THE INVENTION OF THE
NECKTIE

By: Isidore (Izzy) Abrahami

Unlike with any other invention in the world, the necktie has been invented and reinvented many times in its thousand year marathon throughout the annals of human history. And it's one of the quirks in the chronicles of Mankind that the necktie's turbulent route is still very much kept secret.
We have in our possession a document signed by 249 heads of state and dated March 22, 1992, in which the politicians ratify the terms of a previous agreement of 320 years ago, to continue the policy of secrecy and not to disclose the facts concerning the tumultuous, ever-changing invention of the necktie and it's diversified uses, for the next five hundred years.
The document, page 311, paragraph 932, states: “The uncovering of the truth concerning the invention of the necktie will put the world's ruling systems and each one of the politicians in a crash course with the people, beside inflicting an irreparable damage to our most fortunate taxing system.”
Many courageous researchers before us have attempted to uncover the secrets surrounding the invention of the necktie with little success. The breakthrough in our investigation came with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In one of the most concealed chambers in the cellars of the by now defunct KGB, we managed to uncover an unusually guarded and highly sensitive dossier, consisting of twenty seven thousand documents, marked: THE NECKTIE FILES.
Many documents from among the “necktie files” shed a disturbing light relating to the facts surrounding the invention of the necktie and its peculiar uses until this very day.
This is the first time ever that the full story of the invention of the necktie and its subsequent evolution is fully revealed.
The detailed documentation found in among the “necktie files” conclusively proves that the origin of the necktie, as opposed to the theory held by Mr. Yves St. Lauren which postulates that the necktie has never been invented, but found, is traceable to the Treaty of Mersen signed between Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Charles the Fat in 870 A.D..
Except for unifying the European Principalities in order to facilitate the collection of taxes, the three rulers forged a new decree intended to sow fear and intimidate the European population into total submission.
This new law made it compulsory for all males above the age of six, except for nobility, to wear a piece of rope around their necks. The rational for such law forwarded by the three politicians was that it would save much of the tax payers' money spent by the cumbersome procedures in the hanging of the wrongdoers. This, they claimed, would be achieved as the offender would be hanged on the spot with his own rope for which he himself had paid. The decree also specified the measurements of the rope. It had to be more than half a centimeter thick and no less than one meter long.
This law caught the rest of the politicians' imagination and within a year it spread like a wildfire and was adopted by every politician all across the continent.
It was a time in Europe and in the British Isles that no man, except for nobility and for a few Teutonic Knights errant, dared to be seen in public without wearing the rope around their necks.
The person who would put the decisive stamp on the necktie and would turn it from a symbol of degradation to a symbol of honesty and nobility, as we know it today, was a small-time thief by the name of Alfonso Faber, a son of a farmer who lived in the tiny English village of Battle. The year was 1066.
Alfonso Faber conceived of a genius idea. His idea was to weaken his rope in a way that nobody would notice. And so, if he's caught and hanged and his rope is weak enough to break, he would have a chance to escape death.
On Oct. 14, 1066, with the Norman's invasion of the English South coast, Alfonso Faber, who dodged the military draft and was hiding in a small hut in the shores of Hastings town, observed that the wooden arrows that have fallen into the water and were nibbled by fish, looked exactly like pieces of rope. Picking a few of them he realized that contrary to their original firmness they would tear easily.
Once Alfonso Faber grasped the correlation, and once the sounds of war have faded, he acquired a few pieces of rope and a small rowing boat and went out to sea to test his idea. As a bait, he glazed the rope with fish paste, which was the common meal of the masses at the time, dropping it into the water. It worked miracles. The fish nibbled the rope exactly according to the rope's pattern and no one could discern that the rope has been ‘treated’ by fish.
It took Alfonso Faber two weeks and twenty pieces of rope to find out as of how long he has to leave the rope under water in order to weaken it enough so that it would break at exactly his weight.
Except for two cryptic documents found in among the "Necktie Files" written some 824 years later by the young Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in 1890, in which he claims that Alfonso Faber subconsciously desired to be caught and hanged in order to test his invention, no other facts exist to substantiate such theory.
The confirmed fact is that two years after his experimentation, Alfonso Faber was caught in the open bazaar in Battle stealing a pair of live fish. As he was hanged on the nearest tree with his own rope, the rope broke.
The exact date was Oct. 30, 1068.
It was the first time in the history of the known world that anything like that has ever happened.
Scores of messengers were sent to consult with the most powerful politicians of the “New World” as of what should be the proper conduct in the case of Alfonso Faber.
The messengers were to meet with Pope Gregory in Rome who was busy at this time to excommunicate King Frederick I, (Barbarossa, i.e. Red Beard), with the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne in Germany all of whom were preoccupied with carrying vicious battles against each other and against Pope Innocent IV, William of Holland, the Synod of Lyons in France, and against the Lesser tenants-in-chief of the three minor houses of Luxemburgs, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns.
A secret paper headed “The Neck-Rope Pact” which we found intact in among the "Necktie Files", and signed by all the above mentioned politicians, gives a clear picture of what has come to pass in these encounters.
The paper's first paragraph proclaims: We the divine authorities agree to the following:
1. We were presented with an exceptional opportunity to make
use of the case of Alfonso Faber in convincing the masses of
the existence of divinity among us; only God could have made
the rope of Alfonso Faber break.
2. Therefore, we order to spare his life in addition to beatify
and sanctify him. From this moment on, he will be known as
Saint Alfonso Faber. And as Saint he becomes immortal.
3. Our mandate gives us the power to make it a law of the world
that any Man, Woman or Child, except for those of noble
lineage, who gets the divine privilege of setting an eye on
Saint Alfonso Faber, to pay us, God's representatives on
Earth, a tax of seventy two gram of gold as a recognition of
God's powers in sparing Alfonso Faber's life and beatifying
him to a Saint. This tax will be known as “The Neck-Rope Tax.”
Upon hearing of the verdict from his prison warden, Alfonso Faber, the once small-time thief, couldn't be happier. He was informed of his Sainthood, released and was given money and food.
Alfonso Faber couldn't know of what had happened and whom he should thank for his good fortune.
Within a month the laws set in “The Neck-Rope Pact” were widely known, accepted and ruthlessly reinforced.
People became divided. Part of those who came face to face with the newly declared Saint wearing his broken rope around his neck grudgingly paid the Neck-Rope Tax. Others pretended not to see him, risking their lives. And still others migrated to the mountainous regions where the chances of Saint Alfonso Faber showing up there, were pretty slim.
The records of this period disclose that each month up to twenty one thousand men, women and children were hanged or incarcerated in Europe on charges of evading the Neck-Rope Tax.
We can presume that Alfonso Faber felt awful. Being street-smart, he realized that he has been made an instrument for the extortion of new taxes, for dividing the population and for sowing fear into the public at large.
The circumstantial evidence we possess shows that the politicians' enforcement agencies wouldn't let him stay home but force him to travel to various villages and towns, stroll in market places and attend festivities where large crowds of people have been assembled. After all, the Neck-Rope Pact specifically ordered that Saint Alfonso Faber should be seen by as many people as possible.
On the other hand we have a solid proof that he was revered by many who in former times had scorned him.
But there was another group of people who found a unique way of defying the new tax laws; they themselves began to wear broken ropes around their necks. And because not too many people knew Alfonso Faber personally, they could pass for the Neckrope Saint, as he came to be known, and who by the politicians' decree didn't have to pay taxes.
Here we have to differ with many previous theories which hold that the invention of the necktie as we know it today is solely due to Saint Alfonso Faber. With all due respect, he was only a small and unaware pawn used by the politicians for their own ends which hardly had anything to do with the evolution of the necktie.
There's nothing that could contradict our findings which places the invention of the necktie as we know it today on the shoulders of the politicians who were the original signatories to The Neck-Rope Pact, and, as our findings will show, on the long line of politicians who have been ratifying the Pact till this very day.
With the death of the immortal Saint Alfonso Faber in the village of Yde in the Dutch province of Drenthe in 1101, the Synod of the European politicians issued a decree which was to elect a new Saint and bestow upon him the divine ascendancy, and for the sake of immortality, the name of Alfonso Faber.
FNMBS, our affiliate investigative group of New York, has conducted a thorough research of the original fish-nibbled rope of Mr. Faber, which involved new scientific methods such as parasite research, pollen analysis, (C14) CT scanning, DNA analysis, etc., which confirms the findings published in this paper beyond a reasonable doubt.
The remains of the original Alfonso Faber and his fish-nibbled and broken rope around his neck, can be seen in the Provincial Museum of Drenthe, in Holland.
For the next four hundred and sixty years the politicians' practice in electing a new "Saint Alfonso Faber", once the previous one had passed away, stayed intact. Their principle in choosing a new Saint was that he should look pretty much the same as the original one, and that he shouldn't be public-shy. After all the constant tax flow into the politicians' pockets depended on his encounters with as many people as possible.
On Dec. 28, 1561 something extraordinary happened which was to put one of the final touches, and give the last conclusive push to the invention of the necktie, as we know it today.
On that day the official Saint Alfonso Faber XXIII, a miller's son, was helping his father in grinding grain with the rotating millstones. In a fateful accident, his traditional broken rope which he was wearing around his neck got caught in between the millstones and was flattened.
In a terrible panic for ruining the shape of the Holy Rope, Alfonso Faber, a genuine and simple man, hid in the mountains.
Here we have to note that the statement issued on Father's day of 1993, by the secret club of the world's politicians: "Krawatten und Konformismen GmbH" in Berlin, places this day (Dec. 28, 1561) as the day the necktie was invented.
We have to point out that this statement is erroneous. The necktie has never been invented, nor found. In an astounding parallelism, it evolved with the evolution of the politician.
The disappearance of Saint Alfonso Faber made most of the European population happy, at least for a short time; they were freed of paying the Neck-Rope Tax which, as always, exceeded their meager earnings.
As if collectively agreed, no one blew the whistle on the vanishing of Saint Alfonso Faber. It was probably the first silent mass protest in the annals of Mankind.
The first politician who discovered that something has gone wrong was Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, nine months later.
We don't have sufficient evidence to put the blame on anyone for the Duke's discovery. We can only assume that he started to suspect something when he checked his balance sheet and found out that his profits were diminishing considerably.
All at once, tens of soldiers were dispatched to search the mill of Alfonso Faber's father in the tiny German village of Krefeld.
Within an hour, to everyone's astonishment, the flattened rope of Saint Alfonso Faber was found.
That same day, the Duke called for an urgent and secret conference which took place in Krefeld's town-hall and was attended by most of the European politicians of the time.
The minutes of this conference were found intact in among the "necktie files". They suggest that the first day was spent in deciding whether to kill all of Europe's millers, or to abolish the rights of people to buy flour or bread.
On the second day, a foxy looking politician by the name of John Calvin, who in some years would become one of the most tyrannical visionaries of Europe, had a vision. Holding the flattened rope high above his head he declared:
"For us to control the whole tax-paying population through one person, is more difficult than to control every tax payer through all tax payers!"
This stunning declaration revolutionized the political thinking of the times and probably for all times to come.
Minutes after Calvin's declaration, a new law was established.
It directed the twenty thousand three hundred and fifty four regional tax authorities in Europe to start manufacturing flattened pieces of rope which had to have a design of symbols printed on them. Those were to tell the length of time for which the individual has paid his taxes.
Every male was ordered to purchase from the tax authorities a flattened piece of rope with the appropriate symbols on it representing the period for which he had paid his taxes.
The decree also forced each male to wear the flattened piece of rope around his neck at all times "in order to show the community his honest character in fulfilling his civic duties in paying his taxes."
Saint Alfonso Faber was excommunicated and an edict against him became effective.
Inspired by one of his most spirited visions, John Calvin concluded the conference with the words which were to become the politicians' secret dictum for generations to come:

WITH DEAD DESIRE THEY BOTH WON'T DIE;
THE SILVER LINK, THE SILKEN TIE,
WHICH HEART TO HEART AND MIND TO MIND,
IN BODY AND IN SOUL CAN BIND. *

The new law caught the tax authorities by surprise. At first they employed tens of thousands of women to weave the flattened pieces of rope with the varied number of stripes. Each stripe told that the wearer has paid his tax for one month. But with the passage of time, and with the introduction of automatization, the tax authorities began building machine-equipped factories for the production of, what would became known as, the Neck Tax-Tie.
This law of the Neck Tax-Tie turned out to be one of the most conceited and sophisticated pieces of legislation ever to be concocted by the politicians of the period.
It forced every male to buy his own neck tax-tie for a price that exceeded the cost of production by 203%. (See the Necktie Files, document 19001/5, page 3211).
But, cleverly, it also offered incentives to those who would pay their tax for a whole year in advance.
They could buy, for 7% less of the original price, only one neck tax-tie per year with twelve stripes set on it representing twelve months of paid tax. Those who couldn't afford to pay their tax one year in advance had to buy a new neck tax-tie with the appropriate number of stripes, each time they paid their taxes. In addition they were required to pay 15% more for each extra stripe.
*Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), rewrote these lines years later.

The ingenious scheme of John Calvin and the rest of the politicians in associating the ungratifying tax with the gratifying piece of attire, succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.
With the beginning of the new century, (1600) the tax-tie became the pride of every man in Europe. By wearing it, men indicated that in paying their dues, they could be counted among the honest and dutiful members of society. And not only that. Those who wore the twelve-stripe tax-tie exhibited their wealth by demonstrating that they were able to pay their tax one year in advance.
We've found remnants of society clubs from this period which carried names such as "The two-stripe gentry association" or "The seven-stripe fraternity club". The evidence shows that those mushroomed in every part of Europe and divided the population into unbridgeable class clusters.
At this time, men began working longer hours and much harder in order to be able to pay the maximum amount of taxes, a thing which enabled them to buy a tax-tie with as many stripes as possible and by doing so, reach the upper classes of society.
The massive evidence we've uncovered points out that one hundred and sixty years later, on September 4, 1761, the neck tax-tie, helped by the calculated political manipulations of people's fears and beliefs, had finally came on its own.
On this date, at exactly 18:00 hours, the first contest for the "Necktie Man of the Year" was conducted in the German town of Koln and was dedicated to the memory of the first and the immortal Saint Alfonso Faber. The winner was the British Sir Edward Milos who wore a blue twelve-stripe necktie.
Even so, we have to disagree with the contentions of many research groups which claim that the precise moment in which the Neck Tax-Tie became the final version of the Necktie, was Sep. 4, 1761 at exactly 6:00 o'clock P.M..
Our disagreement is based on scores of top secret documents which we purchased from eleven of the world's principal politicians for a skyscraping price which, for reasons that lie in the domain of the Capital Gain Tax, we're unable to disclose.
The evidence found in these documents features one of the most guarded covert operations in modern times and depicts the next astonishing metamorphoses of the necktie.
The publication of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", on Dec. 25, 1867, jolted the political establishment and inflamed the current politicians.
With no exception all of them agreed with Marx's premise, which maintained that the course of history is determined by economic factors, and not by the creative, artistic or the intellectual genius of the human being.
Within hours they called for an urgent meeting.
Three days later, on Dec. 28, 1867, the meeting took place in the palace of Versailles.
The mood of the conference was depressed. Things were not going as they should.
The majority of the population was cheating on their taxes and the money wasn't flowing in as before. Many citizens were forging their own striped neck tax-ties, and the politicians were beginning to recognize that they had to find new ways of enlarging their own personal riches.
What was even worse was the leaking of "State secrets" which, like in our day, meant the disclosure of the politicians' embezzlement of gigantic sums of money, threatened their well being.
"Das Kapital" made them aware that "economic factors", which in lay language meant the accumulation of close-mouthed money, would determined the course of history. In turn, that meant their own reputation in the future history books.
The politicians knew that once and for all they have to stop the leakage which uncovered their ways of amassing their fortunes, and find fresh ways to secretly keep on making deals with each other.
One of the entries in the diary of William Ewart Gladstone, a British politician who attended the conference, says that "Three days into the conference, the answer was found coincidentally thanks to an obscure Austrian monk who went by the name of Gregor Mendel."
The revelations in the documents we've purchased are stunning.
First, Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, wasn't a part of the elite conference. He was a poor monk who was experimenting on the cross-breeding of peas. And because the gardens of Versailles were known at the time for their abundance of peas, he had decided to come down from Austria and secretly sneak into the Versailles' gardens.
He was caught, brought before the politicians and found guilty.
Before he was hanged, he threw onto the ground a load of peas which he pulled out of his sack and made a plea on their behalf. His last words were:
"The numerous variations of the pea, each with its own astonishing beauty of design must be fully appreciated. I'm totally convinced that no one will ever understand the coded language of the peas hidden in their design of colors, shapes, dots and lines with which they communicate with each other."
He was hanged with his own neck tax-tie which bore one stripe.
Minutes after the hanging, the politicians were struck as if by lightning. Suddenly, the real meaning of the monk's last words became crystal clear. And all of a sudden they knew the answer to their major problem.
The answer lied in the peas.
It suddenly became clear to every politician in the conference that if peas can secretly communicate among themselves with lines, colors, dots and shapes why can't they!
And astoundingly, the pea was in every way a miniature of the neck tax-tie.
The minutes of the secret debate that followed tell of what happened next.

-16-
A law, smartly called "The law of equality", was established.
It abolished the degrading name of the Neck Tax-Tie, though not the practice, and replaced it with the more simple name of Tie.
To the objections of the French and the German politicians who attended the conference, they gave the Tie also a French and German name. Cravate, was French, and Krawatte was German.
It was agreed that from this moment on every supreme politician will wear, like all men, a Tie which will appear to symbolize his equality to all people.
It was diligently decided to create a clandestine and cryptic coded language which will be hidden in the design of the tie, in its combination of patterns, colors, shapes, dots and lines. Thus, enabling the three hundred politicians who rule the world to make silent deals among themselves without anyone ever being able to uncover them.
One of the documents we've obtained give also an explicit example of how the tie with its clandestine and cryptic language will be operated.
"If two or more politicians meet to outwardly discuss the peace business, or any other social issue for impressing the masses, they should meet at least three times per session. Dinner, lunch and breakfast. In each meeting they will wear different ties through which they'll make the desirable deals among themselves.
The ties at dinner will outline the suggested deals, the ties at lunch will carry a discussion and will probe the profitability of each suggested deal and the ties at breakfast will conclude the deals and will carry the agreement of all parties involved.
They made a vow of eternal secrecy noting that "Even in time of war which shouldn't stop us of making profits, the code of the tie will not be revealed."
A decision was made to concoct the secret tie language within a month.
It's interesting to note that the author of a book touching upon the politicians' plot of the tie, titled: CODE DE LA CRAVATE, published by the house of AUDIN in Paris, in the second half of the nineteen century, disappeared without trace.
(See: Fliegen und Krawatten, by Davide Mosconi Riccardo Villarosa,
DuMont Buchverlag, Koln, P. 189)
The next thing known is that the committee chosen to create the code of the tie, employed tens of experts in the field of pea-breeding, to uncover their cryptic language and implement it to the code of the tie.
As the Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel predicted, none of the experts were able to fully decode the clandestine stripes, dots and patterns of the peas. Only partially.
A new cryptic language had to be found.
Within five years, on Jan. 28, 1873, the coded language of the tie, was ready. This language included the use of stripes, colors, shapes, dots, patterns, lines and drawings.
The few coded expression of the peas which were decoded and spoke of nature, love, friendship, peace, decency and sincerity, were of no use to the politicians.
Unanimously, the principal politicians decided to turn the ancient and obscure mill in the tiny German village of Krefeld, which belonged at one time to the father of the official Saint Alfonso Faber XXIII, and in which the first flattened rope came into being, into a factory where the secretly coded ties of the politicians were to be manufactured.
Nine years later on April 18, 1881, the full production of the politicians' coded ties had begun.
We consider this day to be the exact date in which the invention of the necktie has occurred.
But there were still a few problems which the politicians had to face. The Golden Age was at Europe's doorway. More and more people were becoming dissatisfied with the tax system. Many more were learning how to make their own Neck Tax-Ties, thus managing to cheat on their taxes.
Another thing which alarmed the politicians was of what would happen when the population will see them wearing their own coded ties, which in no way resembled the common Neck Tax-Ties. Wouldn't they start suspecting that the politicians' ties carry a certain meaning?
In one of the most secret conferences in modern times, which took place in their unrevealed tie factory in Krefeld, the major politicians made an historical and crucial decision which was to be persevered by every politician in the world up to our day.
They decided to abolish the Neck Tax-Tie.
Though, not the tax.
Their reasoning was that the people would be drowning in so much joy and happiness, and would look at the politicians with such gratitude and admiration for liberating them from wearing their Neck Tax-Ties that they wouldn't suspect anything.
In addition, the payment of taxes was left to everyone's discretion.
A secret document from among the "necktie files" makes clear that the politicians have calculated, in the most minute detail, the gains and losses of such step.
There's no question that they arrived at the conclusion that their gains would overwhelmingly outweigh their losses.
But, the politicians couldn't foresee one thing.
Because of the sudden surge of admiration toward them, the public at large started wearing ties similar to those of the politicians'.
At first the politicians panicked thinking that their secret was out. But within weeks, they recognized that, as always, fate was on their side.
They realized that the common wearing of ties was the best camouflage for their coded ties and for their hidden agreements they ever dreamed of.
This was the time that Honore de Balzac, adopting the pseudonym of Baron Emile de L'Empese, published a book titled: "THE ART OF TYING A NECKTIE." It was also translated into German under the title: "KRAWATTENBINDENS."
By 1893, the common tie had become a colossal success. It had become an ornament of repute, a symbol of accomplishment, a model of civility and what was badly needed, a pretense of wealth.
Identifying the psychological needs of the population, the politicians subsidized the mass production of ties and encouraged their use.
And as then, two families of ties, totally separated from each other, exist today. The secretly coded ties of the politicians and the common tie of the people.
This is the true history of how, why and when the tie was invented and evolved through the ages.

APPENDIX
Due to the dangers involved in attempting to decode the politicians' coded ties, we have discontinued our research.
But we became aware of countless agreements between politicians reached through their coded ties.
These secret agreements, contrary to the politicians' rhetoric, were solely about their own personal gains. These agreements were about the amounts of their kickbacks, their profits from increasing or decreasing of interest rates and from devaluating the currency, their share from new taxes, about new schemes and plots which will enable them to enlarge their profits, about the number of young people that should be killed in a war between them, and finally, about the flesh and the libido qualities of the girls and boys with whom they'll be spending the night.
From a government official who refused to be identified, we've learned of a few agreements reached through the tongue of the tie.
One of those was reached in the meeting of Yalta between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.
Some details are known about this agreement.
The secretly coded ties of the politicians and the common tie of the people.
First they agreed to equally share the 43.5 percent kickbacks from the construction companies, 33.1 percent from the arms' suppliers, 21.6 percent from the morticians' union and 14.9 percent from the funeral parlors. Then, the three politicians agreed not to disclose to their own people the forthcoming attacks by the German and the Japanese air force on London, Coventry, Pearl Harbor and Stalingrad, previously agreed upon by the concealed tongue of the tie in meetings between Hitler and Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.
It resulted in total of seven million death and netted each of the initial politicians sixty nine million, seven hundred and twenty thousand American dollars.
Another similar agreement, with a comparable outcome, was concluded in the secret meeting between president Bush, Saddam Hussein and Yitshak Shamir. And later confirmed in a meeting with Ayatulla Khomeini.
There's a conclusive evidence that the politicians' agreements of Mastricht, including those between Chancellor Kohl and Prime minister Major, concerning the EEC were also carried out by the tongue of the tie.
Because the politicians never have trusted each other, at the end of each such meeting they had to surrender the names of the newly created companies which were to deposit, on their behalf, the huge amounts of money into foreign banks. In addition, they had to disclose to each other the names of their banks and the numbers of their private accounts. Dates and hours of deposits were essential.
These and the detailed description of the boys and girls with whom the politicians satisfied their lustful appetites, gave each one of them an equal leverage of blackmailing each other.
We can confirm that in 1993 there are in existence a total of four billion seven hundred million and two hundred and one thousand ties in the world.
There are five hundred million and sixty three hundred thousand secretly coded ties for the exclusive use of the politicians.
Sixty three percent of the world population, excluding the politicians, are wearing the common tie.
In 1991, the knot of the tie became a part of the politicians' code. Secret names of the different knots were clandestinely fabricated:
The Tenor Knot, The Champ Knot, The Dodge City Knot, The Gaga Knot, The Agnelli Knot, The Steck-O-Fix Knot, The Bataille Knot, The Overpull Knot, The Slit Collar Knot, The Schrumpfer Knot, Da Capo Knot, The Windsor Knot, The Dicky Knot, The Villarosa Knot, and The Swiftly Tilting Knot.
A top secret entry in John Major's personal diary refers to The Swiftly Tilting Knot in his own handwriting:

STARS IN THE PURPLE DUSK ABOUT THE ROOFTOPS,
PALE IN A SAFFRON MIST AND SEEM TO DIE,
AND I MYSELF ON A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET,
STAND BEFORE A GLASS AND TIE MY TIE.*
Conrad Aiken: (1889-1973)

[c] Isidore (Izzy) Abrahami, 2010

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Publication Date: 09-02-2010

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