Well-Known Fables Set to Music Vocal or Instrumental

Abstract

Long-term collecting brings surprising experiences. This fascinating large-format presentation of fable texts and music has its own history in our collection. Two early copies, since given away with other duplicates, had a price of 50 cents and were in relatively poor condition. We then kept a 75c version. Now here is a gift of a 50 cent version in very good condition -- and with a new characteristic, a tied-string binding. As I already wrote then, this large-format 32-page pamphlet is a treasure! The first four large-format (12¼" x 9½") pages present, in two columns, the texts of sixteen fables according to Jacobs' version, complete with his moral. All but one have a small black-and-white illustration. The illustrations are taken from Weir, Heighway, Griset, and someone working after Doré. Then follows an AI on 3, followed by the musical rendition of each fable, with the same moral put in quotation marks above the music at the top of the page. Each fable then gets a one-page or two-page spread with piano music and verse lyrics. Moore's texts are rhymed. The fables put to music here are BS, CP, DS, "The Fox and the Cat," FG, OF, FK, GGE, BF, LM, MSA, MM, "The Miser and His Gold," "The Swallow and the Other Birds," SW, and WSC. The lyrics for the first fable, "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," run this way: Now the wolf was hungry and wanted a meal, But he found the sheep this time harder to steal, And the shepherd dogs did not help his ordeal, So he felt he was doomed to defeat. Then he came upon an old sheep hide, That some farmer's wife had cast aside, With this on his back and the field very wide He soon had a young lamb to eat.