L’Oiseau Blue – The Blue Bird was a play by the Belgian poet and playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, first produced in 1908. This edition is a translation into Yiddish by Morris Myer. It was published in 1910 by English Yidisher Ferlag in London and printed by Israel Narodiczky in Whitechapel.
Morris Myer was born in Romania in 1879. He came to London in 1902 and worked as a journalist, editing various short-lived publications. After he had produced this book, from 1910 to 1913 he was the London correspondent of various New York publications, including the newspaper, Forverts. From 1913 until his death in 1944 he edited the London Yiddish newspaper Di Zeit, which I have written about here.
The play itself is a fairy story about a girl called Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, who seek happiness, represented by the Blue Bird of happiness, helped by the good fairy Bérylune. It has been filmed several times, including a version in 1940 staring Shirley Temple. If you would like a copy for yourself, this book is in the Yiddish Book Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library.
Jewish Miscellanies 