Wherefore Art Thou Borromeo? // 87

so that no wife is left in the company of other men without her husband being present?

Both men and women may row. All husbands are jealous in the extreme: they do not trust their unaccompanied wives to be with another man, even if the other man's wife is also present.

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Answer on page 273

Wherefore Art Thou Borromeo? Three rings can be linked together in such a way that if any one of them is ignored, the remaining two would pull apart. That is, no two of the rings are linked, only the full set of three. This arrangement is generally known as the Borromean rings, after the Borromeo family in Renaissance Italy, who used it as a family emblem. However, the arrangement is much older, and can be found in seventh-century Viking relics. Even in Renaissance Italy, it goes back to the Sforza family; Francesco Sforza permitted the Borromeos to use the rings in their coat of arms as a way of thanking them for their support during the defence of Milan.

Emblem of the Borromeo family and its use (bottom, left of

centre) in their coat of arms.

On Isola Bella, one of three islands in Lake Maggiore owned by the Borromeo family, there is a seventeenth-century baroque

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