Misadventures in the Land of Fables #37
You think you’ve seen them all and then, wait, another old collection of fables turns up. Just before New Year, I discovered ‘An Argosy of Fables‘ by Frederic Taber Cooper. An illustration from the volume popped up in my recommendations on the image sharing service Pinterest. A vivid composition of three monkeys on the branch of a tree, playing with a bell, a red sun behind them.
Further investigation revealed that the volume contained hundreds of fables, “a representative selection from the fable literature of every age and land” and, being published in 1921, was available to read or download on-line, via wikisource and archive.com.
Imagine my delight. The (mis-)adventurer crests the mountain ridge. Below him, the foothills yield, mist-covered, to fertile plains.
THE TOAD AND THE FROG
‘The Toad and the Frog’ is a fable attributed to a French-educated, English theologian Odo of Cheriton (1180/90-1246). It makes a seemingly straightforward point about reciprocity. I struck me as odd, if you’ll forgive the pun, because the action did not support the message.
It goes like this:
The Toad which lives on land once asked the Frog, which lives in the pond, to give her some water to drink. “Surely,” said the Frog, and she gave her all the water she wanted. Later the Frog, being hungry, asked the Toad to give her something to eat. The Toad answered: “No, indeed, I won’t. I am so afraid that there won’t be enough food for myself that half the time I don’t eat sufficient for my own good.”
Generosity is wasted on a selfish nature.
Now I understand how people may use a claim of scarcity, or their own economic difficulties, to excuse their miserly natures. This seems to be the characteristic Odo is criticizing, but the schema is too simple, indeed, flawed.
There is an asymmetry between the resource of water and that of food, particularly for toads and frogs. Food has to be sought, hunted, caught. Water is abundant and for the frog forms the environment in which it lives. It expends no effort acquiring or developing this resource. What generosity is it to share this passive resource?
Indeed, if this scenario is an analogy for anything, it is one of privilege. Of inherited wealth. Or native entitlement. The frog may have been born in the pond. It may also have migrated there, but either way lays claim to a natural resource which ought to be available to all. The commons, if you like. This then was the starting point for my version of that same encounter.
Very quickly it transpired that the moral roles would be reversed.
You can read my version here: ‘The Toad and the Frog‘
And this is my Pinterest board: