This Aesop fable (Perry 69) seemed relevant to social media and all the hot takes and concern trolling regarding recent political events. I thought I’d post the Townsend version unaltered, on Bluesky, but as I wrote some changes suggested themselves to me. For those of you who don’t have social media or who don’t yet follow me on Bluesky, here it is:
Writing is a journey of discovery, even re-writing or re-imagining or whatever it is I am doing in these misadventures, but the discovery is accidental and unpredictable. It only happens when things do not work out as planned. If your route proves unnavigable, if you take the wrong path, and you keep going, you may find yourself approaching your destination from an unexpected direction, or you may end up somewhere else entirely. It is this that reveals something about you, something you did not intend.
This weekβs fable is an example. It is a revision of one of Aesopβs more obscure efforts (albeit one that is pegged near the top of the Perry list): ‘The Two Frogs By the Road‘
βTWO FROGS were neighbours. One inhabited a deep pond, far removed from public view; the other lived in a gully containing little water, and traversed by a country road. The Frog that lived in the pond warned his friend to change his residence and entreated him to come and live with him, saying that he would enjoy greater safety from danger and more abundant food. The other refused, saying that he felt it so very hard to leave a place to which he had become accustomed. A few days afterwards a heavy wagon passed through the gully and crushed him to death under its wheels. A willful man will have his way to his own hurt.β
As I read, I imagined someone more adventurous than attached, someone who rejected the comforts and compromises of community, a rugged individualist, a settler, and also someone who would ultimately rather prefer to impose their own limits on others in the name of freedom, their freedom.
So I set out to revise the tale as a satire of this rugged individualism, picking at the brutality inherent in that attitude. I may have achieved that, to an extent, but the finished work produces, I think, a pathos that was not originally intended, and a characterisation far more equivocal, of both pioneer and exile, the intrepid and the lost, and the self-destructive.
Hares are noted for their speed and for their timidity. Or, to put the two characteristics together: when they are startled from their hiding places, they are running for their lives, and thatβs when we see them. Iβve seen plenty in my time, disturbing them as I womp through the middle of some bramble-encrusted woodland. Just a week ago I was running through a field of thistles when a hare detonated in front of me. It left its escape to the last moment, but gained a hundred yards up the hill before it turned to check whether I was in pursuit.
LOST IN THOUGHT
What, I wondered, had the hare been doing so inconspicuously among the dead thistles? Not grazing, or sleeping, resting perhaps, but would it really need to rest so often? Maybe it was simply lost in thought and my approach had shocked it out of its reverie. That might explain the burst of speed: a reflex, a survival mechanism, a sudden, automatic acceleration out of danger, triggered not consciously chosen.
This explanation also contradicts the arrogance attributed to the hare in Aesop’s classic fable, βThe tortoise and the Hare.’
The hare’s speed might seem impressive to an on-looker, but to the hare itself it is nothing. The hare cares about its safety and its meditations, not its speed, which is no more than a means to an end. The fable now seems like a mistake. It is other creatures who boast of the hareβs speed, the tortoise who issues the challenge, and the bewildered hare is pressured into taking part. This became the starting point for my version of the tale.
‘SLOW BUT STEADY WINS THE RACE’βWHAT RACE?
I agree the tortoise has a point: determination and resolve will bring it to its destination while, despite its speed, the hare may never reach it, as it runs in whatever direction brings safety. However, their destinations are not the same so can their efforts be meaningfully compared?
It could instead be argued the hare is wasting its talents, as Laura Gibbs’ translation puts it: βthe story shows that many people have good natural abilities which are ruined by idleness; on the other hand, sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence.β
Much as I approve the moral of the original fable, my version steps to one side to take a sideways glance at the idea of the race. It criticizes those who would make sport of others or who fail to appreciate the divergence in our goals and motivation. We are not all heading to the same destination.
Dmitry invited us to βgo up to the next dog you see with a bone or food, and take it from himβ¦ Watch his reaction.β He was confident we would encounter hostility, which he construed as an assertion of ownership. I couldn’t really dispute that. Iβve been growled at dog with a bone between its teeth. Hell, weβve probably all tried to take a toy away from a dog at some point; they tend not to want to let go. Whether this is evidence of ownership or not, I donβt know, but it could certainly be translated as the statement βmine, not yours,’ for that moment at least.
But what, I wondered, would happen if another bone were to be dropped nearby? Would the dog take any interest in it? Would it drop one for the other? Could it be tempted away from its possession and would it forget its ownership when it claimed the new item?
And what entitled it to either of the bones? Where did they come from? Who provided them?
These speculations started me along the road to the latest fable, in which two dogs contest first one bone, then another.
When I wrote this fable, I neglected to make notes on the process. A week later, I had forgotten how and why it had come about, where the idea originated or what I was thinking at the time. Fortunately, I had written about the episode in my journal.
It was a response to a discussion I witnessed on Twitter (aka X). The original post, more of an essay or screed, was entitled βCapitalism and the Way of the Dogβ and was written as a response to the claim that βproperty lawβ was a social construct and not βa natural mode of being.β
CONSIDER THE DOG
Consider the dog, wrote the author, Dmitry. “You can test this βproperty rights are innateβ claim very easily. Go up to the next dog you see with a bone or food, and take it from him… Watch his reaction.” Hostile, Dmitry asserted. In addition to the dog, Dmitry wanted us to consider the wasps and their nest, the lioness and its prey (a zebra), the crow and the shiny objects he collects. All intended as examples of the assertion of property rights in nature.
I felt I had to respond, for two reasons. One, because the argument didn’t seem quite right: it was reductive but, on the other hand, it was not without merit. An interesting combination. Moreover, it cut straight to the point where politics, philosophy, and economics collide. Also literature. Dmitryβs use of animal examples reminded me of the classical function of fable as elements of rhetoric.
I wanted to unpick his argument. Or complicate it. Thatβs how I tend to respond to reductive claims. And I am particularly uneasy about claims concerning what is natural or not. These claims always strike me as normative and exclusionary. What is the attraction, I wonder? Is it because to be natural is self-evidently right and unnatural wrong?
So I did as Dmitry suggested. I considered the dog. I considered the wasp. And I considered βthe lioness and the zebra she had captured.β This is what I concluded about the latter.
THE LIONESS AND THE ZEBRA
The lioness eats the zebra. Thatβs why she hunted it down and killed it. You might say for a brief period, from the killing to the end of the meal, the lioness considers the zebraβs carcass as its property. Any attempt to take it away from her would be deterred with violence or the threat of violence. This would seem a fairly uncontroversial observation.
But why stop there? Doesnβt there come a point when the lioness moves on, having eaten her fill, a point where the scavengers take over? Hyenas, vultures, also rodents and insects consume the remainder of the carcass. The lioness doesnβt take more than she things she needs. She doesnβt assert property rights over the excess. And she doesnβt hoard.
But what if she were to hoard? How would that look? Would it be considered equally natural? This is the question I asked, and I recalled the lions encountered here in the land of fables: the lion who terrorized the forest with its rampaging, ‘The Lion and the Hares‘; the lion that bullied its partners into giving up their shareβthere’s a few of those: ‘The Lion’s Share‘ ‘The Wolf, the Fox, and the Lion‘.
A great many fables consist of nothing more than a brief dialogue. As a rule, these fables pass me by. They’re too obviously didactic, too dry, the juice squeezed out of them, the flesh stripped.
The dialogue typically takes the form of answer to a question or challenge, an answer which articulates the moral. And that’s it. There is no story, no turn of events, no surprise. The only colour comes from the quality of the observation, the insight revealed in the line of comparison drawn between human behaviour and that of the natural world.
One of the better examples is Robert Dodsleyβs βThe Kingfisher and the Sparrowβ [read here], in which a sparrow, a town-dweller, exhorts a kingfisher to display its beauty to the world. Dodsley draws on observable charasteristics of the two birds. Kingfisher plummage is vivid and brilliant and yet it is an elusive sight, confined to its habitat of rivers, canals, and wetlands. You wonβt see it flying overhead or hopping about the hedgerows.
The sparrow argues the kingfisher was given those attributes for the visual pleasure of others and should not therefore hide itself away. It ought to exploit them for fame and adulation. ‘No!’ says the Kingfisher. ‘Not interested. I have no need for any of that fuss.’
“I have learned not to build my happiness upon the opinion of others, so much as on my own conviction, and the approbation of my own heart.”
I applaud the message, an affirmation of being true to yourself, but it remains only that, a message. A message sealed with a simile. Take it or leave it.
‘The Young Lady and the Looking-Glass‘ by William Wilkie claims to be a metaphor for how fables work. A mother puts a mirror in the corner where her spoiled and willful daughter goes to sulk and thus, by seeing her reflection in these moments, they young lady is confronted by the deformity her behaviour inflicts upon her appearance, and this is enough to get her to change her ways.
The mirror is fable:
“It is a mirror, where we spy At large our own deformity And learn of course those faults to mend Which but to mention would offend.”
Wilkie argues that calling someone on their faults directly doesn’t work: “To bid your friend his errors mend, is almost certain to offend.” They will resist. (Call out culture on social media tends to confirm that observation.) Fable provides an indirect means to make the point instead. But will the subject recognize themselves in the fable?
It can’t offer a direct reflection, nor even a corresponding one. The characters in fables are not typically human, but animals or inanimate objects, and if they are human, they are persons as remote as kings and beggars. How then will this recognition take place?
This reminds me of the problem of satire, and many of these English fables (collected by Cooper) hail from the age of satire. Satire hopes to shame the intended target by means of exaggeration, caricature, reductio ad absurdum. It often fails because the target rarely sees themselves as such. If a bully sees themselves as a victim, they will identify with the victim not the oppressor. If they believe their behaviour justified, it will be someone else who needs reproof, not them, someone less reasonable.
Less a mirror than an unwashed window.
Sure, fables may be inspired by things that happen in the real world, but this response is one of generalization and exemplification. A fable removes the insight from the real life instance and distills it into a tangible narrative form, to which we can assentβthis is the way of the world, this is foolish, this is wrongβor dissent, by offering a counter-example.
This is the role it can be seen to play in the Panchatantra. In the framing story, each chapter sees the prince inviting a wise man to illustrate a value or insight. The wise man does this by telling a story and within those stories characters tell other stories, using them as arguments and counter-arguments to advance, change or defend a course of action.
The difference between condemnation and discussion, between morality and ethics.
Fruit falls from trees when ripe, if we donβt pick it, or if birds and insects and rodents donβt get to it first. Thinking about the Garden of Eden, I wondered what if the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil also fell? What if Eve found it on the ground and understood this as permission to eat? What if this were the temptation?
The idea of things going to waste, especially something as precious as knowledge, is intolerable. If this were the choice confronting Eve, I would not blame her for breaking the taboo. In fact, I would applaud.
Prompted by this slightly whimsical supposition, I wrote a new version of the pivotal scene Read it here before moving on to the commentary:
Paintings of the Garden of Eden tend to depict it as an orchard, or a landscape of woods and meadows, but always trees bearing fruit. The text emphasises the trees. “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,” God declared. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
[Reader, they did not die.]
Combine the trees and the fruit with the nakedness of Adam and Eve and you have a childlike portrait of innocence. An image which the eating of the forbidden fruit destroys, primarily by making them ashamed of their nakedness. (Not the kind of insight I would have hoped to gain from the Tree of Knowledge.)
LABOUR OR LEISURE IN PARADISE?
A naked couple eating from abundant fruit trees denotes a life of easy gratification, an existence delivered from want and work, an eternal summer. This may be the popular understanding of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But we forget that in the previous chapter man is created, it seems, because something was missing from the agrarian landscape God had fashioned: “and there was not a man to till the ground.”
Adam was created to take that role in the picture and God invited (instructed) him to cultivate and keep the land. I suppose we are meant to assume he planted, harvested and ate his crops, or used them as feed for the beasts of the field, which he ate or didnβt eat, we donβt know. None of that is stated.
But we do know he was doing all this naked and that seems odd, and somewhat hazardous. Iβm tempted to explain the disjunction as a result of story revisions and development over a many centuries from its (likely) Sumerian origins. Either that, or as an expression of scorn for the nudity of early tribes.
THE TREE OF LIFE?
The real puzzle of the narrative comes later when they are expelled from Eden “lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” The Tree of Life? Excuse me. Why wasnβt it mentioned before? Will they not already have eaten from it as it wasnβt subject to any prohibition? Is God just gaslighting them here, piling on the agony by exaggerating what they have lost? Or were they really going to live for ever?
The text does not seem to envisage pregnancy and children until after the expulsion from Eden so that suggests to me that Adam and Eve would have ploughed on for ever and that they must have been eating regularly if inadvertently from the Tree of Life.
“The Fables, then, must have grown up through many centuries in the country of their origin before setting out on their travels.”
Continuing with my journey through Cooperβs ‘Argosy of Fables‘, I discover that some of the Persian tales are in fact Indian in origin and that I have encountered them before. I have passed them on the road, heading in the opposite direction. I confess I didn’t recognize them immediately. Just a vague sense of deja lu, an inkling, as if time had folded over and formed a loop.
Cooper’s source was a Persian collection titled ‘Anvar-i Suhaili,’ which became (in English) ‘The Lights of Canopus.’ This collection in turn derived from a book called ‘Kalilah and Dimnah,’ which was the arabic version of the Panchatantra, aka ‘The Fables of Bidpai.’ (You can read about it here.)
THE CAMEL DRIVER AND THE SNAKE
The tale that prompted this bit of research was ‘The Camel Driver and the Snake’.
A camel driver rescues a snake from a bushfire, but the snake shows no gratitude. It declares it will kill both man and mount for several reasons, first, because it is in its nature, and second, because evil is the recompense mankind make for good. It proves the latter point through the testimony of an old buffalo abandoned by its masters and a tree abused by the passers-by it has sheltered. Then a fox approaches and offers its thoughts. It first wants to know how the snake managed to curl up inside the bag used in its rescue. The snake demonstrates and the fox invites the man to do what he should have done in the first place: beat the trapped snake to death.
A brutal, realist morality tale. Immutable nature, and the folly of trusting those who you know to be evil and hoping they might change. But it occurred to me that the claim the snake is evil by nature is a mistake, a mistake both parties have made.
AM I EVIL?
Humankind will rightly be wary of these deadly creatures. Stories of unfortunate deaths will have been passed down since the beginning of language. In our imaginations, snakes have been cast as malign, hostile, a threat. But the fatal attacks are mitigated by self-defence, prompted by their fear of us. We are not their usual prey; there need not be evil intentions.
The snake in the story seems to have adopted the role given it by man. It has coiled its identity around hostility. It sees itself as an incarnation of evil. A killer. What if we were to confront this identification? What if we could dissolve it with calm, insightful kindness? What if that could be the message?
I put to one side the snakeβs argument about manβs ingratitude. The argument is a good one and the story proves as much. Its brutal conclusion represents less a prudent attitude to ‘evil’ than an obliterative reaction to an truthful accusation.
CONSIDER THE DOGS
