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 […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #7
I was today years-old when I discovered the jackdaw was protagonist of so many fables. (Well, today and a few weeks, but who’s counting?) It came to my attention after I started work on a version of ‘The Jackdaw and the Fox’ and my research turned up five or six other stories I’d previously not […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #6
The fable of ‘The Frog and the Mouse’ exists in a bewildering number of versions – so many, and so divergent, it’s hard to identify one as definitive. If you had to start somewhere, this simple account of murder at a river crossing would be the place: The Frog and the Mouse (translated by Laura […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables, #5
Our shadows are incomplete, imperfect imitations of ourselves. When the sun is high, they cower unformed at our feet, while later, they walk by our side, like children, devoted and playful, and small. But as the sun goes down, the shadows start to outgrow us; they stretch, as far as they dare, before turning back […]
Trees I have known
a downy birch with witches broom, nr Beeley, Derbyshire When I first saw this tree, I stopped in my tracks. (I was running at the time so that’s not as hyperbolic as it sounds.) It has the same impact on me even now. The balls of witches’ broom seem like decorations. I see swirls of […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables, #4
Many Aesopic fables are little more than a description of a situation or an action; to call them stories would be to stretch the definition. The situation does not develop, there is no turning point, sometimes there’s no conflict at all. A character makes an observation, a comment aimed at another and this all that […]