Fool After Midnight

A wise adviser once advised me this way:

"Don’t  move your mouth 

Till you've got something to say;

Talk in the morning, but when the Moon comes up,

Take my advice boy and Keep Your Mouth Shut."

Late at night when I'm feeling Divine,

I make the same mistakes Every Time.

I make myself promises that I always forget;

I talk too much, do stupid things

I always regret.

I’m just a Fool after Midnight,

My senses fade after daylight.

I’m just a fool.

Note:  This is another in a series "illustrating" song lyrics by Kevin Ayers.  Fool After Midnight, a really magical, wistful, depressive Kevin song (I apologize for the tautology)  appeared on the Kevin Ayers/Ollie Halsall collaboration album As Close As You Think,  released on the Illuminated label in the UK in 1987. You can listen to the recording by visiting This Link and searching for the record, song and "play" button at the lower right.  As Close As You Think was recorded at the home studio of former King Crimson/Bad Company bassist Boz Burrell, and, as I hope you will hear, is delightful, but definitely more on the order of a very good demo (Kevin's a highly resourceful and sophisticated recordist) than a polished master version, which would, no doubt, have featured real drums and a fewer synthesized sounds.  I'm sorry Kevin has never revisited the song, but maybe the mood and inclination didn't last.  I post it here partly because it brings back some Fool After Midnight memories of time spent running around with with Kevin and sometimes Ollie several years earlier than the song in Manhattan, Brooklyn and on Long Island.  I hope the various King Arthur legend illustrations I have chosen suit the lyric and do not seem irrelevant or superfluous.  If they do, the song paints its own, vivid mental pictures.


ILLUSTRATION KEY:

1. Aubrey Beardsley, Merlin and Nimue, 1893.

2.  William Morris, King Arthur and Sir Lancelot,  1862.

3.  Julia Margaret Cameron, The Parting of Lancelot and Guinivere, 1874.

4.  Gustave Dore, Guinivere, 1877 (illustration to Tennyson's Idylls of the King).   

Ornicopia 6 (Big Bird Part 2)

 

Walton Ford, Elephant Bird (2002)

785.  Where did the elephant bird live?  On the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa.

Size comparison of the elephant bird with the human, the ostrich and some non-avian creatures.  Each grid segment = 1 square meter.

786.  When did the elephant bird become extinct?   It is believed that early navigators, stopping off for food supplies, caused the extinction of this species.  Probably this happened some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century.  It is generally believed that the elephant bird gave rise to the legendary tales of the roc.**

Subfossilized elephant bird eggs (Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris)

**    For readers unfamiliar with the roc, or who have forgotten the Sinbad the Sailor stories of their childhood, the roc is an enormous, legendary bird of prey, often described as being white in color.

According to art historian Rudolph Wittkower, the roc originated in the fight between the Indian solar bird Garuda and the chthonic serpent Nāga, a word that A. de Gubernatis asserted signified 'elephant' as well as "snake". The mytheme of Garuda carrying off an elephant that was battling a tortoise appears in two Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata (I.1353) and the Ramayana (III.39). The roc appears in Arabic geographies and natural history, popularized in Arabian fairy tales and sailors' folklore. Ibn Battuta (iv. 305ff) tells of a mountain hovering in air over the China Seas, which was the roc.   

        In the 13th century, Marco Polo stated "It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure". Marco Polo explicitly distinguishes the bird from a griffin.

Friedrich Justin Bertuch, Roc illustration from Arabian Nights,  Bilderbuch für Kinder, 1790-1830 (Eigenbesitz), Fabelwesen

 

        The scientific culture of the 19th century introduced some 'scientific' rationalizations for the myth's origins, by suggesting that the origin of the myth of the roc may lie in embellishments of the often-witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb. In 1863, Bianconi suggested the roc was a raptor (Hawkins and Goodman, 2003: 1031). Recently a giant subfossil eagle in the genus Stephanoaetus identified from Madagascar was actually implicated as a top bird predator of the island, whose megafauna once included giant lemurs and pygmy hippopotami (Goodman, 1994).

Gustave Dore, The merchants break the roc's egg (from Fifth Voyage of Sinbad), From Le Magasin pitoresque, Paris, 1865

        One such rationalizing theory is that the existence of rocs was postulated from the sight of the African ostrich, which, because of its flightlessness and unusual appearance, was mistaken for the chick of a presumably much larger species. Ostriches, however, were already well-known in Biblical times. But on the other hand, a Medieval Northern European or Indian traveller, if confronted with tales about ostriches, might very well not have recognized them for what they were.

The Avenue or Alley of the Baobabs, Madagascar

Reader Notes:

1.  Elephant bird text excerpted from:  1001 Questions Answered About Birds by Allan D. Cruickshank and Helen G. Cruickshank (Toronto, General Publishing Company, 1958).

2:  Roc descriptive material adapted from Wikipedia.

3.  Please see prior related entry Ornicopia 5: What is the largest bird known to have lived?
4. All images except the eggs enlarge after clicking.

 

The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson (1882)

 

  

I.  "Fortunate beings!", cried the young man.  "Forty pounds is the entry money of the Suicide Club".  

    "The Suicide Club," said the Prince, "why, what the devil is that?"

"Listen," said the young man; "this is the age of conveniences, and I have to tell you of the last level of perfection of the sort.  We have affairs in different places; and hence railways were invented.  Railways separated us infallibly from our friends; and so telegraphs were made that we might communicate speedily at great distances.  Even in hotels we have lifts to spare us a climb of some hundred steps.  Now we know that life is but a stage to play the fool upon as long as the part amuses us.  There was one more convenience lacking to modern comfort; a decent, easy way to quit that stage; the back stairs to liberty; or, as I said this moment, Death's private door."

II.  An hour after, Florizel in his official robes, and covered with all the orders of Bohemia, received the members of the Suicide Club.  

    "Foolish and wicked men," said he, "as many of you have been driven into this strait by the lack of fortune shall receive employment and remuneration from my officers.  Those who suffer under a sense of guilt must have recourse to a higher and more generous Potentate than I."

Illustrations (from top):

1. Banksy, Rat, Westbourne Grove, London W11.

2. From Unheimlichte Geschichten (dir. Richard Oswald), 1919 (German film adaptation of "The Suicide Club").

3. From "The Suicide Club", Suspense (CBS television series), February 14, 1950. The program was an adaptation of "Story Of The Young Man With The Cream Tarts", the first story in Stevenson's "The Suicide Club".

4. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Bas Relief Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, The St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland, ca. 1899.

5. Martha Stewart, Strawberry cream tart.

6. Satan, Gustave Dore, Paradise Lost, wood engraving, 1866.

7. Unknown artist, Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor of the House of Luxembourg, and his third wife, Anna of Schweidnitz (Anne of Swidnica).

8.  The Queen of Bohemia Swallowed Up Alive, From Robert Burton, Wonderful Prodigies of Judgement And Mercy, 1685.