Misadventures in the Land of Fables #38
I talked last week of my discovery of a whole new landscape of fables in Frederic Taber Cooper’s ‘An Argosy of Fables.’ Well, it seems this landscape was fraught with danger, a jungle of deep shadows and grave consequences. I was familiar with Aesop’s work, and the later latin upstarts often attributed to the ancient greek author, but the ones collected under the heading ‘Hindoo Fables’ [sic] are new to me, and they are brutal.
There are some blunt warnings: the monkey who is crushed to death while playing on a temple construction site, a catastrophic mishap for a hunter and the greedy jackal who thinks it has stumbled upon a feast.; these I prefer to imagine as animated cartoons, in that way the gravity of the injuries are not felt but substituted instead as comic elements of the story. (Cartoons are violent.)
‘The Old Jackal and the Elephant’
‘The Old Jackal and the Elephant’ represents an early example of the perennial theme of a protagonist undone by vanity. A pack of jackals conspire against large elephant. One of their number approaches and explains the animals have decided things would go better if they had a king who brought order to their affairs. It flatters the elephant with an offer to take up the crown and the elephant, aware of its stature and majesty, accepts. But the jackal leads the elephant into a deep swamp. Its weight pulls it down and when it asks the jackal for help, it receives this uncharitable reply:
“Perhaps,” replied the Jackal with an impudent laugh, “your Majesty will condescend to take hold of the tip of my tail with your trunk, and let me pull you out!”
Then White-Front knew that he had been deceived. He sank deeper and deeper in the slime, and made many a meal for the Jackals.*
The brutality of the outcome can be measured by your sympathy for the victim and the victim here is a placid elephant whose only crime is to consider itself worthy of being crowned king.
‘The Vulture, The Cat and the Birds’
Likewise, the old vulture in ‘The Vulture, The Cat and the Birds’ appears at first as a humble creature deserving of respect, but a little flattery sees it cruelly betrayed. For a fable, this is a heartbreaking outcome.
An old vulture lived in the hollow of an ancient fig tree. It had lost both eyes and talons and it survived only by the good grace of the birds who lived in the branches above. One day, while the birds were away, a cat came prowling. Scared out of their wits, the chicks squeeled in alarm and the vulture, using its size and bearing, challenged the intruder. “Who dares frighten my little friends!” he cried. “Be gone.” The cat, however, preferred cunning to confrontation. “They have nothing to fear,” it said. “I am a humble seeker of truth and enlightenment, and have given up the eating of flesh to pursue a life of abstinence.” It claimed to have come to learn from the vulture whose reputation for wisdom and holiness had spread across the land. Flattered, the vulture accepted the cat as its novice—for wasn’t it true, he asked himself, that I am old and wise and, yes, holy, if you like. “We shall fast together,” he announced. But the cat had no intention of going unfed and when next the nests were unattended, it climbed the tree and helped itself, and fled before it could be detected. When the birds discovered their loss, they searched for their loved ones and found their bones at the foot of the tree, behind the vulture’s hollow. “Is this how you betray our generosity?” they howled, and then, with heavy hearts, they executed the innocent creature.
See what I mean? Brutal. Heartbreaking.