In 1947 the World Publishing Company of Cleveland and New York published Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, illustrated by Joseph Low, as one of their Living Library series. It used FitzGerald’s fourth version and contained 33 illustrations by Low, though really only 32 since the frontispiece was a copy of his illustration for quatrain 94. Of these, 15 were full–page and 17 half–page illustrations, all in red ink and all facing or on the same page as their respective quatrains. The book is Coumans #152 & Paas #4345.
Low’s illustrations are very skilfully done in a pseudo–Persian–miniature style, and cleverly relate to their respective quatrains, as we shall see.
Fig.1a (quatrain 1): note the sleeper at the base, the figure of the Sun with a Helios–like crown firing an arrow (“shaft of light”) at “the Sultan’s Turret” with the fleeing stars of night to the right.
Fig.1b (quatrain 3): note the crowing cock and the group of drinkers before the Tavern.
Fig.1c (quatrain 12): a literal and obvious depiction of this famous quatrain set “underneath the Bough.”
Fig.1d (quatrains 22–23): note one of “the loveliest and the best” leaving “we, that now make merry in the Room” to creep “silently to rest.”
Fig.1e (quatrain 32): neatly depicts both “the Door to which I found no Key” and “the Veil through which I might not see.”
Fig.1f (quatrain 43): neatly encapsulates the lines “So when the Angel of the darker Drink/ At last shall find you by the river brink.”
Fig.1g (quatrain 45): a verse not often illustrated by artists, this illustration clearly depicts a Sultan leaving his metaphorical Tent for the Land of the Dead, and “the dark Farrash (Servant)” either dismantling the tent of the departing Sultan, or erecting the Tent for the next.
Fig.1h (quatrain 51): another verse not often illustrated by artists, presumably because of the obscure word–play in “Taking all shapes from Mah (Moon) to Mahi (Fish).”
Fig.1i (quatrain 58): shows Omar “by the Tavern Door agape” being approached by “An Angel Shape / Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder.”
Fig.1j (quatrain 64): clearly representing “the Door of Darkness,” through which none return.
Fig.1k (quatrain 69): clearly relates to “this Chequer–board of Nights (represented by the Moon) and Days (represented by the Sun.) Curiously, the chess–board is eight squares by four. Note “the Closet” (box for the chess pieces) in the bottom right hand corner.
Fig.1l (quatrain 70): illustrates “The Ball” that goes “Here or There as strikes the Player.” Note that the ball has a face!
Fig.1m (quatrain 79): rather neatly illustrates the Debt never contracted and which cannot be repaid – one of Omar’s comments on the injustice of Original Sin, as clarified in quatrains 78 and 80.
Fig.1n (quatrain 90): another quatrain not commonly illustrated, presumably because of the obscurity of “the Porter’s shoulder–knot a–creaking” – the Porter being the man shown bearing the baskets of wine jugs at the close of Ramadan. (The porter’s shoulder–knot was a leather pad worn on the porter’s shoulder to prevent the strap, from which hung heavy jars of wine, from digging into his shoulder. As the porter walked and the jars swung to and fro, the strap would ‘creak’ as it rubbed against the leather of the shoulder–knot.) Note “the little Moon ... that all (the pots inside the Potter’s Shop on the left) were seeking.”
Fig.1o (quatrain 98): depicting “some wingéd Angel” and “the yet unfolded Roll of Fate.”
Fig.1p (quatrains 100-101): shows “Yon rising Moon” of quatrain 100 and the Saki turning down an empty Glass of quatrain 101.
I have shown so many of Low’s illustrations not only because they are a visual delight, but also because, though many adhere literally to the quatrains they depict, they do it so neatly. Plus he does not shy away from the more obscure quatrains, but neatly illustrates those too with reference to FitzGerald’s Notes (which unfortunately were not included in the volume, though FitzGerald’s lengthy essay on “Omar Khayyam: the Astronomer Poet of Persia,” prefixed to his first version, was.)
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
Low was well enough known for him to merit an obituary in The New York Times on 20 February 2007, and for this to be reprinted in various American newspapers in subsequent days (1). From that point of view, he is well documented enough to merit only an outline biography here. Unfortunately, most available biographical material tends to emphasise his later career as the writer and illustrator of children’s books, and as a cover designer for The New Yorker magazine, to the extent that his Rubaiyat, and some of his other books, get rather pushed into the background. Part of the aim of the following, then, is to place them in their biographical context.
Joseph Charles Low was born in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania on 11 August 1911, the son of John Routh Low (an office manager) and his wife, Stella May Low (née Rent.) He had a brother, John Routh Low Jr, some 2 years older than him. At the time of the 1920 US Federal Census, the family were living in Oak Park Township, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), where he attended Oak Park and River Forest High School. Fig.2a is a photograph of him taken from a 1929 School Yearbook. In his early twenties, he attended the University of Illinois (Chicago) and the Chicago Art Institute. He frequented the Newberry Library at the latter, where he spent many hours poring over their large collection of illustrated books. He admired primitive art and medieval & Baroque sculpture, and later visited the Basque and Catalan regions of northern Spain, and the Provence region of southern France, to study the art there, particularly that within churches and chapels.
The first book he illustrated appears to have been Melanie Earle Keiser’s God returns to the Vuelta Abajo, subtitled “a Tale of the Cuban Vega” (tobacco plantation), published by William R. Scott in New York in 1936. Low’s illustrations were basic line drawings, two examples being shown here as Figs.3a (p.36) & 3b (p.142.)
In 1937 he moved to New York City to attend the Art Students’ League and to study under the German artist George Grosz. But despite Grosz’s own unconventional background in art (he had been involved in Dada in Berlin, for example, though he had perhaps mellowed with age), Low found more inspiration in the visual wealth afforded by libraries and museums, and ended up being largely self–taught.
The second book illustrated by Low appears to have been Margaret Rau’s Chinese mystery story for older children, The Band of the Red Hand, published by Alfred A. Knopf of New York in 1938. His illustrations consisted of a line–drawing headpiece to each chapter, but with a bit of cheating, in that the same claw–like hand appeared as the headpiece to numerous chapters, as well as on the red cover of the book! Two examples of the headpieces are shown in Figs.4a (p.11) & 4b (p.45).
It was at the Art Students’ League that Low met fellow student Ruth Hull, whom he married in 1940. They had two daughters, Damaris, born in 1942, and Jennifer, born in 1944. Low and his wife were eventually to collaborate on various projects, the most notable of which was Mother Goose Riddle Rhymes published by Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York in 1953. The New York Times voted it “Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year.” Fig.5 gives the rebus version of “Jack and Jill.” Not all the rebus versions of these rhymes were as simple as this example, but the authors provided solutions at the end of the book in case you got stuck (and I did get stuck on one!) (Though this was an early example of Low’s work on children’s books, it wasn’t his first, for in addition to Margaret Rau’s book, just mentioned, he had illustrated The Rainbow Dictionary by Wendell William Wright, with the assistance of Helene Laird, for The World Publishing Company in 1947 – the same year and publisher as his Rubaiyat. Many more were to come!)
To the foregoing we should add that from 1941 he started working as a freelance designer for advertising agencies in New York City, and that from 1942 to 1945 he taught graphic art and design at Indiana State University, Bloomington, where he helped to set up the University’s Corydon Press.
Two years after his Rubaiyat, in 1949, the Viking Press of New York published A Harvest of World Folk Tales, edited by Milton Rugoff, and with illustrations & decorations by Joseph Low. At over 700 pages, it certainly was a harvest covering folk tales from all over the world, from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. Four examples are shown here as Fig.6a from the title–page of the Arabian & Turkish section, on p.131; Fig.6b Robin Hood, on p.251; Fig.6c from the Indian section, on p.434; and Fig.6d from the Scandinavian section on p.684.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
In the 1950s, having moved to Newtown, Connecticut, Low was able to set up the Eden Hill Press – named after the road on which he and his wife lived – his own private press. It enabled him to print limited editions of his own work, books as well as prints, mostly now rare, but many of which have survived in museums and galleries (2), with some occasionally turning up in auctions. Fig.7a is a thankyou note to Gillett Griffin and Associates for a pleasant weekend at the Shambles in August 1954 (presumably fishing was involved) and Fig.7b is a print titled “the Burning of Nasau Hall in 1802”, a linocut probably dating from 1958. There is a connection between the two for Gillett Griffin was a Curator of Graphic Arts at Princeton University, and Nassau Hall had been part of the university (then a college.) Princeton would eventually become a repository for much of Low’s work (2). Fig.7c is an undated curiosity, seemingly a lengthy way of telling people to make their phone calls brief (hence the “No need to repeat yourself when you call” in the bottom right hand corner – I presume GARden 6-2289 is an old–style phone number.) Fig.7d is another undated oddity, its caption translating as “May the good Lord keep the Moon from the Wolves,” and with “Old Proverb” beneath the caption. This curious French proverb seems to have been used as a sarcastic response to someone with exaggerated fears about some potential threat, for the Moon clearly has nothing to fear from the wolves supposedly howling at it (3)!
Related to this last, Ten Proverbs was a portfolio of ten of Low’s prints from colour lino–cuts, published in a limited edition of 350 copies by the Eden Hill Press in 1959. Each illustrated a particular proverb, though most are little known today (4). I am not normally a fan of ‘primitive art’, but there is something about these which has a strange appeal. Accordingly, I give five of them here: Fig.8a illustrates “Beggars mounted run their horse to death”; Fig.8b “God is at the lending; the devil is at the paying”; Fig.8c “In the kingdom of the blind the one–eyed is king”; Fig.8d “The cat loves fish, but fears to wet her paws”; and Fig.8e “The fool is touched by God.”
Ten Proverbs was followed by a similar portfolio, Heads, this containing 24 woodcuts by Low, issued by the Eden Hill Press in 1960, in a limited edition of 450 copies. Figs.9a & 9b are two examples. It would be interesting to know more about the genesis of Heads – did Low have an interest in masks, as a number of artists have done, or was he simply investigating variations on the human head ? Unfortunately no information is available at present.
Fig.2b is a photo of him taken at the Eden Hill Press in about 1960 (5).
A year later, in 1961, another portfolio, The Wren–Boys’ Rhyme, containing nine prints by Low, was issued by the Eden Hill Press in a limited edition of 150 copies. Two of its prints are shown in Figs.10a & 10b. There are several variants of the Wren Boys’ Rhyme / Song, but all relate to an old Irish custom (with variants elsewhere), performed on St. Stephen’s Day (26 December), of capturing a wren, regarded as King of the Birds (hence the crown in Fig.10b), sacrificing it, and parading it around the community to the accompaniment of the rhyme / song. This was supposed to promote prosperity for the coming year (6).
Being issued by Low’s own Press, he could clearly indulge himself more in these three portfolios than he might have been able to do if under contract to a mainstream publisher, notably in his use of a primitive style, though as we shall see, his primitive style ‘caught on’ with publishers to quite a surprising degree. The portfolios demonstrate his wide range of interests as well as the care he took in his researches into them: in his collection of proverbs, notably, as well as his delving deep into folklore for The Wren–Boys’ Rhyme. The devil in Fig.8b, too, could easily be derived from a church gargoyle or misericord – recall his visits to churches in Spain and France. Again, though the Fool in Fig.8e doesn’t wear a jester’s cap, he does seem to carry a flower (?) as a pseudo–marotte. Note too that the Hand of God above him has Yahweh in Hebrew around the wrist, a curious detail we shall return to later. I would hazard a guess, too, that prior to illustrating The Rubaiyat he did a fair amount of research into Persian Art as well as reading FitzGerald’s text in great detail.
But we are not finished with the Eden Hill Press yet, for in the 1960s Low seems to have planned a portfolio relating to Aesop’s Fables, though whether the portfolio as a whole ever actually materialised, or just appeared over time in the form of limited editions of single prints relating to individual fables, is unclear. According to John J. McKendry’s book Aesop: Five Centuries of Illustrated Fables (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1964), Low illustrated “The Lion in Love” (Fig.11a – McKendry p.88–9) to accompany an abridged text of Eunice Clark’s 1948 translation, and “The Cock and the Pearl” (Fig.11b – McKendry p.90–1) to accompany an abridged text of Marianne Moore’s 1954 translation. Both were issued in 1963, and seem to be the only two housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, a single print illustrating “The Cat and the Cock” (Fig.11c – not in McKendry) with an abridged version of a modernised translation by Sir Roger L’Estrange, definitely appeared with dated title–page, text & print in single sheet signature form in 1967. (L’Estrange’s original translation was published in 1692.) I cannot say I am much taken with these prints myself, though Low’s use of three different translations of Aesop again shows his thorough knowledge and research.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
During the period covered by the foregoing Low had done a number of dust–jackets for various publishers. An early notable one is that of B. Traven’s novel, set in the slave–labour mahogany camps of Mexico, The Rebellion of the Hanged (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1952), shown in Fig.12a. Also notable is that he did the dust–jacket for Theodor H. Gaster’s abridged edition of Frazer’s Golden Bough, The New Golden Bough (Criterion Books, New York, 1959), shown in Fig.12b. Both are in primitive style, the latter being closer in style to that of his Ten Proverbs. Later he did a more conventional dust–jacket for Alex Comfort’s book of “discursive essays on biology and art”, Darwin and the Naked Lady (George Braziller, New York, 1962), shown in Fig.12c. It features a Low–esque portrait of Darwin alongside the figure of a naked woman which Low almost certainly adapted from an erotic Indian temple sculpture. For Braziller he also did the dust–jackets for a trilogy of books published in 1963: Charles H. Long, Alpha: the Myths of Creation, Alan W. Watts, The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity, and Joseph L. Henderson & Maud Oakes, The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection. The designs were all based on the Tarot, Fig.12d being that for the first book, based on the “Le Monde” card. Later again he did a dust–jacket for an edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Time Life Books, New York, 1965), shown in Fig.12e. It presumably shows the head the Berkshire boar Napoleon in Orwell’s allegorical novel, done rather in the style of his Aesop illustrations.
From about 1951 to 1966 Low was commissioned by various recording companies to design record covers for their classical music recordings (7). About 50 of these were done for the Haydn Society label, part of the deal being that Low got a free copy of the record, which enabled him to add considerably to his collection of classical music recordings! Two examples of his covers are shown here, Fig.13a (Stravinsky – dating from 1954) and Fig.13b (Torelli, Vivaldi, Locatelli – dating from 1955) both in Low’s characteristic primitivist style. He also did about 30 covers for another company, Vanguard Records, of which Fig.13c (The Virtuoso Oboe – dating from 1958) is an example. He also did 4 covers for Caedmon Records, whose first issue, in 1952, was a recording of Dylan Thomas reading some of his poetry. (Subsequently Caedmon became pioneers in the field of audio books.) Fig.13d (Robert Graves – dating from 1957) is an example Low’s work for Caedmon. The styles of both Vanguard and Caedmon covers are again recognisably Low.
Finally for this section, Low did numerous covers for The New Yorker magazine. He is said to have produced these from about 1940 to 1980, but I have not personally seen any dating from earlier than 1960, and the covers I have seen from the 40s & 50s tend to be much more conservative in style. Of later work, Fig.14a is the cover for the issue of 2 May 1964; Fig.14b that for 5 February 1979; and Fig.14c that for 30 April 1979 – this last has a curiously Heath Robinson touch to it.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
Low illustrated an edition of Ambrose Bierce’s well–known book, The Devil’s Dictionary, published by the Peter Pauper Press in 1958, this being the only book he illustrated for them. I give two examples here: Fig.15a (p.12) & Fig.15b (p.25.) Incidentally, Low is not named as illustrator on the title of the book, but he named himself on the title–page on an object held in the Devil’s right hand!
Low illustrated an edition of Jonathan Swift’s Directions to Servants, published by Pantheon Books, New York, in 1964. Two examples are shown here as Fig.16a (p.15) & Fig.16b (p.115). If his illustrations for The Devil’s Dictionary record Low’s fascination for a primitive / cartoon style, then those for Directions to Servants mark a more caricaturistic form of it, parallel in date to his Eden Hill Press experiments. Note also his use of splashes of colour in both books, splashes which refuse to adhere to anything like the contours of the underlying drawing, another characteristic we shell meet again in what follows.
The next book illustrated by Low which caught my attention was Barbara K. Walker and Mine Sümer’s book for young people, Stargazer to the Sultan, published by Parents’ Magazine Press, New York, in 1967. Before I had seen it, I wondered if it was a children’s version of the life of Omar Khayyam, based on the story of the three friends in particular, but no. Instead, it turned out to be the rather ingenious story of how a poor woodcutter, driven by the ambitions of his wife, contrives to become the Sultan’s astrologer. Despite my disappointment, I must say the book has a definite charm, and its illustrations serve to show how far Low had come, stylistically, since his Rubaiyat of 1947 and his Arabian & Turkish folktales illustration of Fig.6a. Thus, Fig.17a shows the cover of the book, presumably depicting the woodcutter in his new role as court astrologer contemplating the heavens, and Fig.17b shows the woodcutter before his promotion approaching the Sultan with the ‘prediction&rsqyo; which secures his appointment (the recovery of a stolen ring whose location has been revealed to him by the thief.)
Also of great interest are Low’s illustrations to Alvin Tresselt and Nancy Cleaver’s book The Legend of the Willow Plate, published, like the previous book, by Parents’ Magazine Press, New York, in 1968. It recounts the Chinese story depicted on the hugely popular English willow–pattern dinner–ware. The story centres on the love of a poor poet, Chang, for Koong–se, the daughter of a wealthy Mandarin, who seeks to split them up as he wishes his daughter to marry a Duke. Fig.18a shows Chang and Koong–se; Fig.18b shows the furious Mandarin berating his daughter.
Stargazer to the Sultan and The Legend of the Willow Plate are two of the numerous books for children and young people illustrated by Low, of which we have already seen a couple of examples, and of which Low did many more from the 1960s through to the 1980s. I propose not to dwell on these, but to take his best known book of this type, written and illustrated by him, to represent all: Mice Twice, first published by Atheneum of New York in 1980, but with many reprints later. It won a Caldecott Honour award in 1981. It tells the story of a Cat who invites a Mouse to dinner, intending her to be on the menu. But the Mouse asks if she can bring a friend, and the Cat, now expecting two mice to be on the menu (hence “Mice Twice”), readily agrees. Unfortunately, the Mouse takes her friend the Dog... The style of the illustrations can be summarised by the cover (Fig.19a) and by the picture of the Mouse and the Dog turning up at the Cat’s door (Fig.19b).
In the 1980s, aside from Mice Twice and reprints, Low appears to have illustrated only five books for children, the last of these, Hear Your Heart and A Learical Lexicon, appearing in 1985. (Fig.20a shows the cover and Fig.20b the frontispiece of the latter, both neatly imitating Lear’s own style.) Whether this was because he felt it was time to retire and devote more time to his passion for sailing, or whether it was because his eyesight was starting to fail (it became so bad that by about 2000 he had to give up solo sailing), is not clear. He died in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on 12 February 2007. His wife Ruth had died almost exactly a year before, on 13 February 2006.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
Sometimes included in listings of books associated with our artist is this oddity: Book of Joseph Servant and Prophet of God. At the foot of its title–page its publisher is given as, “Joseph, Publisher / 37 Madison Ave., N.Y.C.” (Fig.21a), and overleaf from that is “Copyright 1946, by Joseph Low” with, below, “Printed by Theo. Gaus’ Sons, Inc., N.Y.N.Y.” But is this Joseph Low, the artist ? The cover is undecorated, and bears only the title of the book, and there appears to have been no dust–jacket, although the book is scarce and I have only ever seen four copies of it. It is also unillustrated, which, if it never actually had a dust–jacket, would make it unique among the many books associated with the name of Joseph Low, the artist.
This slim book of 63 pages is divided into 3 sections, the first two being collections of metaphysical verse, “Book of Truths” (p.11–30) and “Book of Psalms to my God of All–in–All" (p.33–54), and the third, “Kabala Book of Mysteries” (p.57–62), being devoted to the Jewish Kabala. Fig.21b (p.57), plus titles like “The Heptad Beloved of God” (p.58) and “The Symbol of the Five Recondite Dimensions” (p.62) serve to give a good picture of the Kabala section. Fig.21c shows the colophon (p.63), and this immediately raises the question as to whether Joseph Low was the author (Yosef ben Eleazer being a pseudonym), or whether he was actually only the publisher on behalf of Yosef ben Eleazer, and just the copyright owner of the publication.
The address 37 Madison Ave., N.Y.C. is another mystery, for up until 1935 it had been the address of the famous Madison Square Hotel, but that closed in 1935, and it was sold in 1944 to a wealthy oil executive who had plans to convert it into offices and apartments. Whether “Joseph, Publisher” operated from there in 1946, who Yosef ben Eleazer was, and what connection he had to Joseph Low, whoever he was, all remain unclear. I am not aware of any Jewish connections to our artist’s family (though Löwe, hence Low, can indicate German–Jewish origins), but, as we have seen, there is some indication that he had an interest in Judaism: recall that two of his Ten Proverbs are actually Jewish proverbs (4f & h) and that two others have Jewish connections (4e & i). More particularly recall the Hebrew inscription in the last (Fig.8e.) The four Hebrew letters YHWH, or Yahweh, are known as the Tetragrammaton, and have mystical significance, often being used on amulets (recall also Fig.21b.) But casting considerable doubt on the significance of these is the fact that one of my copies of the book contains a hand written and signed gift inscription on the half title–page reading, “To Solomon de Sola, With every Blessing from the Eternal One,” with the signature “Joseph Low” beneath (Fig.21d). Unfortunately, the only Solomon de Sola I have been able to trace is a dental surgeon operative in New York City throughout the 1940s! Now, our artist’s signature varies quite a bit, but is the signature in Fig.21d that of our artist or that of a different Joseph Low ? In Fig.21e, going from top to bottom, the first signature comes from our artist’s World War II draft card of 1940; the second is the signature as in Fig.21d; the third is from the colophon of the Aesop print of Fig.11c, dating from 1967; the fourth is from a copy Charles Cotton’s The Compleat Gamester, illustrated by Low & published in 1970; and the bottom one is from a copy of Myra Cohn Livingston’s A Lollygag of Limericks, illustrated by Low and published in 1978. Looking at the second and comparing it with the others, the J is totally different (but so is the J in the fifth); the s is different, the p is different; the h is different; the curl of the L is different; and the right hand curve of the w is different, veering off to the right, not the left. All in all, then, I think the Joseph Low of Book of Joseph most likely isn’t our artist. So who was he ? I do not know. Joseph Low is a fairly common name. There was, for example, a Jewish diamond importer called Joe (rather than Joseph) Low, born as Juda Low in Poland in 1898, and resident in New York in the 1940s. But he seems not to have used Joseph, always Joe, and the signature on his naturalisation papers of 1939 does not match that of Fig.21d – the letter J does not match, and nor does the writing of Low. He is not our man, then. Also in New York in the 1940s was Joseph Low, a Dairy Proprietor, born in Russia in about 1918, and also apparently of Jewish origins, but there is no evidence he was our man either. Then there was a lawyer called Joseph Low living in New York in the 1940s, but need I go on? The mystery remains.
**********
Note 1: Besides this obituary (reprinted, for example, in The Pittsburgh Post–Gazette on 3 March 2007), the best source of information is an obituary by Low’s family in the St. John Tradewinds on 4 March 2007. This was a community focussed newspaper founded in 1972 for those living on St. John in the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It is now online, as is this obituary of Low. [By way of explanation, Low and his wife spent the winter months in St, John from about 1975, where they had a house specially built for them. The two became very much involved in the St. John Historical Society and collaborated with Rafael Valls on a book about the history of the island, St John Backtime (Eden Hill Press, 1985).]
Note 2: For example in the Firestone Library at Princeton University; the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Also the Joseph Low Papers at University of Minnesota and those at the Newberry Library of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Note 3: It is interesting that in Norse mythology one wolf chases the Moon around the night–time sky and another similarly chases the Sun round the daytime sky. They will finally catch them and eat them at the End of the (present) World. Whether the French proverb has any connection with this, though, is another matter. It is also interesting that January’s full moon is known as the Wolf Moon.
Note 4: In no particular order, the ten proverbs are: a) It is not a basket of hay but a basket of flesh that makes a lion roar; b) Beggars mounted run their horse to death (Shakespeare, Henry VI part 3, 1.4.127); c) The sleeping fox dreams hens; d) God is at the lending, the devil is at the paying (there are many proverbs about borrowing and lending, of course); e) In the kingdom of the blind, the one–eyed is king (generally attributed to Erasmus, Adagia (Proverbs), though Erasmus may have got it from Genesis Rabbah, a detailed Jewish commentary on the Book of Genesis); f) The cat loves fish, but fears to wet her paws (a Jewish proverb); g) One beats the bush, another gets the bird (a proverb with several variants, notably John 4.37; “One soweth, and another reapeth”); h) When a rogue kisses you, count your teeth (a Jewish proverb); i) The fool is touched by God (a variant on Psalm 116.6, “The Lord preserveth the Simple” which of course comes from the Hebrew Bible); j) The hind that would be mated by a lion must die for love. (Shakespeare, All’s Well that ends Well, 1.1.103–4.)
Note 5: Taken from an article, “The Eden Hill Press of Joseph Low” (no author cited) published in the magazine American Artist, February 1960, p.50–51 & p.68.
Note 6: Low’s principal source here is Charles Swainson’s The Folklore and Provincial Names of British Birds (London, 1886), p.36–43, which explains how the wren, not the eagle, became King of the Birds, and thus in Latin became Regulus and in French Roitelet, for example. Swainson also discusses variants of the ceremony in the Isle of Man, Wales, England and France. Low also cites an unspecified edition of Frazer’s Golden Bough, most likely Theodor H. Gaster’s abridged edition, The New Golden Bough, published by Criterion Books of New York in 1959, for which he designed the dust–jacket (Fig.12b). For the wren, see section 427.
Note 7: A very useful site for Low’s designs for record covers can be found here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/1135927-Joseph-Low .
**********
My thanks are due to Fred Diba, Joe Howard and Sandra Mason for proof–reading this essay and making some useful comments on it, particularly as regards the Rubaiyat illustrations.
**********
To return to the Notes and Queries Index, click here.
To return to the Index of the Rubaiyat Archive, click here.
