Folk-Lore and Fable

By Aesop

Excerpt
Introductory Note: THE HABIT of telling stories is one of the most primitive characteristics of the human race. The most ancient civilizations, the most barbarous savages, of whom we have any knowledge have yielded to investigators clear traces of the possession of this practice. The specimens of their narrative that have been gathered from all the ends of the earth and from the remotest times of which we have written record show traces of purpose, now religious and didactic, now patriotic and political; but behind or beside the purpose one can discern the permanent human delight in the story for its own sake. The oldest of stories are the myths: not the elaborated and sophisticated tales that one finds in, say, Greek epic and drama, but the myth pure and simple. This is the answer of primitive science to the question of the barbaric child, the explanation of the thunder or the rain, of the origin of man or of fire, of disease or death. The form of such myths is accounted for by the belief known as animism, which assumed personality in every object and phenomenon, and conceived no distinction in the kind of existence of a man, a dog, a tree, or a stone. Such myths are still told among, e. g., the American Indians, and the assumption just mentioned accounts for such features as the transformation of the same being from a man into a log or a fish, or the marriage of a coyote and a woman. Derived from this state of belief and showing signs of their origin, are such animal stories as form the basis of the artistically worked-up tales of Uncle Remus. Thus in primitive myth, the divinities of natural forces are not personifications, for there was no figure of speech involved; the storm, the ocean, and the plague were to the mythmakers actually persons. The symbolical element in literary myths is a later development, possible only as man gradually arrived at the realization of his separateness in kind from the non-human objects of his senses. With this realization came the attempt to adapt }he myths that had come down from more primitive times to his new way of thinking, and the long process of making the myths reasonable and credible set in. But while the higher myths were being thus transformed into the religions- of the civilized man, the ways of thinking that had...

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: -ESOP'S FABLES -- FACE -- THE COCK AND THE PEARL g -- THE WOLF AND THE LAMB 9 -- THE DOG AND THE SHADOW 10 -- THE LION'S SHARE 10 -- THE WOLF AND THE CRANE n -- THE MAN AND THE SERPENT 1 1 -- THE TOWN MOUSE AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE 12 -- THE Fox AND THE CROW 12 -- THE SICK LION 13 -- THE Ass AND THE LAPDOG 13 -- THE LION AND THE MOUSE 14 -- THE SWALLOW AND THE OTHER BIRDS 14 -- THE FROGS DESIRING A KING 15 -- THE MOUNTAINS IN LABOUR 16 -- THE HARES AND THE FROGS 16 -- THE WOLF AND THE KID. .' 16 -- THE WOODMAN AND >THE SERPENT 17 -- THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY 17 -- THE Fox AND THE STORK 17 -- THE Fox AND THE MASK 18 -- THE JAY AND THE PEACOCK 18 -- THE FROG AND THE Ox 19 -- ANDROCLES 19 -- THE BAT, THE BIRDS, AND THE BEASTS 20 -- THE HART AND THE HUNTER 20 -- THE SERPENT AND THE FILE 21 -- THE MAN AND THE WOOD 21 -- THE DOG AND THE WOLF 21 -- THE BELLY AND THE MEMBERS 22 -- THE HART IN THE OX-STALL 22 -- Fox AND THE GRAPES 23 -- THE HORSE, HUNTER, AND STAG 23

Book Id: WPLBN0000581674
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 29,762,927 KB.
Reproduction Date: 2007
Full Text

Title:

Folk-Lore and Fable

Author:

Aesop

Volume:

Language:

English

Subject:

Fiction, Children's literature, Children's fiction

Collection:

Children's Literature Collection

Subcollection:

Historic
Publication Date:

Publisher:

World Public Library Association

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