DCML digest, Vol 1 #649 - 12 msgs

[Kriton Kyrimis]

DON:

> The story states that Quagmire was $crooge's "great uncle" -- this means
> his grandfather's brother.

As a non-native English speaker, I confess I interpretted "great uncle"
as "distant uncle", i.e., something like his father's cousin, several
times removed. I suspect that Olaf made the same mistake.


MITCHELL:

> Many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three
> I was married to a widow who was pretty as can be
> This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red
> My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed

This is exactly the kind of mess from which Greek law protects you.
If you marry a widow, her daughter becomes your own daughter, and hence
your father's grand-daughter, whom Greek law prohibits him from marrying,
even though they are not related by blood.  Considering that Mark Twain's
story (e.g., http://www.rit.edu/~cjh4090/text/FAMILY.txt) is supposed
to have been taken from a suicide note, this is probably a good thing!

BTW, another appropriate title for the song would be "my father married
his own granddaughter"!

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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"Absolute power never appealed to me either.  Fine for the first couple of
 weeks, but then there's all that tedious paperwork."
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