Misadventures in the Land of Fables #35
The latest fable is an original, and also pleasingly short. Nor was it inspired by a picture, or even by real life, although I have often disturbed hares hunkered down in the middle of woods as the hunting dog does in the tale.
If you’d like to read the fable before proceed with these comments, which will also be brief, you can find it here: ‘The Hare and the Hunting Dog‘
It was a simple idea, but it changed in the writing. A hare escapes a dog by running across the surface of a pond. It doesn’t realise the impossibility of what it had done until it looks back at where it came from. Having performed a miracle, it becomes inflated with a sense of its powers and attempts to repeat the feat, only to sink and almost drown.
But I’m tired of punishment narratives.
And then when I introduced rabbits as excited witnesses, they appreciation of the hare’s powers passed to them and gave him/her space to express the insight without needing to be half-drowned. It happened, or so it seems; it served its purpose. He’s safe, but he knew nothing about it.
“One miracle is enough for a lifetime.”
THE HARE AND THE HOUND
When I was considering the title—would it be ‘hound’ or ‘hunting dog’ or something else?—I discovered an Aesop original [Perry 331] which has a similar starting point and arrives at a conclusion that, although very different in focus, has a comparable tone.
This is the GF Townsend version:
A HOUND started a Hare from his lair, but after a long run, gave up the chase. A goat-herd seeing him stop, mocked him, saying ‘The little one is the best runner of the two.’ The Hound replied, ‘You do not see the difference between us: I was only running for a dinner, but he for his life.’
The hound makes a fair point, though I wonder if a hare wouldn’t outpace it even without this desperation. But it is desperation that is the kernel of both tales. Here it is the spur to the creature’s extra speed, while in mine, it is that thing which cannot be repeated at will. You cannot make yourself desperate, nor should you wish it, no matter what it brought out of you.
Circumstances will take care of it.
