Misadventures in the Land of Fables #69
A frog plays banjo by the light of the moon. I can’t find the exact image that inspired the latest fable, ‘The Frog and the Moon,’ but in my search I discovered the sub-genre of ‘frogs making music by moonlight’ and I hate it. Regardless of tasteful composition and colour palette, as seen above, the […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #68
“Ogni scarrafone è bell’ a mamma soja:” ~~~ This Neopolitan proverb, translated as ‘every cockroach is beautiful to its mother,’ sums up the fondness and natural bias a parent has for their children. Sometimes a proverb is all you need; narrative is redundant, little more than an amusing illustration of the point. There are […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #67
~~~ ‘The Dog, the Meat, and the Reflection,’ ‘The Dog and the Shadow,’ ‘The Dog in the River,’ ‘or ‘The Dog and the Piece of Flesh.’ Or number 133 in Perry’s index. A simple comic fable about a dog—a silly, greedy dog—who sees its reflection in a pond and tries to steal the meat from […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #66
‘The Fox and the Crow’ is one of the classics. La Fontaine places it second in his collection; it pops up early in both Jacobs and L’Estrange, and in the Penguin (Handford) edition too. The image of a fox sitting at the foot of a tree looking up at a crow is one of the […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #65
‘Bend not break’ is sound advice. Adaptability or flexibility trump rigidity as a tactics in the face of adversity. The menace is temporary. Bend under its force and you will survive and rebound. Set yourself against it and you will break. This is the message of Aesop’s fable, ‘The Oak Tree and the Reeds.’ For […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #64
You do not always get to where you intended to go. You discover the road you’re travelling does not lead where you thought it would. You watch uneasily as your path veers away and the twinkling lights of the settlement at the head of the valley disappear behind the brow of the hill. What then? […]