Some of these facts may be true. Some of them may not. John Lewis may have uncovered them. Romas Foord may have illustrated them.

1. It has been established that, after certain studies in the hidden arts and after certain rituals, the adept when in an appropriate trance, by hurling a saxophone seven times over running water, can read the damage on the instrument as one would read a set of tarot cards. Dirt, dents in the body, damaged keys (to be dealt a broken Ab key is the portent of disaster and a new spin on the wheel of life) broken springs marks on the finish, even, and most commonly broken, the reed must be taken into account. It is the most benevolent sign for the reed to remain intact, for the reed is the most basic sound producing part, its fragility is essential in its symbolism relating to the 'human condition'. If the reed remains unbroken it implies power in the adept, it is considered that the strength and virtue of the adept is what protects the reed. The damaged parts and their relationships in the malfunction of the instrument (a torn pad and a broken spring on the same key have a close relationship as they affect the playing of the same note) are seen as a microcosm, can show certain aspects of the future, can split mountains.

2. ...It was further revealed to me by an old man, face like a shadow, that within the structure of the saxophone, while it is being played, and only, only while it is being played* are all the ingredients, could one rearrange them, of the ancient, secret Philosophers Stone sought by alchemists to turn base metal into gold.

*It is essential that some essence of the alchemist is present.

3. A woman from Tristan De Cunha about whose origin little is known (no-one on the island remembers a time when she did not live there, but no-one is aware of her having any relatives), and whose abilities as a medium are well documented, described to the local Priest how, during an illness, she left her body and witnessed the defeat of Jericho. She describes the horns used as 'spirit horns'; shaped like a saxophone without keys, but seemingly intended to play just one note.

4. Archeologists in the Middle East have discovered a curved, conical wind instrument of great antiquity and thought to be ceremonial in its function. It appears to be intended to produce only one note at a time. Although there are holes along the instrument, they are positioned so that they could not be spanned by a normal hand.

There are traces of blood and materials foreign to the geography of the region in which the horn was found, in and around the holes.

It seems that the holes were stopped by caking in some ritualistic mixture producing a different note for different ceremonies or occasions.

5. The hand of John the Baptist is exhibited in the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.

It is whispered by old men in the tea houses where they still smoke hookahs, under the Calata Bridge, that the hand is encased in metal so it can not be seen that the hand is split between the fingers, almost to the wrist. Three cuts, doubling the length of the fingers — giving them an exceptionally large span.

Certain shamans cut their hands similarly.

6. A cult has grown in the mountains of Sikkim. Its central item is a saxophone left by a last stand military band of the raj. It found its way, bartered for a horses head, to the house of a corpse carrier, a social outcast with an idiot son.

The keys have been stripped off the saxophone leaving the curved, conical horn with holes. The locals say that the holes are covered when the horn is played with a mixture unknown in exact content to all but the idiot boy. The recipe is rumoured to contain ingredients brought from Tibet by a European fleeing from the Chinese invasion of the fifties.

The European was shown hospitality by the corpse carrier, discovered the saxophone and started to instruct the mute child in its playing. Concentrating solely on the embouchure, he allowed the boy to play only one note. He stripped the saxophone of its mechanism, melted the pieces down and added the ingredients he had brought with him from Tibet. He caked the hardening mixture over the holes and blew a single long note, starting inaudibly and growing louder until the whole valley rang. At the crescendo, his student pierced the teachers lungs with a single, skilled thrust using one of his fathers knives. His teacher held the note as blood flowed through his mouth and nose running down the sax, inside and out becoming part of the hardening mixture covering the holes.

After he collapsed, the valley rang for three days. The mute child who is the figurehead of the new cult plays the sax in their rituals. It is claimed by the corpse carrier, now in his nineties, that when the valley rings again for three days, the Dalai Lama will again rule Tibet in law as well as in the peoples hearts.

The sax used by this cult is a silver plated alto made in the US by Elkhart industries and bears, appropriately, the brand name 'Universal'.

7. The fingernail digit of each of the boy's fingers was smashed on his seventh birthday and the pulped finger set in hot wax between two discs. Left on for two years, the finger ends become discs large enough to cover the holes in the horn. In a society which shuns mechanism, this was considered more expedient than putting a system of keys, springs and levers on the horn.

From the age of seven, the child could do little with his hands, which were slit almost to the wrist to double the length of the fingers, except play the horn.

During the ceremony there is no pain, but fear of the ceremony and the pain over the next two years as the fingers heal usually unhinges the personality of the player.

The thumbs are left intact.

8. A French ship was sunk in the Atlantic, and the entire cargo lost except for one crate which (it was later discovered) rounded the Cape and was washed ashore on a small island east of Madagascar.

The island, though largely ignored, was visited by a strategy conscious captain in the US Navy in the seventies. He and his crew were amused to find the natives using saxophone mouthpieces, the contents of the crate, as currency. The most precious mouthpiece was a crystal mouthpiece* adopted by the local magician who had had crystals implanted in his belly during his initiation.

Ironically, he and his predecessors used a conical horn in the figure of a bird-head, neck and shoulders — shaped not unlike a saxophone without keys, but he wore the mouthpiece merely as an ornament.

When one of the crew attempted to demonstrate its original purpose, relations between crew and islanders declined quickly. Several of the crew, including the sax player, died under mysterious circumstances before returning to the US.

*A prototype, and therefore the only one in the shipment, its loss on this occasion stopped its development until Van Doren successfully marketed a crystal clarinet mouthpiece in the seventies.

9. A Guatamalan Indian tribe have adopted a saxophone left behind by a French anthropology student into their funeral ritual. It is played on the banks of a lake from which is said to come the spirit which accompanies of the souls of the deceased to the afterworld. It rises from the lake, enters the bell of the sax and rises up through the instrument enticed by the shadow play on the inside of the instrument as the keys open and close. It enters the player through the mouthpiece and in the players body narrates the journey of the soul to the relatives gathered round, eager for news of the deceased. Only when he tells them that the soul has crossed the bridge into the underworld do they disperse. The funeral is over and the saxman (shaman) returns alone to the lake and plays to allow the guardian to return to the water. If he fails to play this second time he will go mad and put out his eyes after a matter of weeks, as he us unable to carry on seeing with the eyes of the spirit still trapped in his body.

10. A Siberian peasant regarded locally as a 'powerful man' was reported to be using a sax mouthpiece (an old brass Otto Link bantone) without reed or ligature but with skin stretched and dried over it, then cut to form a vibrating membrane, as a goose call in the annual goose hunt.

It was confirmed by people in neighbouring villages that geese would change their course and add as much as forty miles to their journey to answer his call.

He obtained the mouthpieces from a man travelling east believed to be a Soviet deserter, disinclined to leave his mouthpiece when he fled, but exchanging it for an overcoat.