Mediaeval Chinese whispers

[RussellB[SA]]

A young man joins the monastery.

He is assigned to helping the other monks

in copying the old canons and laws of the

church by hand.



He notices, however, that all of the monks

are copying from copies, not from the original

manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the

head abbot to question this, pointing out that

if someone made even a small error in the first

copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that

error would be continued in all of the subsequent

copies.



The head monk, says, 'We have been copying

from the copies for centuries, but you make

a good point, my son.'



He goes down into the dark caves underneath

the monastery where the original manuscripts

are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't

been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go

by and nobody sees the old abbot.



So, the young monk gets worried and goes down

to look for him. He sees him banging his head

against the wall and wailing.

"We missed the R !

We missed the R !

We missed the %*@# R !"

His forehead is all bruised and he is

crying uncontrollably. The young monk

asks the old abbot, 'What's wrong, father?'

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies,

'The word was...



CELEB R ATE