All Greek to Me

Do you have trouble remembering the nine Muses?  For that matter, do you have trouble recalling the difference between the Muses and the Graces?  And what about the Fates—and the Furies? 

A previous blog dealt with mnemonics—phrases like Every Good Boy Does Fine to help you remember musical notes, or HOMES for the five Great Lakes. Well, I’m here to provide you with similar memory-jogging devices for those mythological Greek personages.

There are nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who represent the arts and sciences.  They are: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy)

Now for a mnemonic (named for their mother, Mnemosyne) to help remember them: how about Caterpillars Capture Every Elephant Made Perfect Through Trade Unions?

But wouldn’t be more helpful if each word in the mnemonic not only had the initial letter, but maybe the first three letters, to jog your memory?  Okay, try this:

California’s Clinton Eradicates Euthanasia, Melting Political Terrors, Thawing Uranium.

There are three Graces, goddesses of joy, charm, and beauty. They are the daughters of the nymph Eurynome and Zeus—who apparently really got around. Their names are Aglaia (splendor, glory), Euphrosyne (merriment), and Thalia (feast).  And they should be easy to remember as Aglow, Euphoric, Thanks!

There are also three Fates, or Moirae (“apportioners”): Clotho (spinner of the thread of life), Lachesis (drawer of lots), Atropos (cutter of the thread of life). They were believed to appear after the birth of a child to determine the newborn’s destiny in life.  An easy mnemonic: Clothes Lachrymose, Atrocious!

Finally the Furies (Erinyes), sometimes known euphemistically as the Eumenides, or “kindly ones.”  Their origin was rather bloody: the Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw his genitals into the sea (naughty boy). The Furies arose from the drops of blood, and the goddess of love, Aphrodite, from the sea foam. Well, maybe so.   You know the Furies as Alecto (relentless pursuit), Megaera (jealousy), Tsiphone (blood vengeance) You can easily remember them as Alexander’s Megahit T-shirts.

On second thought, it might be easier to memorize the names of the goddesses than to remember these mnemonics.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has never been inspired by any Muse, but despite all odds, he keeps plugging away:

                        Hickory, dickory,

                        Remember Terpsichore,

                        The Muse of the song and the dance.

                        And make this your motto:

                        It’s always Erato

                        Whose poetry speaks of romance.

                       

                        Boil, bake, or fry a pea

                        To rhyme with Calliope,

                        Whose poems are noisy and epic.

                        And don’t forget Thalia,

                        Whose works never fail ya

                        With comedy Johnny Depp-ic.

                       

                        And as for Melpomene,

                        She is my nominee

                        For tragical fear and pity,                       

                        And pitch-perfect Euterpe

                        Makes me chipper and chirpy

                        When she cranks out a musical ditty.           

                        Up on the chimney a

                        Grave Polyhymnia

                        Spouts poems both sacred and pious.

                        And it’s clear that Urania

                        Has some sort of mania

                        With an astronomical bias.

                        But my favorite Muse

                        From whom I take my cues

                        On the banks of Buffalo Bayou

                        Should be no special mystery,

                        She’s the great Muse of history,

                        Omniscient, omnipotent Clio.

Try to Remember

After a recent blog on frequently confused words, one of the more literistic* customers wrote to say she uses a mnemonic to distinguish continuous from continual.  She remembers that the word ending in OUS means One Uninterrupted Sequence.  Mnemonics have been useful devices for millennia, to help the fevered brain recall hard-to-remember facts, especially lists of items.

You’re probably familiar with HOMES, which is supposed to remind you of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.  Of course, if you want to remember them in order of size, you’ll have to think of SHMEO, which is harder to do. 

It’s just about as difficult to come up with the name of that noted celebrity ROY G. BIV. But if you do, he will lead you effortlessly to the colors of the spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Our British cousins prefer a historical allusion to the defeat of Richard Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.  Whatever works.

Many of us remember Every Good Boy Does Fine for the notes on the lines of the treble staff.  In Britain, as we know from the play by Tom Stoppard and André Previn, it’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. And the bass clef lines tell us that those Good Boys Do Fine Always.

Biological taxonomy is embedded in the memory by Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach, which, to those in the know, can be rendered as Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

And for mathematicians who want to remember the first digits of pi (3.14159265…), there’s “How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics…”  Just count the number of letters in each word.  That could go on forever.

Mnemonics get their name from the mythical Greek Titan Mnemosyne, the daughter of Gaia and Uranus, the mother of the Nine Muses—and the possessor of a prodigious memory.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou’s memory is not prodigious, but his appetite for the ludicrous is nothing short of miraculous, as you may easily discern from the following:            

           

            The fugitive

            Roy G. Biv

            Remarked one day in Greenwich,

            “Kids Prefer Cheese”

            (Roy paused to sneeze)

            “Over Fried Green Speenwich.”

*I have no more idea than you do what “literistic” means—but it’s part of the name of a New York agency that represents writers like Ruth Rendell, Dick Francis, and John Irving, so I figure it must have something to do with books.