Misadventures in the Land of Fables #82

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Weasels. Not the first animal you’d cast in a fable. You’d think first of lions, foxes, rabbits, donkeys, dogs, snakes. I was going to say they turn up only twice in Aesop, but in fact there are six on the Perry list, usually in association with mice—their most salient characteristic is as mini-predator, enemy of rodents and small birds. But it was the peculiar little fable ‘The Weasel and the File’ that captured my interest.

More of that, another time, because once I started my research I got sidetracked by the more well-known, ‘Aphrodite and the Weasel’ or ‘The Cat-Maiden.’ This is one of those fables that feature an appeal to the Gods, something that rarely turns out well for the appellant.

A weasel falls in love with a handsome young man and the goddess Aphrodite transforms her into a young woman so that she might consummate her love in marriage. But Aphrodite decides to test the transformation. When she sets a mouse scurrying across the bridal chamber, the young woman cannot stop herself from pursuing it. Nature will out.

In folk tales, these transformation are typically in the opposite direction and often the result of curses, where the good and the beautiful is concealed by the disgusting form of an animal, or the form of a disgusting animal: The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast. The purpose of the action is to reveal the true nature and reward goodness. Pious and sentimental. The transformation in this fable, by contrast, is comic. The goddess plays a trick. The poor woman is humiliated. The transformation fails to transcend base animal nature.

I still don’t quite accept the premise of the weasel falling in love. Where does it live? How do they meet? I can’t envisage it. What does a fond weasel look like? I may not be the only one to have trouble, other versions changed the weasel to a cat. And the cat seems a more plausible choice, relatively-speaking, being a domestic animal that will already have contact if not relationship with humans as well as a known pursuer of mice. But still, a cat in love. Hmmm.

This may be why the Carolean fabulist Roger L’Estrange translated the Latin source as the story of a young man’s love for his cat, ‘A Cat and Venus.’ The transformation gives rise to a night of passion, cut short by Venus’ (Aphrodite) intervention, possibly the raunchiest fable ever written. His conclusion is less cynical than the original too, placing an affirmation of love alongside the inevitability of nature. “The extravagant Transports of Love, and the wonderful Force of Nature, are unaccountable; the one carries us out of our selves, and the other brings us back again.”

So I began to wonder if the young man might not choose to overlook his bride’s peculiarities. What did he expect? Someone who conformed completely to his wishes? Probably. But it’s never that easy. Deal with it. Or don’t.

You can read my version here: ‘The Young Man and the Cat’.