Misadventures in the Land of Fables, #8

‘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.

In my version, I seek to set the record straight.