Aesop's Fables

“ Let me lie quiet for a moment, and then we'll go back to the house."
Not knowing what else to do, Spenser sat down by her side and stared at the tops of the oaks, showing over the wall.
So for, perhaps, two minutes.
Then—
"I know," said the girl. "I remember. It's straight out of Aesop's Fables, this pretty place. The rooster and the well and the puppies and the cool of the little old house—they all fit in. And I'm sure the old pictures talk when they're left alone."
"They'll have something to say to-night," said William Red Spenser. ”

“ Why don’t you come down too?” The Goat thought well of this advice, and jumped down into the well. But the Fox immediately jumped on her back, and by putting his foot on her long horns managed to jump up to the edge of the well. “Good-bye, friend,” said the Fox, “remember next time,
“Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.”
And this is the end of Æsop’s Fables. HURRAH! ”

“ They do not make the same use of their reason as other people, but like the jaundiced eye, view every thing in a false light, and having turned a deaf ear to all advice, and pursued their unaltered course until all their property is irrecoverably lost, when at length misery forces upon them a sense of their situation, they still lay the blame upon any cause but the right one—their own extravagance and folly; like the Prodigal in the fable, who would not have considered a solitary occurrence as a general indication of the season, had not his own wicked desires blinded his understanding. ”

“ Another prose collection by Ademar of Chabannes was made before 1030, and still preserves some of the lines of the lost Fables of Phædrus. The Fables became especially popular among the Normans. A number of them occur on the Bayeux Tapestry, and in the twelfth century England, the head of the Angevin empire, became the home of the Fable, all the important adaptations and versions of Æsop being made in this country. One of these done into Latin verse by Walter the Englishman became the standard Æsop of medieval Christendom. ”

“ We may therefore perceive, from this Fable, how proper it is for those to hold their tongues, who would not discover the shallowness of their understandings. “Empty vessels make the greatest sound,” and the deepest rivers are most silent; the greatest noise is ever found where there is the least depth of water. It is a true observation, that those who are the weakest in understanding, and most slow of apprehension, are generally the most precipitate in uttering their crude conceptions. Grave looks, an aspect of dignity, and a solemn deportment, may sometimes deceive even an accurate observer ”

“ Aesop embodies an epigram not uncommon in human history; his fame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it. The firm foundations of common sense, the shrewd shots at uncommon sense, that characterise all the Fables, belong not him but to humanity. In the earliest human history whatever is authentic is universal: and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always some central man who had first the trouble of collecting them, and afterwards the fame of creating them. ”

“ The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn; it must not allow for what Balzac called "the revolt of a sheep" The fairy tale, on the other hand, absolutely revolves on the pivot of human personality. If no hero were there to fight the dragons, we should not even know that they were dragons. If no adventurer were cast on the undiscovered island—it would remain undiscovered. If the miller's third son does not find the enchanted garden where the seven princesses stand white and frozen—why, then, they will remain white and frozen and enchanted. ”

“ One of them again answered him: “We indeed wish you well, but the danger is not over. There is one other yet to pass through the shed, who has as it were a hundred eyes, and until he has come and gone, your life is still in peril.” At that moment the master himself entered, and having had to complain that his oxen had not been properly fed, he went up to their racks and cried out: “Why is there such a scarcity of fodder? There is not half enough straw for them to lie on. Those lazy fellows have not even swept the cobwebs away.” ”

“ Their whole life is as full of alarms as that of a Hare, and they never think themselves so easy as when, like the timorous folks in the Fable, they meet with a set of creatures as fearful as themselves. ”

“ The greatest advance, however, towards a re-introduction of the Fables of Aesop to a place in the literature of the world, was made in the early part of the seventeenth century. In the year 1610, a learned Swiss, Isaac Nicholas Nevelet, sent forth the third printed edition of these fables, in a work entitled “Mythologia Aesopica.” This was a noble effort to do honor to the great fabulist, and was the most perfect collection of Aesopian fables ever yet published. ”

“ The true fabulist, therefore, discharges a most important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue. In this consists the superiority of the Fable over the Tale or the Parable. The fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet, under a merry guise, to convey instruction. Phaedrus, the great imitator of Aesop, plainly indicates this double purpose to be the true office of the writer of fables. ”

“ To this purpose I think Æsop's Fables the best, which being stories apt to delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful reflections to a grown man, and if his memory retain them all his life after, he will not repent to find them there, amongst his manly thoughts and serious business." [266]
The best Æsop collection for teachers and pupils alike is The Fables of Æsop, edited by Joseph Jacobs. ”

“ For although men of penetration see through the pretence, and escape its dangers, yet the weak, the vain, and the unsuspicious are put off their guard, and have not discernment enough to shun the trap so pleasingly baited. The Fable also furnishes a hint against hypocritical, legacy hunters, whose regard is generally of the same nature as that of the Fox for the Hen. ”

“ The Ass and the Old Shepherd
A SHEPHERD, watching his Ass feeding in a meadow, was alarmed all of a sudden by the cries of the enemy. He appealed to the Ass to fly with him, lest they should both be captured, but the animal lazily replied, “Why should I, pray? Do you think it likely the conqueror will place on me two sets of panniers?” “No,” rejoined the Shepherd. “Then,” said the Ass, “as long as I carry the panniers, what matters it to me whom I serve?”
In a change of government the poor change nothing beyond the name of their master. ”

“ The wolf will be always wolfish; the fox will be always foxy. Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great peoples have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal love; they salute them as expressions of that abstract and anonymous energy in nature which to any one is awful, and to an atheist must be frightful. So in all the fables that are or are not Aesop's all the animal forces drive like inanimate forces, like great rivers or growing trees. ”

“ The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. Many of these fables are characterized by the strictest observance of these rules. They are occupied with one short narrative, from which the moral naturally flows, and with which it is intimately associated. "'Tis the simple manner," says Dodsley, [2] "in which the morals of Æsop are interwoven with his fables that distinguishes him, and gives him the preference over all other mythologists. ”

“ It is not being employed much, but well, and to the purpose, which will make us useful to the age we live in, and celebrated by those which are to come. As the multiplication of foxes and other vermin is a misfortune to the countries which are infested with them, so one cannot help throwing out a melancholy reflection, when one sees some particular classes of the human kind increase so fast as they do. But the most obvious meaning of this Fable is the hint it gives us in relation to authors. ”

“ In the Middle Ages it was naturally the Latin Phædrus that represented the Æsopic Fable to the learned world, but Phædrus in a fuller form than has descended to us in verse, A selection of some eighty fables was turned into indifferent prose in the ninth century, probably at the Schools of Charles the Great. ”

“ The collections which we possess under the name of Aesop’s Fables are late renderings of Babrius’s version or Προγυμνάσματα, rhetorical exercises of varying age and merit. Syntipas translated Babrius into Syriac, and Andreopulos put the Syriac back again into Greek. Ignatius Diaconus, in the 9th century, made a version of 53 fables in choliambic tetrameters. Stories from Oriental sources were added, and from these collections Maximus Planudes made and edited the collection which has come down to us under the name of Aesop, and from which the popular fables of modern Europe have been derived. ”

“ The "Hitopadesa" was a very fountain of riches, as old as the hills themselves, precious and inexhaustible. In its innumerable translations it passed down the stream of time, and the fables known as Aesop's made their way among all races of people in the same marvellous way. No one knows whether Aesop—through the Assyrians with whom the Phrygians had commercial relations—borrowed his stories from the Orientals or whether they borrowed from him. One thing is certain, nothing persists so strongly and lives so long as a fable or folk tale. ”

“ ÆSOP'S FABLES. The Wolf Turned Shepherd.
A wolf, finding that the sheep were so afraid of him that he could not get near them, disguised himself in the dress of a shepherd, and thus attired approached the flock. As he came near, he found the shepherd fast asleep. As the sheep did not run away, he resolved to imitate the voice of the shepherd. In trying to do so, he only howled, and awoke the shepherd. As he could not run away, he was soon killed.
Those who attempt to act in disguise are apt to overdo it.
The Stag at the Pool. ”

“ Though the poor Traveller in the fable was not guilty of any real crime in what he did, yet one cannot help approving the honest simplicity of the Satyr, who could not be reconciled to such double dealing. In the moral sense of the fable, nothing can be more offensive to one of a sincere heart, than he that blows with a different breath from the same mouth; who flatters a man to his face, and reviles him behind his back. ”

“ In Conclusion, An Ass of the Long Robe, when he comes once to be Detected, looks Infinitely Sillier, then he would have done in his own Shape: Neither is Æsop's Ass Laugh’d at here for his Ears, or for his Voice, but for his Vanity, and Pretence; for T’other is but according to his own Kind and Nature; and Every thing is Well and Best, while it Continues to be as God made it. ”

“ An old man was employed in cutting wood in the forest, and, in carrying the fagots into the city for sale. One day, being very wearied with his long journey, he sat down by the wayside, and, throwing down his load, besought "Death" to come. "Death" immediately appeared, in answer to his summons, and asked for what reason he had called him. The old man replied: "That, lifting up the load, you may place it again upon my shoulders."
We do not always like to be taken at our word.
The Fox and the Leopard. ”

“ So the Boar came up and drove at him with his tusks; then a Bull gored him with his horns; still the Lion lay helpless before them: so the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger, came up, and turning his tail to the Lion kicked up his heels into his face. “This is a double death,” growled the Lion.
Only cowards insult dying majesty.
The Ass and the Lapdog
A Farmer one day came to the stables to see to his beasts of burden: among them was his favourite Ass, that was always well fed and often carried his master. ”

“ Buffoons, like dwarfs, should be matched with those of their own level; a man, in sense or stature, would be ashamed to encounter either of them. But notwithstanding all this, and though the Boar in the fable is a very good example to men of generous brave spirits not to give themselves up to passion, nor to be distempered with thoughts of revenge upon the insolent behaviour of every Ass that offends them, because their hands would be dishonoured by the tincture of a base man's blood ”

“ No matter what he was or how he lived, many, many stories are still told about him, and the greater part of the fables we all like to read are said to have been written or told by him, and everybody still calls them Aesop's fables.
Some of the stories told about him are curious indeed. Here are a few of them.
In those days men were sold as slaves in the market, as cattle are sold now. One day Aesop and two other men were put up at auction. Xanthus, a wealthy man, wanted a slave, and he said to the men: "What can you do?" ”

“ There are two accounts upon which people that have been useful are frequently neglected. One, when they are so decayed, either through age or some accident, that they are no longer able to do the services they have formerly done; the other, when the occasion or emergency which required such talents no longer exists. Phædrus, who more than once complains of the bad consequences of age, makes no other application to this fable than by telling his friend Philetus, with some regret, that he wrote it with such a view ”

“ THE BEASTS of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, “Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong.” ”