Now, I am inclined to think that this, as I believe, the only published reference to an interesting rarity, will hardly satisfy the craving of the FitzGerald enthusiast. I shall therefore give the fullest information on the subject, whereby the modern Mæcenas will be afforded full particulars of what only a few of the cult of Omar can ever hope to possess.
Those who know their Ruba’iyat as they should will remember that there are several allusions made by the philosopher to the amusements of his countrymen.
Take the FitzGerald quatrain:—
“When you and I behind the veil are passed, Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the Sea’s self should heed a pebble cast.”
Here, in the last line, we have what is probably an allusion to the game of “Ducks and Drakes,” “which,” says Mr. Edward Heron-Allen in the notes to his admirable translation, “was known to the Egyptians and also to the Greeks under the {181} name of ἐποστρακισμος. It was played with oyster-shells. The curious are referred to Minutius Felix (A.D. 207), who describes the game in his preface.” This last is a gentleman with whose name I am free to confess I have hitherto been unfamiliar, and to whose writings I have no access. I must therefore leave the enthusiastic reader to follow up the clue for himself. However, with the aid of Liddell and Scott, I find myself able to go one better than Mr. Heron-Allen, and would refer the reader to Archæologus Pollux, the author of Onomastikon, whose date is prior to Felix by twenty-nine years!
Another game which we find Omar Khayyam alluding to is that of chequers, which is familiar to us in FitzGerald’s oft-quoted quatrain:—
“But helpless pieces of the game he plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays”;
altered in the later edition to:—
“’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days, Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays; Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays And one by one back in the Closet lays.”
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