Aesop's Fables

(1867)

Translated by Reverend George Fyler Townsend (18141900)

Although there are more modern collections and translations, Townsend's volume of 350 fables introduced the practice of stating a succinct moral at the conclusion of each story, and continues to be influential. Several editions were published in his lifetime, and others since.

Aesop's Fables continue to be revised and translated through the years, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told.

The fables of Aesop have become one of the most enduring traditions of European culture, ever since they were first written down nearly two millennia ago. Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature. First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf? Aesop's Fables has survived through the ages. From parent to child, or from teacher to student, these fables go down from generation to generation teaching children morals through fictional stories. These fables are also child-friendly. The main characters are always animals that have the ability to speak.--Submitted by A Lover of Good Books

INTRODUCTION

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. He had

the fame; and, on the whole, he earned the fame. There must have

been something great and human, something of the human future and

the human past, in such a man: even if he only used it to rob the

past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been

really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling

Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of

Wales. But the word "Mappe" or "Malory" will always mean King

Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the

Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the "Idylls of

the King." The nursery fairy tales may have come out of Asia with

the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have been

invented by some fine French lady or gentleman like Perrault: they

may possibly even be what they profess to be. But we shall always

call the best selection of such tales "Grimm's Tales": simply

because it is the best collection.

The historical Aesop, in so far as he was historical, would seem

to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially

and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He

lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in

the time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect like

everything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity

of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as the

celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his

having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those

who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the

cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly

moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general

legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten

in our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophic

slaves. Aesop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus: he was

also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old

world could be worshipped like Aesop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It

is odd to note that both the great slaves told their best stories

about beasts and birds.

But whatever be fairly due to Aesop, the human tradition called

Fables is not due to him. This had gone on long before any

sarcastic freedman from Phrygia had or had not been flung off a

precipice; this has remained long after. It is to our advantage,

indeed, to realise the distinction; because it makes Aesop more

obviously effective than any other fabulist. Grimm's Tales,

glorious as they are, were collected by two German students. And if

we find it hard to be certain of a German student, at least we know

more about him than We know about a Phrygian slave. The truth is,

of course, that Aesop's Fables are not Aesop's fables, any more

than Grimm's Fairy Tales were ever Grimm's fairy tales. But the

fable and the fairy tale are things utterly distinct. There are

many elements of difference; but the plainest is plain enough.

There can be no good fable with human beings in it. There can be no

good fairy tale without them.

Aesop, or Babrius (or whatever his name was), understood that,

for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like

abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must

always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of

two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess

must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn

in chess must march on. 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. If there is no personal prince to find the

Sleeping Beauty she will simply sleep. Fables repose upon quite the

opposite idea; that everything is itself, and will in any case

speak for itself. 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. It is

the limit and the loss of all such things that they cannot be

anything but themselves: it is their tragedy that they could not

lose their souls.

This is the immortal justification of the Fable: that we could

not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into

chessmen. We cannot talk of such simple things without using

animals that do not talk at all. Suppose, for a moment, that you

turn the wolf into a wolfish baron, or the fox into a foxy

diplomatist. You will at once remember that even barons are human,

you will be unable to forget that even diplomatists are men. You

will always be looking for that accidental good-humour that should

go with the brutality of any brutal man; for that allowance for all

delicate things, including virtue, that should exist in any good

diplomatist. Once put a thing on two legs instead of four and pluck

it of feathers and you cannot help asking for a human being, either

heroic, as in the fairy tales, or un-heroic, as in the modern

novels.

But by using animals in this austere and arbitrary style as they

are used on the shields of heraldry or the hieroglyphics of the

ancients, men have really succeeded in handing down those

tremendous truths that are called truisms. If the chivalric lion be

red and rampant, it is rigidly red and rampant; if the sacred ibis

stands anywhere on one leg, it stands on one leg for ever. In this

language, like a large animal alphabet, are written some of the

first philosophic certainties of men. As the child learns A for Ass

or B for Bull or C for Cow, so man has learnt here to connect the

simpler and stronger creatures with the simpler and stronger

truths. That a flowing stream cannot befoul its own fountain, and

that any one who says it does is a tyrant and a liar; that a mouse

is too weak to fight a lion, but too strong for the cords that can

hold a lion; that a fox who gets most out of a flat dish may easily

get least out of a deep dish; that the crow whom the gods forbid to

sing, the gods nevertheless provide with cheese; that when the goat

insults from a mountain-top it is not the goat that insults, but

the mountain: all these are deep truths deeply graven on the rocks

wherever men have passed. It matters nothing how old they are, or

how new; they are the alphabet of humanity, which like so many

forms of primitive picture-writing employs any living symbol in

preference to man. These ancient and universal tales are all of

animals; as the latest discoveries in the oldest pre-historic

caverns are all of animals. Man, in his simpler states, always felt

that he himself was something too mysterious to be drawn. But the

legend he carved under these cruder symbols was everywhere the

same; and whether fables began with Aesop or began with Adam,

whether they were German and mediAeval as Reynard the Fox, or as

French and Renaissance as La Fontaine, the upshot is everywhere

essentially the same: that superiority is always insolent, because

it is always accidental; that pride goes before a fall; and that

there is such a thing as being too clever by half. You will not

find any other legend but this written upon the rocks by any hand

of man. There is every type and time of fable: but there is only

one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to

everything.

G. K. CHESTERTON