Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

In the 'Coriolanus' of Shakespeare, Menenius, the Roman Consul, is introduced in character,44 and recounts the apologue to the disaffected citizens of Rome. Thus the dramatist, in his superb way:

Men. Either you mustConfess yourselves wondrous malicious,Or be accused of folly. I shall tell youA pretty tale: it may be you have heard it;But since it serves my purpose, I will ventureTo stale 't a little more.1 Cit. Well, I'll hear it, sir; yet you must not thinkto fob off our disgrace with a tale; but, an 't please you,deliver.Men. There was a time when all the body's MembersRebelled against the Belly; thus accused it:That only like a gulf it did remainI' the midst o' the body, idle and inactive,Still cupboarding the viand, never bearingLike labour with the rest; where th' other instrumentsDid see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,And, mutually participate, did ministerUnto the appetite and affection commonOf the whole body. The Belly answered:1 Cit. Well, sir, what answer made the Belly?Men. Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus —For, look you, I may make the Belly smileAs well as speak – it tauntingly repliedTo the discontented Members, the mutinous partsThat envied his receipt: even so most fitlyAs you malign our senators, for thatThey are not such as you.1 Cit. Your Belly's answer? What!The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye,The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,With other muniments and petty helpsIn this our fabric, if that they —Men. What then? —'Fore me this fellow speaks! – what then? what then?1 Cit. Should by the cormorant Belly be restrained,Who is the sink o' the body —Men. Well, what then?1 Cit. The former agents, if they did complain,What could the Belly answer?Men. I will tell you,If you'll bestow a small – of what you have little —Patience awhile, you'll hear the Belly's answer.1 Cit. Ye're long about it.Men. Note me this, good friend,Your most grave Belly was deliberate,Not rash, like his accusers, and thus answered:'True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he,'That I receive the general food at first,Which you do live upon; and fit it is,Because I am the storehouse and the shopOf the whole body; but, if you do remember,I send it through the rivers of your blood,Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain,And through the cranks and offices of man.The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins,From me receive that natural competencyWhereby they live; and though that all at once,You, my good friends – ' This says the Belly, mark me.1 Cit. Ay, sir; well, well.Men. 'Though all at once cannotSee what I do deliver out to each,Yet I can make my audit up, that allFrom me do back receive the flour of all,And leave me but the bran.' What say you to 't?1 Cit. It was an answer. How apply you this?Men. The senators of Rome are this good Belly,And you the mutinous Members; for examineTheir counsels and their cares; digest things rightly,Touching the weal o' the common, you shall findNo public benefit which you receiveBut it proceeds or comes from them to you,And no way from yourselves. What do you think?

The oldest fable in Holy Scripture, having been spoken or written about six centuries before the time of Æsop, is that of The Trees in Search of a King, recounted by Jotham to the men of Shechem, and directed against Abimelech,45 wherein it is shown that the most worthless persons are generally the most presuming:

'And all the men of Shechem assembled themselves together, and all the house of Millo, and went and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem. And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of Mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you. The Trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the Olive-tree, Reign thou over us. But the Olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? And the Trees said to the Fig-tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the Fig-tree said unto them, Should I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? And the Trees said unto the Vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the Vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? Then said all the Trees unto the Bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the Bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the Bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'

The Samians had impeached their Prime Minister for embezzling the money of the Commonwealth, and would have put him to death. Æsop, addressing the assembled councillors, introduced the fable of The Fox and the Hedgehog into his oration, as an argument to dissuade them from their purpose.

'A fox, swimming across a rapid river, was carried by the current into a deep ravine, where he lay for a time bruised and sick, and unable to move. A swarm of hungry flies46 settled upon him. A hedgehog, passing by, compassionated his sufferings, and would have driven away the flies that were tormenting him. "Pray do not molest them," cried the fox. "How is this?" asked the hedgehog. "Do you not want to be rid of them?" "By no means," replied the fox; "for these flies are now full of blood, and sting me but little, and if you rid me of these which are already satiated, others more hungry will come in their place, and will drink up all the blood I have left." Thus also, O Samians, this man no longer injures you, for he is wealthy; should you, however, put him to death, others who are poor will come, who will exhaust you by filching the public money.'

Such a plea in arrest of judgment would hardly suffice in these later days.

The fable of The Frogs petitioning Jupiter for a King was spoken by Æsop to the Athenians in order to reconcile them to the mild yoke of the usurper Pisistratus, against whom, after they had raised him to the supreme power, the people began to murmur. 'The Commonwealth of Frogs, a discontented, variable race, weary of liberty, and fond of a change, petitioned Jupiter to grant them a king. The good-natured deity, in order to indulge this their request with as little mischief to the petitioners as possible, threw them down a log. At first they regarded their new monarch with great reverence, and kept from him at a most respectful distance; but perceiving his tame and peaceable disposition, they by degrees ventured to approach him with more familiarity, till at length some of them even ventured to climb up his side and squat upon him, and they all conceived for him the utmost contempt. In this disposition, they renewed their request to Jupiter, and entreated him to bestow upon them another king. The Thunderer in his wrath sent them a crane, who no sooner took possession of his new dominions than he began to devour his subjects one after another in a most capricious and tyrannical manner. They were now more dissatisfied than before; when applying to Jupiter a third time, they were dismissed with the reproof that the evil they complained of they had imprudently brought upon themselves, and that they had no remedy now but to submit to it with patience.'

Plutarch, in his account of 'The Feast of the Sages' at the Court of Periander, King of Corinth (himself one of the seven), narrates the incident of Alexidemus, natural son of the Tyrant of Miletus, who, having taken offence at being placed lower at the table than 'Æolians, and Islanders, and people known to nobody,' was ridiculed by Æsop, who related to the assembled guests the fable of The Arrogant Mule mortified. 'The lion,' said he, 'gave a feast to the beasts. The horse and the ass sent excuses, the one having to bear his master a journey, and the other to turn the mill for the housewife; but, in order to honour the hospitality of the forest king, they sent their son, the mule, in their stead. At table a dispute arose about precedence, the mule claiming the higher place in right of his parent the horse, which the ox and others disputed, asserting that the mule had no just pretensions to the dignity claimed. At length, argument having run high, the mule would fain have been content with the seat reserved for the ass; but even this was now denied him, and, as a punishment for his presumption, he was thrust to the lower end, as one who, instead of meriting consideration, was nothing but a base mongrel.'

It is said that when Æsop was being taken to the rock Hyampia, there to be sacrificed, he predicted that the hand of retributive Justice would smite his persecutors for their inhumanity; and, reciting the fable of The Eagle and the Beetle, he warned them that the weakest may procure vengeance against the most powerful in requital of injuries inflicted. 'A hare, being pursued by an eagle, retreated into the nest of a beetle, who promised her protection. The eagle repulsed the beetle, and destroyed the hare before its face. The beetle, remembering the wrong done it, soared to the nest of the eagle and destroyed her eggs. Appealing to Jupiter, the god listened to the petition of his favourite bird, and granted her leave to lay her eggs in his lap for safety. The beetle, seeing this, made a ball of dirt, and, carrying it aloft, dropped it into the lap of the god, who, forgetting the eggs, shook all off together.'

The Piper turned Fisherman was spoken by Cyrus (King of Persia) at Sardis to the Ionians and Æolians on the occasion of their sending ambassadors, offering to become subject to him on the same terms as they had been to Crœsus. But he, when he heard their proposal, told them this story: 'A piper seeing some fishes in the sea, began to pipe, expecting that they would come to shore; but finding his hopes disappointed, he took a casting-net, and enclosed a great number of fishes, and drew them out. When he saw them leaping about, he said to the fishes: "Cease your dancing, since when I piped you would not come out and dance."' Cyrus told this story to the Ionians and Æolians because the Ionians, when Cyrus pressed them by his ambassador to revolt from Crœsus, refused to consent, and now, when the business was done, were ready to listen to him. He therefore, under the influence of anger, gave them this answer.47

The fable of The Horse and the Stag was rehearsed by Stesichorus to the citizens of Himera48 with a view to stimulating them to beware of the encroachments of Phalaris the Tyrant, whom they had chosen general with absolute powers, and were on the eve of assigning him a body-guard. 'The stag, with his horns, got the better of the horse, and drove him clean out of the pasture where they used to feed together. So the horse craved the assistance of man; and in order to receive the benefit of his help, suffered him to put a bridle on his neck, a bit in his mouth, and a saddle upon his back. By this means he entirely defeated his enemy. But guess his chagrin when, returning thanks, and desiring to be dismissed, he received for answer: "No! I never knew before how useful a drudge you were; and now that I have found what you are good for, you may depend upon it I will keep you to it." Look to it, then' (continued Stesichorus), 'lest in your wish to avenge yourselves on your enemies you suffer in the same way as the horse; for already, through your choice of a commander with independent power, you have the bit in your mouths; but if you assign him a body-guard, and permit him to mount into the saddle, you will become, from that moment forth, the slaves of Phalaris.'

When the Athenians, with the ingratitude which sometimes blinds a whole people to the merits of their best friends, would have betrayed Demosthenes into the hands of Philip, King of Macedonia, the orator, as watch-dog of the State,49 brought them to a better frame of mind by a recital of The Wolves and the Sheep. 'Once on a time, the wolves sent an embassy to the sheep, desiring that there might be peace between them for the time to come. "Why," said they, "should we be for ever waging this deadly strife? Those wicked dogs are the cause of it all; they are incessantly barking at us and provoking us; send them away, and there will no longer be any obstacle to our eternal friendship and peace." The silly sheep listened; the dogs were dismissed, and the flock, thus deprived of their best protectors, became an easy prey to their treacherous enemy.'

On another occasion, when the populace were wrangling and disputing on matters of comparatively small moment whilst neglecting more important concerns, the same orator warned them of the danger they were in of losing the substance in fighting for the shadow. 'A youth,' said he, 'one hot summer day, hired an ass to carry him from Athens to Megara. At mid-day the heat of the sun was so intense that he dismounted, and sat down to repose himself in the shadow of the ass. The driver of the ass thereupon disputed with him, declaring that he had a better right to the shade than the other. "What!" said the youth, "did I not hire the ass for the whole journey?" "Yes," replied the other, "you hired the ass, but not the ass's shadow." While they were wrangling and fighting for the place, the ass took to his heels and ran away.'

CHAPTER XI

HINDOO, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN FABLES. – PILPAY, LOCMAN. – THE 'GESTA ROMANORUM.'

'When to my study I retire,And from books of ancient sagesGlean fresh sparks of buried fireLurking in their ample pages —While the task my mind engagesLet old words new truths inspire.'James Clerk Maxwell.

The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or Bidpaī, which are undoubtedly of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their having been translated into the Arabic in the sixth century under the name of the 'Book of Kalilah and Dimnah,' and afterwards into other Eastern languages, has altered their Indian character, and caused them to assume a Persian vesture and significance. They are rich in ripe wisdom, and prove the insight of their author or authors into human nature, which in those early days, and in those far countries, was much as it is in more westerly communities and in our own times.

Taking the Æsopian fable as our model, the bulk of Pilpay's stories are not fables par excellence. They are more of the nature of rencontres of adventures, fabulous, it is true, and containing generally an excellent moral, but elaborated and complex for the most part; they are wanting in the terseness, the crispness, and concentration, as well as in the simplicity and spontaneity, of the Greek. At the same time there is a freshness and vigour in these old fables that is not sacrificed by translation, and they are sufficiently striking and admirable as moral stories to justify the repute in which they have always been held. The Greedy and Ambitious Cat is one of the stories in the Bidpaī collection.

'There was formerly an old woman in a village, extremely thin, half starved, and meagre. She lived in a little cottage as dark and gloomy as a fool's heart, and withal as close shut up as a miser's hand.50 This miserable creature had for the companion of her wretched retirement a cat, meagre and lean as herself; the poor creature never saw bread nor beheld the face of a stranger, and was forced to be contented with only smelling the mice in their holes, or seeing the prints of their feet in the dust. If by some extraordinary lucky chance this miserable animal happened to catch a mouse, she was like a beggar that discovers a treasure: her visage and her eyes were inflamed with joy, and that booty served her for a whole week; and out of the excess of her admiration, and distrust of her own happiness, she would cry out to herself, "Heavens! is this a dream, or is it real?" One day, however, ready to die for hunger, she got upon the ridge of her enchanted castle, which had long been the mansion of famine for cats, and spied from thence another cat, that was stalking upon a neighbour's wall like a lion, walking along as if she were counting her steps, and so fat that she could hardly go. The old woman's cat, astonished to see a creature of her own species so plump and so large, with a loud voice cries out to her pursy neighbour: "In the name of pity speak to me, thou happiest of the cat kind! Why, you look as if you came from one of the Khan of Kathais'51 feasts; I conjure ye to tell me how or in what region it is that you get your skin so well stuffed."

'"Where?" replied the fat one. "Why, where should one feed well but at a king's table? I go to the house," continued she, "every day about dinner-time, and there I lay my paws upon some delicious morsel or other, which serves me till the next, and then leave enough for an army of mice, which under me live in peace and tranquillity; for why should I commit murder for a piece of tough and skinny mouse-flesh, when I can live on venison at a much easier rate?"

'The lean cat, on this, eagerly inquired the way to this house of plenty, and entreated her plump neighbour to carry her one day along with her.

'"Most willingly," said the fat puss; "for thou seest I am naturally charitable, and thou art so lean that I heartily pity thy condition."

'On this promise they parted, and the lean cat returned to the old woman's chamber, where she told her dame the story of what had befallen her.

'The old woman prudently endeavoured to dissuade her cat from prosecuting her design, admonishing her withal to have a care of being deceived.

'"For, believe me," said she, "the desires of the ambitious are never to be satiated but when their mouths are stuffed with the dirt of their graves. Sobriety and temperance are the only things that truly enrich people. I must tell thee, poor silly cat, that they who travel to satisfy their ambition have no knowledge of the good things they possess, nor are they truly thankful to Heaven for what they enjoy, who are not contented with their fortune."

'The poor starved cat, however, had conceived so fair an idea of the king's table, that the old woman's good morals and judicious remonstrances entered in at one ear and went out at the other; in short, she departed the next day with the fat puss to go to the king's house; but, alas! before she got thither her destiny had laid a snare for her. For, being a house of good cheer, it was so haunted with cats that the servants had, just at this time, orders to kill all the cats that came near it, by reason of a great robbery committed the night before in the king's larder by several grimalkins. The old woman's cat, however, pushed on by hunger, entered the house, and no sooner saw a dish of meat unobserved by the cooks, but she made a seizure of it, and was doing what for many years she had not done before, that is, heartily filling her belly; but as she was enjoying herself under the dresser-board, and feeding heartily upon her stolen morsels, one of the testy officers of the kitchen, missing his breakfast, and seeing where the poor cat was solacing herself with it, threw his knife at her with such an unlucky hand that it struck her full in the breast. However, as it has been the providence of Nature to give this creature nine lives instead of one, poor puss made a shift to crawl away, after she had for some time shammed dead; but in her flight, observing the blood come streaming from her wound – "Well," said she, "let me but escape this accident, and if ever I quit my old home and my own mice for all the rarities in the king's kitchen, may I lose all my nine lives at once!"'

The moral of the story is, that it is better to be contented with what one has than to travel in search of what ambition prompts us to seek for.

In the Escurial, near Madrid, the library of which is rich in ancient literary treasures, is a work by Ebn Arabscah, a collection of Arabian fables. Arabia may with truth be designated the very fountain-head of fabulous story. It was in that country that the venerable Locman flourished, during, it is believed, the reigns of the Jewish kings David and Solomon. Berington, in his essay on 'The Arabian or Saracenic Learning,' remarks that Locman is said to have been an Ethiopian or Nubian, extremely deformed in his person, but so famed for wisdom as to have acquired the appellation of the Sage. His fables and moral maxims, written for the instruction of mankind, were in the estimation of the Eastern people a gift from heaven, and they received them as its inspired dictates. 'Heretofore,' says the Divine being in the Koran, 'we gave wisdom to Locman.' The same writer suggests whether Locman and Æsop may not be the same person. 'The history of the two sages is so perfectly similar in their characters and the incidents of their lives, that one must have been borrowed from the other. But the chronological difficulties,' he adds, 'are sufficiently perplexing.'

We have already seen that the alleged similarity in character and bodily appearance was due to the invention or misconception of Planudes, whose story of Æsop was written in the fourteenth century, and therefore the seeming identity of the sages falls to the ground. Moreover, the fables of Æsop have a mobility about them which we do not find in those of other fabulists; they are essentially Attic in their diction, exhibiting all the marks of that compressed wit and wisdom for which the ancient Greek mind was distinguished. Eastern fable, on the other hand, is ornate and florid, and wanting in the Grecian clear-cut directness and point. It is idle to assume that the ideas, if not the diction, may have been borrowed and clothed in a new dress, unless it can be shown that the substance or subject-matter of the fables of the two sages is alike or similar in character. Granted that a few – about a dozen in number52– of the Æsopian fables find their counterpart in the fables of a more remote antiquity and in more Eastern countries, this circumstance might be expected; ideas dating from the very advent of the human race are current amongst us in this day, but surely even we of the nineteenth century have a sufficient stock of original conceptions to justify our claims to be considered inventors, and so with Æsop and the race of fabulists in all ages.

Mrs. Jameson says,53 with great force and truth, that 'the fables which appeal to our higher moral sympathies may sometimes do as much for us as the truths of science,' and she paraphrases from Sir William Jones's Persian Grammar a fable embodying one of those traditions of our Lord which are preserved in the East.

'Jesus,' says the story, 'arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and He sent His disciples forward to prepare supper, while He Himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market place.

'And He saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together looking at an object on the ground; and He drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man.

'And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.

'"Faugh!" said one, stopping his nose, "it pollutes the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could not even cut a shoe out of it." "And his ears," said a fourth, "all draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a fifth, "he hath been hanged for thieving!"

'And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, He said, "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!"

'Then the people turned towards Him with amazement, and said among themselves, "Who is this? this must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog!" And being ashamed, they bowed their heads before Him, and went each on his way.'

'I can recall,' continues Mrs. Jameson, 'at this hour, the vivid, yet softening and pathetic, impression left on my fancy by this old Eastern story. It struck me as exquisitely humorous, as well as exquisitely beautiful. It gave me a pain in my conscience, for it seemed thenceforward so easy and so vulgar to say satirical things, and so much nobler to be benign and merciful; and I took the lesson so home that I was in great danger of falling into the opposite extreme; of seeking the beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and the repulsive. Pity, a large element in my composition, might have easily degenerated into weakness, threatening to subvert hatred of evil in trying to find excuses for it; and whether my mind has ever completely righted itself, I am not sure.'