Our word “museum” comes from the ancient Greek ton Mouseion. It’s a proper noun because the Muses were goddesses who, when inclined, helped mortals make art. Ton Mouseion, grammatically neuter, was used to describe place, a place where Muse-like things happen.
My old Liddell & Scott lexicon gives the example of mouseia chelidonon, literally places of the swallows, but more accurately the places where swallows do their Muse-like things. The translator must supply the verb.
Liddle & Scott say swallows twitter, and so does most everyone else. But I hear songs when swallows gather by the hundreds. To my ear, the swallows sing.
The swallows build their nests on the limestone cliffs and ledges of Central Texas. But like the bats on Congress Avenue in Austin, the swallows have discovered concrete bridges.
The 24th Street Bridge on Zarzamora Creek is such a place. So is the Mitchell Street Bridge over San Pedro Creek.
The bridge on Mitchell Street is near the bridge that carries I-10 over the river just south of downtown, and the swallows have moved in. It’s eerie, being in a metropolis, underneath one of its busiest highways, and being in a swarm of several hundred swallows.
These under-the-bridge places are among my favorite museums in San Antonio. Few visitors seem to have found them.
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