Excursus: another farable

 Excursus: another farable of Jesop* 

Fables are whittled down to a point, e.g. Aesop’s “The Boy That Cried Wolf,” whose point is this : “There is no believing a liar even when he speaks the truth” [George Fyler Towsend’s translation]. Parables

Jesop

are unruly until, uncomfortable with how messy they are becoming, we whittle them down to the point we wish them to make, as Matthew does with “The Parable of the Sower and the Seed,” when he turns it into an allegory. Farables are made of sterner stuff; they cannot be made other than what they are, pointless.

     We know Aesop and esteem him. We know Jesus, and many revere him. Jesop we do not know,** probably with good reason. Why should we pay attention to one that seems to believe life has no point, only a shrug?

“the crow the size of a fox” 

In Tabula Rasa was a crow the size of a fox and a fox the size of a crow. Said one to another, “I am glad I am not you, for then I could not fly.”

  08.14.18 

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 * An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

 ** though he was bedtime reading for four British poet laureates, Laurence Eusden, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, and Alfred Austin.