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Hitopadesa and Panchatantra

The East never stopped to cavil about the source of fables. It has always loved the type. The Hindoos have two very ancient Sanscrit collections of fable-like discourses—the "Panchatantra" (Five Books), written in prose, and the "Hitopadesa" (Friendly Instruction), in verse. These differ from ordinary sets of fables in having the principle of connection throughout and in being, instead of mere brief tales, rather romantic and dramatic dialogues and expositions designed as text-books for the instruction of princes and those called to govern. Many selections, however, have been taken out, translated, modified, and used either as whole stories or as elements of larger ones.

Reynard the Fox and beastiaries

The very widely read and extensively translated eleventh century "Reynard the Fox" is a beast-epic, and not a fable in the technical sense of the term. As likewise the bestiaries are not fables. Those quaint medieval collections of false lore, modeled probably on some earlier Greek or Latin physiologus, were meant as doctrinal expository allegories rather than zoological treatises or than narratives which would fall within our present classification. Yet they are allied to this group in that they are symbolic and didactic and permit unnatural natural history.

Some more writers of fables

There have always been men who wrote of their own times original satires in the form of fables, exposing vice and folly. Phædrus, a freedman of Augustus, wrote five such books in the reign of Tiberius. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Poggio knew and used the type. The greatest name in modern literature in connection with the fable is that of the Frenchman Jean de la Fontaine, who lived at the court of Louis Fourteenth. He expressed in exquisite verse-narrative very high social maxims. Many of our finest well-known fables are paraphrases of his lines. His own favorite was the "Oak and the Reed." He is supposed to have drawn his inspirations from Phædrus. Our own English writers, Gay and Pope, Addison and Prior, Steele and Dodsley, Moore, Goldsmith, Cowper, and others, wrote fables both in prose and verse. Indeed, worthy old Henryson, of "Robin and Makyne" fame, wrote in the fifteenth century a book of "Morall Fables of Esope the Phrygian" in Chaucerian stanzas. One of these poems he calls the "Uplondish Mous and the Berger Mous." Kriloff, the Russian fabulist, who died in the middle of the nineteenth century, disputes the highest place with La Fontaine in the minds of many critics, especially for his originality. A twentieth century humorous set of rational apologues is George Ade's "Fables in Slang."

The popular "Uncle Remus" stories are negro animal-myths rather than fables. Though Kipling's first "Jungle Book" narratives are in effect sui generis, they belong with fable typically if anywhere, as the unnatural very natural beast philosophy evinces. "His Majesty's Servant," the last of the volume, is easily classified. Some of the later tales are animal-myths, however—to wit, "How Fear Came" and "How the Camel Got His Hump;" and some, like "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," are legends; but the talk and actions of the animals in all are fable-wise. The French, it seems, have lately pushed the type the farthest, though in a logical direction. They have retained the animal talk and the satire, but have cast away the narrative. Under the patronage of Rostand, Sir Chanticler has come before the footlights. This play happens to be an anomalous union of the two old distinct meanings of the word "fable"—one, the undelying story of a drama; the other, a symbolic, usually satiric, didactic tale.

Working definition

In the narrative sense of the term, a fable is a very brief invented, double-meaning story in which a lesson of every day practical morality is taught. The kind of lesson is one of the points that distinguish fable from parable and allegory. The fable never aims higher than inculcating maxims of prudential conduct—industry, caution, foresight, and the like—and these it will sometimes recommend at the expense of the higher, self-forgetting virtues. A typical fable reaches just the pitch of morality which the world will approve. In spirit the fable is often humorous, often ironical. In diction it is always simple, forceful, and appropriate.

Three classes of fables have been noticed: (1) the rational—in which the actors and speakers are solely human beings or the gods of mythology, (2) the non-rational—in which the heroes are solely animals, trees, vegetables, or inanimate objects, (3) the mixed—in which the rational and non-rational are combined.

Classes of fables

Now what distinguishes all these from myth and legend is the presence of the evident and acknowledged didactic purpose. What distinguishes the first class, the rational fable, from a parable is the low plane of the motive. Above the utilitarian the fable never rises. If the fable teaches honesty, it teaches it merely as the best policy. What distinguishes the non-rational and the mixed fables from allegory is both the limitation of the moral and the kind of hero. The lesson of the fable is always piquant, single, and clear. The actors in a fable are always things concrete in nature as well as in the story.

The most popular, and hence the most typical of the three classes of fables, is the second, often called also the "beast fable." The beast fable departs somewhat from the laws of nature. In the dialogue, animals and inanimate objects act like human beings. A fox and a bear, for instance, will philosophize on politics. A lion and a mouse will exchange courtesies. But it is a remarkable feature of this type of story that we do not resent the incongruity. And that we do not resent it is because there is a truthfulness that is more interesting to us than is the natural order of the universe—namely, the truthfulness of characterization. Here the verisimilitude must be complete. Although acting the part of rational beings, the animals must be true to our accepted notion of their animal nature—a fox must be foxy; a bear, bearish; a lion, haughty; a mouse, timid; a cat, deceptive; a monkey, mischievous; a canary, dependent; an eagle, lofty; and so on, and so on. It is not necessary that they have no other characteristics, but it is necessary that they possess the commonly ascribed ones.

How to write an original fable

To write what is strictly a fable, a person will need to observe the distinctions of the type in general as cut off from parable on the one hand and allegory on the other, and to observe the distinctions of the subdivisions within the type. Then he must decide, of course, which subdivision he is going to follow, must select his moral, pick out his actors, think over their characteristics, and finally narrate a brief occurrence in a vivid, homely style. The dialogue, while correct, should be very colloquial. It is well for one to pay especial attention to author's narrative, likewise, that it may be informing though limited. After all is told, the writer may or may not affix a maxim at the end, definitely and neatly stated. In either case, however, the lesson taught should be unmistakable. Original and spirited fables could be written in the field of civic morals, about which the world has just begun to think seriously. Despite the good work that is being done in the name of charity, there is room surely for pleasant satire when a Happy Childhood Society gives elaborately dressed dolls to naked babies.

If one chooses to write a rational fable, where the actors are human beings, one must be careful not to write a parable. The lesson of a fable is always unsentimentally practical—not spiritual. Where the actors are gods, or gods and men, the student-writer must distinguish fable from myth. He should not aim at explaining a universal phenomenon, but simply at teaching a single, acute, work-a-day lesson.

Armenian proverbs that might be used for fable maxims

1. When a man sees that the water does not follow him, he follows the water.

2. Strong vinegar bursts the cask.

3. Dogs quarrel among themselves, but against the wolf they are united.

4. Only a bearded man can laugh at a beardless face.

5. Make friends with a dog, but keep a stick in your hand.

6. One should not feel hurt at the kick of an ass.

7. Running is also an art.

8. He who speaks the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.

9. Before Susan had done prinking, church was over.

10. When you are going in, first consider how you are coming out.

11. The ass knows seven ways of swimming, but when he sees the water he forgets them all.

12. A shrewd enemy is better than a stupid friend.

13. Because the cat could get no meat he said, "Today is Friday."

14. A goat prefers one goat to a whole herd of sheep.

15. A near neighbor is better than a distant kinsman.

16. When I have honey, the flies come even from Bagdad.