Fables are simple narratives, often rendered in simple language, and as such easily dismissed as being ‘for children.’ Unfairly so. The Victorians may have put them to use in the nursery, but they were never intended for the younger reader. These sometimes harsh lessons on pride and vanity, on the exercise of power, tactics and […]

The fable of ‘The Two Dogs’ has a simple premise: a man has two dogs, one he takes hunting, while the other remains at home on guard duty; he feeds them equal portions. This seems fair enough, but the hunting dog is not satisfied. It feels it deserves a greater share, especially when it comes […]

‘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 […]

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 […]

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 […]