Fable by Aesop
Speaking of
The Snake and the Crab
in
Ancient Greece
was the equivalent of the modern idiom, '
Pot calling the kettle black
'. A fable attributed to
Aesop
was eventually created about the two creatures and later still yet another fable concerning a crab and its offspring was developed to make the same point.
The fables and their origin
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The first known mention of the snake and the crab is found in a drinking song dating from the late 6th or early 5th century BCE:
- The crab spoke thus,
- seizing the snake in its claws,
- 'One’s comrade should be straight
- and not think crooked thoughts.’
[1]
Since the movement of both creatures is far from direct, this is as much as to say that the pot should not call the kettle black.
A later fable, attributed to Aesop and numbered 196 in the
Perry Index
,
[2]
relates that the two were once friends. When the snake ignored the crab's advice to lead an honest life, it was killed by the crab. The snake then became rigid and the crab commented that if it had done so earlier it need not have died. The story only appeared in Greek sources until it was included in European collections of the fables during the
Renaissance
. In England it was recorded by
Roger L'Estrange
[3]
and
Samuel Croxall
.
[4]
These portray the crab as honest and plain dealing, drawing the moral that one should be straightforward in behaviour and beware of friendship with those who are not. The story had therefore travelled a long way from being an illustration of hypocritical behaviour.
The crab and her daughter
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Scholars believe that the fable of "The Two Crabs", alternatively known as "The Young Crab and its Mother" (
Perry Index
322),
[5]
also derives from the original Greek idiom.
[6]
In this version, a young crab is told to walk straight by its mother and asks for a demonstration of how that is done. The story, recorded by
Babrius
and
Aphthonius of Antioch
in Greek and by
Avianus
in Latin, was taken up by
William Caxton
and later made the subject of new Latin poems by the German Renaissance poets
Hieronymus Osius
(1564)
[7]
and Caspar Barth (1612).
[8]
It is given the moral that those who teach should first set a good example, which at least preserves the bite of the Greek original. In the following century,
La Fontaine's Fables
subtly subvert the story. He titles it
L'ecrevisse et sa fille
(The lobster and her daughter, XII.10)
[9]
but begins with a eulogy of political deviousness:
- The wise, sometimes, as lobsters do,
- To gain their ends back foremost go.
- It is the rower's art...
before telling a fable of a mere five lines out of a total of thirty. The mother instructs her daughter to be straightforward and is answered by an appeal to the force of example, of which the ironical La Fontaine approves.
Artistic use
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Illustrations in fable collections before the 19th century generally portrayed two crabs (or
cuttlefish
) together on a sandy shore.
Vincent van Gogh
's painting of
Two Crabs
is visually much the same, although the
National Gallery
speculates that it might "probably" be an imitation
[10]
of a
Japanese woodblock print
by
Hokusai
.
[11]
An alternative source of inspiration is the fable titled
"Moeder en dochter krab"
(Mother and daughter crab) in Dutch editions of Aesop's fables.
[12]
Certainly it was from Aesop that the artist
Edward Bawden
got the idea for his 1956 coloured
linocut
of "An old crab and a young crab".
[13]
There have also been a few musical treatments of the fable, including Mabel Wood Hill's setting for piano and voice in
Aesop's Fables Interpreted Through Music
(1920)
[14]
and in Edward Hughes
Songs from Aesop's fables
for children's voices and piano (1965). The earlier fable was also set in German by
Andre Asriel
as
Die Schlange und der Krebs
for mixed
a cappella
voices as part of his
6 Fabeln nach Aesop
in 1972.
[15]
[16]
References
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]
- ^
Francisco Rodriguez Adrados
,
History of the Graeco-Latin fable
I, Brill, Leiden NL 1999,
p.146
- ^
Aesopica site
- ^
See online
- ^
Fables of Aesop
, London 1722,
Fable XII
- ^
Aesopica site
- ^
Francisco Rodriguez Adrados,
History of the Graeco-Latin Fable
III, Brill, Leiden 2003,
p.273
- ^
Text online
- ^
Text online
- ^
Elizur Wright's translation
- ^
National Museum site
- ^
There is
an example
in the Harvard art museums
- ^
De nieuwe Aesopus, Groot Fabelboek voor jong en oud
(Groningen 1880)
p. 43
- ^
Edward Bawden ? Aesop's Fables
- ^
Published in New York with
words and music
- ^
Score
at Preston Music
- ^
Performance
on YouTube
External links
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Illustrations in books from the
15th - 20th century
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Aesop's
Fables
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Apocryphal
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Related
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Screen
adaptations
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Print
adaptations
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Translators
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