little fellow was only feet away from the Piper who had just materialized out of the side of the mountain. Well, in truth, he had merely appeared from behind the small overhang of rocks which obscured most of the track.
"Oh, don't worry about the Piper," Joachim assured her. "He's been up and down this track umpteen times today. Struggles up with that pipe of his, then runs down again without it. He's building a pipeline to take a water supply from the upper pool down to the farm at the bottom. That'll be his last trip today. He'll be off for his supper next."
"O-o-o-h." the ewe said, quite relieved by the explanation. She was confident that Joachim, whose beard reminded her of her last husband, would not mislead her.
"Bit of an odd chap, though," he went on as the both of them watched the pipeless Piper run down the track and appear to disappear once more into the side of the mountain. "He wouldn't take a cash payment for the job. Dai the Farm told me that all he wanted was a bed and a pie baking fresh every night. Dai said he even supplies his own fresh meat every evening - Hey!" he broke off suddenly, "Where's your lamb disappeared to?"
"B-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAAAAH!" With a great cry of despair, the fat ewe threw herself from the rocky overhang into the bottomless depths of the mountain lake. Harmonically lengthy waves spread across the glass-green surface like radio signals travelling through space to a distant planet.
"Oh, well," thought Joachim. "It should keep the afanc happy for a while." He turned to the lamb who had been exploring the new bit of pipeline and was now standing at Joachim's side watching the glass-green ripples with the enchanting curiosity of all young, "So he calls every evening at Dai the Meat's and gets a pound of ham and half a dozen eggs...."
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This is one of the Tales of Joachim |
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Ink Amera |
(C) David 1/9/2007 |
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