“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”
So said C.S. Lewis (“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (1950)).
I have read this book: Aesop’s Fables. Wordsworth Classics from 1994. New translation from 1912 by V.S. Vernon Jones, illustrations by Arthur Rackham; introduction by G.K. Chesterton (ISBN 978-1-85326). 203 pages. I give it 5 stars and although characterized as a classic children’s book, I highly recommend reading it as an adult.
It contains more than 200 fables. According to Encyclopedia Britannica fables are short tales populated with animals with human characteristics to reveal the follies and weaknesses of humans and ending with a moral or proverb. When I was in the third grade, we read one ‘The Hare and The Tortoise’ with the moral: “Slow and steady wins the race”.
Reading it I have found one I like better: The Two Bags. Every man carries two bags about with him, one in the front and one behind, and both are packed full of faults. The bag in front contains his neighbors’ faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.
To read the fables is not a fast read; it took me more than a month because there are things to reflect on. For at least the past half millennia according to Wikipedia the various fables were published for children; but I believe adults will enjoy them more than children do.
History of Aesop:
Ancient Greek texts refer to Aesop as a well-known cultural icon. Aesop was an expert story- teller, so good that he was freed from slavery because of his story-telling. He lived from 620 to 564 BC, was very ugly and deformed. Having been liberated from slavery he entered the service of King Croesus of Persia. On a diplomatic trip to Delphi, the town’s people were insulted by his story-telling and threw him off a rock, thus killing him. Another version was that he was born in Ethiopia, as his name suggests, this is supported by the fables having lions, crocodiles and other animals that were unknown in Greece. Another version says that Aesop was not a real person, he was just a fictive person made up.
History of the fables:
The fables were an oral culture only written down in Greek in the 4th century BC long after Aesop’s death; they were well known to the ancient Greek writers who made references to them. There is a record that Socrates while awaiting execution tried to rewrite some of them into verse. In the Roman era they were translated to Latin and spread worldwide, east and west. In the Middle Ages they were translated into European languages for children usually leaving out the fables with the Olympic gods and mythology. Various translators changed and added tales of their own.
Fables, an oral cultural heritage of mankind:
Scholars today believe that many fables are much older than Ancient Greece, and may have originated in the first known historical societies of Mesopotamia, where writing was invented about 5500 years ago, but at that time the fables were part of an oral culture passed down over generations, most likely from even earlier cultures.
Mankind has had the ability to speak for at least 100,000 years, so sitting together telling each other stories, legends, myths and fables was away to share with children the history about their family and tribe, the memories of their culture, which is part of what makes us human.
Reading the fables refined by generations of oral story tellers over thousands of years is like receiving a glimpse of a shared history, I feel the prehistoric storytellers speaking to me. I have the same feeling, looking at ancient rock-art and petroglyphs, also our heritage and also based on animal figures. Here a photo from Twyfelfontein, Namibia at least 2000 years old (UNESCO).
The somewhat old-fashioned language of the book is quite appropriate for a 2500 years old book.
I will finish with another fable: The Crow and the Pitcher. A thirsty crow found a pitcher with some water in it, but so little was there that, try as she might, she could not reach it with her beak, and it seemed as though she would die of thirst within sight of the remedy. At last she hit upon a clever plan. She began dropping pebbles into the pitcher, and with each pebble the water rose a little higher until at last it reached the brim, and the knowing bird was enabled to quench her thirst.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
This fable reminds me of the crow that a few months ago stole My Dear’s bun with cream cheese and learned to eat bun with cream cheese.
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