Aesop's Fables: The Horse and the Donkey and other stories
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Authors
Aesop
Issue Date
1997
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
This is an 8½ x 11 presentation of seven fables. The Horse and the Donkey does not involve the loading onto the horse's back of either the dead donkey or his skin. Only his burdens are transferred. GA has for a moral: Work while you work and play while you play. This advice is good, but does that moral come out of this story? The Horse and the Wolf uses the health ploy of the wolf not as an excuse for doctoring him but rather as a distracting way to chat while positioning himself for attack. Having the wolf start the ploy then works nicely when the horse answers that he is unwell because of an aching foot. The Wise Goats is confusing in its first lines: There was great love lost between them. So, they never quarrelled with each other. In fact, the story does the opposite of the traditional story. One goat lies down so that the other can leap across it over the tree-trunk that spans a stream. The Shrewd Farmer is new to me and somewhat confused. A farmer working the land of a rich landlord finds a sack of money. He hides it elsewhere and arranges to find it while out with his wife. (Clever thinking, I would say!) Despite his attempts to keep her quiet, she spreads the news. The landlord has them in and the wife tells him everything frankly. (But does she know that her husband found it on the landlord's property?) The kind landlord forgives all and lets them keep the money. The Monkey King is told in standard fashion but has an unusual moral: The innocent are easily duped by the cunning. The tale usually sides with the fox against the silly monkey. The Tail of the Bear involves a surprisingly anomaly. A fisherman is crossing a jungle, and the next thing we know a bear is having his tail frozen while he ice-fishes! Which jungles have frozen lakes?
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Publisher
Dreamland Publications