ridiculous happenstance

According to a clearly corrupt but nonetheless plausible variant of this Writing, the Golias himself, early in his reign, put down a rebellion in a defiant village in the mountains. When the fighting was over, the inhabitants were herded into the town square, whereupon the ringleaders were 'tried' for treason, and a sentence of death pronounced upon their alleged captain. Disdaining to carry out the sentence himself, the Golias commanded the first able-bodied citizen upon whom his eyes alit to behead the man on the spot. That citizen, the town smith, seems to have been this Author's father (or grandfather, or great-grandfather).

From that moment the only employment the former smith or any of his family could find was that of executioner, whose duties at the time also comprised non-lethal punishments such as amputation, branding, and flogging, as well as the dislocation of joints and breaking of bones — hence, perhaps, the waggish (but frightful) cognomen 'Bone-Snapper'.