A counting rhyme about the apostles and a miscount over Simon Peter

As a child I had a counting-out rhyme for memorising the apostles, but something in it troubled me: however I recited it, the count never came out right, and I kept ending up with 13 men. In time I even resigned myself to this, supposing that the odd man out was surely Judas. But in the end, having made the acquaintance of the actual text, I discovered that the discrepancy arose because Simon Peter is one man, not two, and everything finally added up. This happens with oral knowledge. It is rather like the business of pronouncing words you have only ever met on paper, but the other way round.

Illustration: The Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, Giotto, from the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

A counting rhyme about the apostles and a miscount over Simon Peter

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s