Modern Fables Rendered in Verse
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Authors
Mumey, Nolie
Issue Date
1971
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
I just googled Nolie Mumey and found that he was a prolific writer--and surgeon, aviator, philosopher, and humanitarian. He died in 1984. In 1987, Norma Mumey (his daughter perhaps?) wrote a life of him once offered on Amazon.com but apparently now out of print. Some of his volumes seem to be selling on the net for several hundred dollars. My cost of less than a dollar for this book testifies to the thrill of shopping on Ebay! The book itself is a curious production. Its cover is partly florid cloth with a sticky embossed tape glued on declaring Fables. The spine reads only Fables and Mumey. The five points at which the binding is sewn are marked by long cuts into the page that resemble worm-holes. The printing is variable and thus sometimes faint. The spine is starting to disintegrate. There are 169 thick pages after a beginning T of C that lists the seventy-seven verse fables. I read the first ten or fifteen fables. They represent standard peasant wisdom. Readers are warned to watch out for traps, to avoid greed, not to play with fire, to resist envy. Man and Horse (37) fleshes out the proverb about looking a gift horse in the mouth. In some fables like the book's last one, the title and illustration both refer to an image, but the verse simply tells a story (168-69). The illustration shows a man and woman holding hands; it reads There is a lid which will fit almost every pot. The verse of Lid and Pot tells of the not-popular girl in a family meeting an ungainly man at church. They fall in love and are married.
Description
Citation
Publisher
The Range Press