Aesop's Tales

Beneath Heed

A gnat alighted on a bull’s horn. After it had bode there a long time and felt like flying on, it asked the bull if he would like it to go now. ‘I didn’t heed when thou came,’ answered the bull, ‘and I shall not heed if thou goes.’

Why the Ant is a Thief

The first ant began life as a man. He was an acreman who, not happy with the yield of his own work, kept casting greedy eyes over his neighbours’ crops and stealing them. His greed angered Woden so much that he shapeshifted him into the bug we call the ant. But even though his shape was new, his ways were of old. To this day he goes about the fields gathering other folks’ wheat and barley and stocking it up for himself.

§ This tale is meant to show that even the harshest doom does not make the evil man good.

A Town of Lies

Faring through the wilderness a man saw a woman standing alone with eyes downcast.

‘Who art thou?’ he asked.

‘I am Truth,’ she answered.

‘And why has thou left the town to live in the wilderness?’

‘For times have shifted,’ she said. ‘In days gone by, few lied. But nowadays, whenever one speaks with others, one finds they are all liars.’

§ Life is a loathsome and wretched thing when lies are worthed above truth.

A Bird in the Hand

A nightingale was roosting in a tall oak tree, singing as they always do. A hawk saw her, and as he had nothing to eat, swooped down and stole her away. She worked to free herself from the claws of death by beseeching him to let her go. She was too small, she said, to make a meal for a hawk; if he was hungry, he had better hunt some greater bird. But the hawk’s answer was: ‘I would be mad to let slip the food I have in my claws to go after something which is not yet in sight.’

§ It is the same with man. It is mindless to let the hope of greater winnings draw thee away from what thou has in thy grasp.