A jackdaw dresses itself in feathers borrowed from other birds. Two of Aesop’s fables are built around this action. They draw broadly the same moral. A condemnation of envy and pretension.
But I don’t feel the actions of Jackdaw are entirely deserving of censure. Or in other words, is he really so bad?
THE VAIN JACKDAW
The Vain Jackdaw is a simple case of envy. Struck by the peacock’s beauty, Jackdaw seeks to emulate it by inserting peacock feathers into its own plumage. It’s a harmless, silly endeavour and the daft bird is mocked for it. I can’t take issue with that, except to note the misleading title of the fable. The Jackdaw is envious rather than vain and if any character could be said to display vanity in this tale it is the peacock.
THE BORROWED FEATHERS
In the Borrowed Feathers, Jackdaw turns up at a beauty contest to decide who becomes the king of the birds. He wins by dressing himself in the discarded feathers of the other birds, but his victory is short-lived. The other birds expose him as a fraud and he is humiliated.
Harsh. And, again, it is the other birds who might more credibly be accused of vanity. (I mean, is there an image of vanity more blatant that the tail of strutting peacock?) Jackdaw’s offence is pretension claiming to be something he is not, something better. Or is it the offence of presumption, not knowing his place?
Jackdaw’s plain appearance would never make him one of the contender’s at a beauty contest, yet he dares to compete for the prize. And to do so, to give himself a chance, he dresses in a motley fashioned from the feathers of his rivals. He cheats. And gets caught.
But it seems to me the skill and imagination he demonstrates make him worthy of applause as much as punishment and Zeus, who called the contest and acts as judge, would be someone who’d appreciate that.
My adventures in the land of fables have led me into the Himalyas, to Kasmir, and to the Panchatantra, a text first compiled in 350-400 CE by Vishnusharma, an octogenarian Brahmin.
I did not literally venture into the mountains to retrieve this ancient literature, of course. I did no more than scale the digital foothills of the internet, where I gathered some background information and start to read two translations of the work. It was then my unarduous journey ground to a halt as I struggled to get through them.
Too Old, Too Rarified
The first and longest part of the Panchatantra describes the intrigues of the jackal Damanaka as he seeks to secure his position in the court of a lion. It’s all talk, as you migh expect: highly-mannered discourses between courtier and king follow on from debates between the jackal and his principled friend Karataka, to whom he reveals his stratagems.
Damanaka is a villain, a liar, who plays one side against another with no concern for anyone’s well-being but his own. His machinations are presented as a caution to princes and rulers who depend on advice, but lessons for us common folk are limited.
The fables appear as part of the dialogue, employed by the characters to illustrate their arguments, as fictional examples cited to warn of adverse outcomes. This is where most of the action is, and where the thrill of complex narration begins, as the stories become nested within each other, but it is the framing story that dominates and it moves too slowly for my taste.
Too Young, Too Simple
So I abandoned the trip and returned home, so to speak. Or rather I leapt forward fifteen hundred years to early last century, when Maude Barrows Dutton published a collection of fables drawn from the same source (probably after Jean de la Fontaine’s collection, who also credited to an Indian sage, ‘Bilpai,’ as author of the original). Now the fables had been chiselled from the ancient text and reformed in the domestic language of the hearth or the bedside, the complexity so much debris on the floor.
But then I discovered the text’s cross-cultural migrations.
The Migrant Text
The Panchatantra had travelled west crossing borders under assumed names in new languages, from Pahlavi to Arabic, Greek, and Spanish, where it became ‘Calila and Dimna’ (the new names for the jackals Damanaka and Karataka). Along the way, it had lost the obscure references and some of the formality, but gained a leaner, more supple form and finally I was able to appreciate it.
I made it through all five discourses (tantras): from the surprisingly upbeat and constructive second ‘book’ in which four creatures become friends and work together to keep each other from harm, which features some robust debate on trust and enmity and mutual interest, to the shocking conclusion of the war between the owls and the crows, which sometimes contradicts the wisdom of the former.
Aesop’s ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ cannot be improved. One of the rare fables to feature a single protagonist, it is concise, complete, and memorable, etched into our culture with the phrase ‘sour grapes.’
Fable as dialogue
Typically, the substance of a fable is a dialogue—a negotiation, a trick, a contest, sometimes little more than a complaint or comment; these latter tend to be the least satisfying, as the moral of the fable is delivered without any semblance of proof or demonstration. Take ‘The Oxen and the Axle-tree.’ The oxen responds to the creaking of the axle as if it were moaning about its labour, delivering a moralistic rebuke on the theme of stoicism, which effectively stands as the meaning of the fable. Similarly, in ‘The Fox and the Grapes,’ there is no one to challenge the fox, but we are not invited to agree with its assertions either.
The Fox and the Grapes
If you aren’t familiar with the fable you can find it here. To summarise, a fox spots some grapes, tries and fails to get them and, upon giving up, dismisses them as not worthwhile—they must be ‘sour’ or ‘unripe.’
We know what the fox is up to, we can see what she’s is doing, and we respond critically rather than approvingly. The moral supplied by most authors tends to support that reading: ’it is easy to despise what you cannot get’ (Jacobs) or ‘what cannot be had, you speak of badly’ (Bensarade, the French poet who composed the lines to accompany the sculptures at the Palace of Versailles).
Roger L’Estrange offers a different angle and combines this fable with another on the same theme (’A Wolf and a Lion’). “Tis Matter of Skill and Address, when a Man cannot honestly compass what he would be at, to appear easy and indifferent upon all Repulses and Disappointments.” He stresses the pragmatic, strategic aspect of the behaviour. In other words, a way of dealing with failure, moving on, ‘adaptive preference formation’ [Jon Elster].
The Fox The Mouse and The Grapes
In my fable ‘The Fox The Mouse and The Grapes’ I have not attempted to rewrite Aesop. I was thinking about the theme of getting told to lower your expectations, of receiving advice which does not honour your request, which changes its goal. And I was trying to find an action which could illustrate it. The fox’s problem seemed to suit my purpose, but its adaptive solution was the opposite of what I wanted. I quickly realised I had to introduce another character, the adviser—a mouse—and the action developed from there.*
*while researching this article, I discovered another version of the fable (Perry index 15) which introduces a mouse as second character: the mouse doesn’t alter the meaning, or even extend the action, but functions as prompt the fox’s dismissive remark, funny though
Funny, surreal, and brutal, ‘The Frogs Who Desired a King‘ is one of the strongest and historically most popular of Aesop fables. At its core, there is a cautionary ‘careful what you wish for’ message, but it is the political applications that account for its longevity.
Frogs decide they want a king and ask Zeus to provide one. Zeus sends them a tree stump or log. The stump of course does nothing and the frogs lose respect for it. They ask Zeus to send them another king and this time Zeus sets a water snake, or a heron, or a crane, upon them. The frogs are destroyed by their new king.
Political Analogy
The political upheavals of the past six centuries have prompted comment by way of this fable. The frogs tire of liberty and want a new regime. They relinquish their freedom and are ‘rewarded’ with a tyrant. Alongside this, the benign inaction of the ‘Stump King’ can be contrasted with the active predation of the Crane, representing two modes of governance.
This was not a fable I considered as a candidate for revision because the existing versions were already sufficiently provocative: the brutal ending was dark and glorious satire, the tree-stump/log as king was a perplexing, surrealist move—but the more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued. The ‘stump king’ was the loose end on which my imagination began to pick.
The Puzzle of the ‘Stump King’
Dumping a lump of tree into the pond was a dismissive act on Zeus’ part. A joke. But was he giving the frogs a hint? Was the stump a placeholder, a king who was not a king, which could allow them to avoid being told what to do and to continue as before? Or was it merely an expression of impatience by the self-centred god? Either way, it seemed to me the frogs’ attitude to the tree stump and the discussion it prompts regarding kingship was the crucial scene.
Once the initial fear and apprehension dissipates, the frogs make the stump the focal point of their lives, but its passivity soon leads to indifference and disrespect and even contempt. The image stuck in my mind, of the frogs climbing on top of their king, using it as diving platform, while some frogs took offence and perhaps grew angry that their king tolerated it and did not punish them.
The Discontent
The conflict between the frogs at this point suggested a reason for the discontent that set the events in motion. Previous versions had been vague or glib on the matter. Various reasons are glossed: Lafontaine describes them as “silly and frightened” and tired of democracy; Townsend too says they’ve grown weary of freedom; L’Estrange, well, it’s almost as if they feel deprived of a monarch (!), while Perry refers to “dissolute habits,” drawing I think on Phaedrus original latin.
For me, the hedonistic energy of the frogs climbing onto the back of their ‘king’ and diving into the water, as if it were a play pool, suggested not so much ‘dissolute habits’ but a clash between innocent chaos and order, perhaps even a generational conflict—the ‘tut-tutting’ about disrespect pointed in that direction. This was my point of entry. I recalled the frogs I’d seen in the local canal and in shallow woodland ponds, piled on top of each other, a jumble of limbs and eyes, slipping between algae and spawn. An image of simple, yet disorderly innocence.
The Plunge
I took the plunge, but soon after discovered the key scene had shifted from the tree-stump to these opening images. (Things often change once you start to write.) It was only the discontented frogs who wanted a king. Their desire for order was also a denial of a way of life and carried with it the threat of violence. It was a desire for destruction.
Foxes, lions, sheep, frogs, jackdaws, snakes, monkeys talking to each other or to themselves. This has been the substance of a fable from the beginning, from the oral traditions of the Indian Subcontinent to the translators of Aesop and beyond.
Why? Because the distance between us (as storyteller and listener) and them allows for a narrative unburdened by our ambivalence toward our fellow men and women. In short, animals make better symbols.
But sometimes people can feature as protagonists. Notably in ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf‘ (which I discuss here, with more than pinch of ambivalence) and also in the cautionary tales of Heinrich Hoffman, which are, arguably, fables or at least fabular.
The Elements
Fables also give voice to inanimate objects too. Aesop’s ‘The North Wind and the Sun‘, for example, sees the two elements contest each other’s abilities in a challenge to rid a man of his raincoat, presenting us with the most precise demonstration of the art of persuasion you could imagine.
Apart from talking, and having feelings, the behaviour of the wind and sun conforms to their nature as we understand it. It seems you can’t really depart from that template when using inanimate objects. You must take them as they come.
The Water Cycle
I observe this rule in my original fable about raindrops, ‘The Drops of Water‘. One of the few lessons I recall from my primary school days concerns the hydrologic cycle. It was known only as the ‘Water Cycle’ and really just explained where cloud and rain came from and where it ends up. Inspired by this elementary knowledge, I put the raindrops in the cycle and let them fall.
If raindrops could speak, I asked myself, what might they say? How might they see their destiny? What would their attitude be toward it? Would they realise how passive they are? That they take part in cycle far greater than themselves. It seemed to me that, unlike the great forces of the elements (the wind and sun), a tiny raindrop could only have a partial grasp of their nature.
This, I believe, corresponds to our own limitations, our inability to comprehend the bigger picture, and ultimately to control how things turn out, or rather to accept that we do not control it, ultimately. This is the insight that informs every beat of the narrative.
It is fanciful. Raindrops do not talk or have feelings and nor do they remain as individuals for longer than their brief journey to earth. But these raindrops aren’t really raindrops, are they?
Fables are simple narratives, often rendered in simple language, and as such easily dismissed as being ‘for children.’ Unfairly so. The Victorians may have put them to use in the nursery, but they were never intended for the younger reader.
These sometimes harsh lessons on pride and vanity, on the exercise of power, tactics and strategy, informed statecraft and political debate in the Ancient World. Socrates transposed them into verse while awaiting judgement and execution.
As an ethical system, Aesop’s fables are incoherent and contradictory, best treated as elements of folk wisdom, appealed to case by case. Each fable is an example, and thus a point of reference, of comparison or contradiction.
For me, they are a starting point. A proposition that prompts a reply. Or even another idea, another discussion.
‘The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf’
Consider Aesop’s ‘The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf’ (aka ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’). A simple tale of a naughty boy who gets his comeuppance. In later versions, that comeuppance is extreme: the boy loses his life; in earlier versions—the original Greek?—he loses only his sheep. In this, the villagers suffer almost as much as the boy. It is the community that sustains the economic damage. It needn’t have happened.
I have long felt the villager’s were remiss in not responding to the boy’s last cry for help. They chose to ignore him when the better course of action would have been to respond and then sack the boy for his third offence. They didn’t and are therefore partly responsible for. There is a lesson there. See my version: ‘The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf’
The moral of Aesop’s original has remained consistent across translations: there is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth [Townsend]. It’s curious then that the fable came to be used as a denunciation not of dishonesty, but alarmism.
‘To Cry Wolf’
I suppose the phrase was popularised by newspaper journalists and politicians censuring those making exaggerated claims of dire consequences, disaster, defeat. You risk losing your credibility, they warned.
But accusations of crying wolf can be disingenuous, a tactic to play down reasonable claims, to delay or derail calls for action that certain parties might find restrictive. It really depends on how plausible these claims are and whether it is possible to mitigate the consequences after they have transpired. (See climate change and fascism for examples of calamities which are best tackled in advance.)
This tension between sounding the alarm and claims of alarmism informs a version of ‘The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf’ that I uncovered in my research. It’s a kind of sequel; a variation or reverberation of the original, and its moral might be summarised thus: an alarm system you decline to use is also no alarm system at all.
The fable of ‘The Two Dogs’ has a simple premise: a man has two dogs, one he takes hunting, while the other remains at home on guard duty; he feeds them equal portions. This seems fair enough, but the hunting dog is not satisfied. It feels it deserves a greater share, especially when it comes to divvying up the meat from the hunt: it did the work, it argues, it should get the benefit.
A Political Fable?
So, this is a political fable examining the issues of labour and remuneration?
No. Apparently not, neither for Aesop, nor his translators. Another element is introduced into the scenario: training. The man trained the hunting dog for its task, but left the guard dog unskilled. Thus the fable sides with the hunting dog’s complaint and blames the man for the alleged inequality.
“This fable shows that the same is true of children: it is not their fault if they don’t know how to do anything, since this is how their parents have raised them.” [aesopica]
This seems … tangential.
The obvious analogy here is not pedagogy, but economics, the division of labour.
Who Gets What and Why?
There are two roles to be performed: the property must be guarded and the hunter must be assisted. Dogs are trained and indeed bred for these roles. There is good reason for them to receive equal remuneration, and that is the arrangement we find, as decided by the master, the executive.
The hunting dog wants more. You can understand its point of view. It will have been instrumental in obtaining the meat from the hunt; it likely had direct contact with it. It worked for it, while the guard dog did not. It deserves more.
However, as one of the early versions suggests, the role of hunting dog is more coveted than that of guard. The guard dog did not choose to stay at home. It would have preferred to stretch its legs by its master’s side. It would have relished the activity and the exercise. Despite its vital role, the guard dog must feel under-appreciated, even neglected. An equal portion at dinner makes up for it.
The Amplification of Privilege
Seems to me there may be more than a little self-regard in the hunting dog’s complaint, more than just the demand of a keen appetite. It knows it is privileged. It has been given more skills than its rival, it has been trained and improved. It therefore believes that superiority ought be reflected come dinnertime. And prompted by its sense of entitlement, the hunting dog takes action.
This is how I develop the action in my version of ‘The Two Dogs’.
Where the original fable sees the hunting dog’s complaint as a conclusion, a proof of an unstable, unsatisfactory situation, I use it as an inciting incident, a provocation, leading to a new resolution, one which may or may not be satisfactory. [clue, it isn’t]
This mature oak tree is not unique; its neighbours—beyond, to the side, and behind—are just as splendid, a handsome family, but from the angle I approached, and with its subtle elevation, rooted on a grassy bank, this one was the most photogenic. (I was running I didn’t stop to check all perspectives.) The thick, grey splayed trunk reminded me of an elephant’s foot. I always get the urge to wrap my arms around trees of this stature, not so much to hug them as to measure the width, to feel how far it exceeds my grasp. A tactical sense of awe.
‘The Nightingale and the Bat‘ (aka ‘The Bat and the Songbird’) is another one of those fables that struck me as mean-spirited. Here is the version translated by Laura Gibbs:
A songbird was hanging in a cage in a window. A bat flew up and asked the songbird why she sang at night but was silent during the day. The songbird said that she had her reasons: it was while she had been singing once during the day that she had been captured. This had taught her a lesson, and she had vowed that she would sing only at night. The bat remarked, ‘But there is no need for that now, when it won’t do you any good: you should have been on your guard before you were captured!’ Aesop’s Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. (Oxford University Press)
You can’t argue with the moral. It is useless to repent after disaster has struck. Precautions should be taken before not afterwards. It’s sensible and pragmatic advice. But there’s a hint of victim-blaming in the scenario.
Who is to blame when a songbird is hunted and captured? The hunter or the songbird? These are rhetorical questions because, although the songbird might have taken precautions, curbed her natural behaviour, it can only be the hunter who is deserving of censure. (Less so if the predator had been an animal.)
The nightingale’s reasoning is flawed, yes, but this points to emotional disturbance not stupidity. It seems more likely that she would cease to sing during the day because she still feels the pain of her capture. She is traumatised. That she sings at all is remarkable, perhaps it is the only thing that keeps her spirit alive.
The bat misses the point. His reply is devoid of empathy. He chides the nightingale for having been captured. These are unwelcome comments, uninvited. And redundant, unless carrying an implicit demand to resume singing during the day, in which case they are presumptuous.
I was today years-old when I discovered the jackdaw was protagonist of so many fables. (Well, today and a few weeks, but who’s counting?) It came to my attention after I started work on a version of ‘The Jackdaw and the Fox’ and my research turned up five or six other stories I’d previously not noticed. These I will consider below, but first a few words by way of introduction to the bird.
The Jackdaw is a small corvid distinguished by its grey nape and its pale grey eyes. An intelligent bird, inquisitive, omnivorous and opportunist, but social. It’s noisy, discordant call – ‘the swans will sing when the jackdaws are silent’ said the Greeks – may be the reason it gets such harsh treatment in the world of fable. In the fables I have discovered (see below), it winds up either dead, captive, ostracized, or humiliated.
A Wanting Creature
Jackdaw is what I would call a ‘wanting creature,’ ruled by appetite and envy, discontented, dissatisfied, but determined to improve its lot. A comic character, because these are typical motives in comedy and Jackdaw rarely harms anyone (but itself) by its efforts. And as when it tries to change its identity or improve its position in society, it falls victim to satire, the ugly side of conservatism which tells us to know our place/get back in our box.
the Fables
‘A Daw with a String At’s Foot’ – a Jackdaw kept as a child’s pet escapes, but dies when the string gets caught on the branch of a tree. The moral varies. L’Estrange sees it as an example of how it is better to be content to what you have, in this case easy servitude among men, while Gibbs’s translation suggests the story is appropriate for those who find greater difficulties after extricating themselves from moderate ones.
‘The Jackdaw and the Pigeons’ – envying the easy, well-fed life of pigeons, the Jackdaw decides to disguise itself as one of them, but its deception is exposed when it opens its mouth to express its satisfaction, returning to its own kind it finds itself rejected. This is another warning to be content with what you have, leave it behind and it may not be there for you when you return.
‘The Jackdaw in Borrowed Feathers’ – there are a number of version of this fable and it is the origin of phrase, to go about in borrowed feathers. In the nicest version, Jackdaw confesses it considers itself ugly and the eagle advises improving itself by wearing borrowed feathers. It works too well and the Jackdaw becomes boastful, provoking the other birds to pluck his borrowed feathers and leave him naked and humilated.
‘The Jackdaw and the Eagle’ – Jackdaw sees an eagle carrying off a lamb, when it tries to do the same its claws get caught in the wool. It is either killed by the shepherd or, as in L’Estrange and Townsend, captured and clipped and made into the child’s plaything we see in the first story. Another on the ‘know thy place’, but here there is obvious wisdom in understanding one’s limitations.
‘The Jackdaw and the Ravens’ – a Jackdaw happens to be bigger than its peers and decides to go and join the ravens, but the ravens do not accept him and when he returns to his peers they reject him too.
An Unresolved Action
The most intriguing of all these fables is ‘The Jackdaw and the Fox,’ also known as ‘The Jackdaw and the Figs’ [Gibbs, Aesop’s Fables, OUP]
A hungry jackdaw alighted on a fig tree. He discovered that the figs were still not ripe, so he decided to wait until they were ready. A fox saw the jackdaw loitering there and asked him what he was waiting for. The fox then offered the jackdaw this piece of advice: ‘It is a big mistake to entertain such expectations: hope will lead you on at first but then leave you empty-handed.’
Curiously, the fable ends before the action is resolved. The fox offers its advice but the evidence is literally inconclusive: the figs might ripen and the Jackdaw may yet enjoy them. My guess is that the ‘wisdom’ here is feed when you can. Do not forego opportunities in the hope of enjoying an especially tasty morsel in the future. A bird in the hand. Fair enough, but I want to see how this scenario plays out. Carlo Gebler felt the same way and in his amusing, sardonic version the Jackdaw wastes away and dies.
I have to admit I identify with Jackdaw in this scenario. Who wouldn’t fancy a sticky sweet fig picked straight from the tree? When I pass some fruit growing wild, I make a plan to return. But Jackdaw’s error is to remain there and wait. Why does it make this error? Previous fabulists, including Gebler, seem to attribute it to hunger. They describe the Jackdaw as half-famished. But this doesn’t work for me. If it were half-famished, its appetite would not be so selective.
the Pleasure Motive
This must surely be a matter of pleasure-seeking, of reason overcome by desire, overwhelming desire.
Either way, what is surprising is the lack of action in the narrative. The Jackdaw sees something, wants it, and sits and waits for it to be ready. It exhibits patience, which on most occasions is a virtue. You’d think this approach would deserve reward, but that would not make much of a story. There would be no conflict or contradiction. There is no drama, no hook, in a story where postive action leads directly to a positve outcome.
But questions remain: why does Jackdaw not realise the figs will take too long to ripen? why does it not give up the vigil when hunger and thirst become too much? why does it refuse to risk losing the figs?
I have an answer.
the Fear of Missing Out
It’s odd for the character of the fox to be introduced and used as narrator or observer rather than as an actor in the drama. This seems a missed opportunity. Like the Jackdaw, the fox is a covetous creature, as well as cunning, and mischievous. The Jackdaw would see it as a rival, and its advice against waiting will be understood as a trick, evidence the Fox also intends to consume the figs. It is this threat which keeps the Jackdaw from leaving to eat or drink.
The moral does not change, but the action develops as a rivalry between Fox and Jackdaw.
My adventures in the land of fables have led me into the Himalyas, to Kasmir, and to the 
I observe this rule in my original fable about raindrops, ‘
Fables are simple narratives, often rendered in simple language, and as such easily dismissed as being ‘for children.’ Unfairly so. The Victorians may have put them to use in the nursery, but they were never intended for the younger reader.
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