A boy on watch chases him off and when he returns to where he has left the meat he finds a kite has flown off with it. A fox on its way home with a piece of meat catches sight of some chickens and decides to hunt one of them down. Yet another Indian variation on the theme is Bidpai‘s story of “The Fox and the Piece of Meat”. The lesson drawn there is that This is what fools of little wit are wont to do they spend a pound to win a penny. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him. The similar lesson about greed is taught in Buddhist scripture by the Kalayamutthi Jataka in which a monkey with a handful of peas drops one and, in trying to retrieve it, drops all the others too. As he struggles to swim to shore, he relaxes his grip on the bone and loses both ‘shadow and substance’. Once upon a time, the Frogs were discontented because they had no one to rule over them: so they sent a deputation to Jupiter to ask him to give them a King. In the version by Jean de la Fontaine (VI.17) the dog attacks its reflection and falls into the water. The moral, according to John Lydgate‘s versified Isopes Fabules, is that the one ‘Who all coveteth, oft he loseth all.’ Taking it for another dog carrying a better bone, the dog opens its mouth to bark at the “other” and in doing so drops its own bone into the river. In Aesop’s story, a dog carrying a bone over a bridge looks down into the water and sees its own reflection. Illustration by Wenceslas Hollar to Ogilby’s Aesop’s Fables (1673-5 Fable "How now!" cried Jupiter "Are you not yet content? You have what you asked for and so you have only yourselves to blame for your misfortunes." Be sure you can better your condition before you seek to change.“ The Dog and the Bone” is a fable ascribed to Aesop that counsels being content with what one has. ![]() In mournful croaks they begged Jupiter to take away the cruel tyrant before they should all be destroyed. He gobbled up the poor Frogs right and left and they soon saw what fools they had been. The Crane proved to be a very different sort of king from old King Log. To teach the Frogs a lesson the ruler of the gods now sent a Crane to be king of Frogland. The Stork God Save Us from the Queen: Gender-Inverted he is a male stork, who the frogs decide to make their King, but then he eats them. In a short time the younger Frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older Frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly to Jupiter about the government. The Frogs Who Desired a King The Frogs Too Dumb to Live: They decide a stork will be their king, and he eats them. ![]() ![]() But they soon discovered how tame and peaceable King Log was. The Frogs hid themselves among the reeds and grasses, thinking the new king to be some fearful giant. Jupiter saw what simple and foolish creatures they were, but to keep them quiet and make them think they had a king he threw down a huge log, which fell into the water with a great splash. So they sent a petition to Jupiter asking for a king. No milk and water government for them, they declared. ![]() They had so much freedom that it had spoiled them, and they did nothing but sit around croaking in a bored manner and wishing for a government that could entertain them with the pomp and display of royalty, and rule them in a way to make them know they were being ruled. The Frogs were tired of governing themselves.
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