Item 10 - Letter from E. B. Cowell to W. Aldis Wright

1 folded sheet

10 Scrope Terrace (Cambridge).—Accepts an invitation, and cites a passage from the Persian poet Kháqání to illustrate the reference to a gourd in the book of Jonah.

—————

Transcript

10 Scrope Terrace
Oct. 29. 1884

My dear Aldis Wright,

Thank you for your kind invitation for next Saturday, which I shall have great pleasure in accepting.

I came on a passage in a poem of the Persian poet Kháqání (which I read while I was at Broadstairs in the vacation)—which may interest you as illustrating Jonah’s “gourd” qîqâyon {1}.

“If to spite the graceful planetree
The ricinus-shrub springs from the ground,
Those who are intelligently practical
Know the ricinus from the plane.
The one will extend its years of life to an hundred,
The other will not last more than three or four months.”

The Persian bîd-anjîr or “willow-fig” is explained in the Dictionaries as “the shrub Palma Christi”.

Yours sincerely
E. B. Cowell

—————

{1} Cf. Jonah iv. 6-10. ‘qiqayon’ is the word used for the plant in the original Hebrew.

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2022.