|
The Fox and the Weasel is a title used to cover a complex of fables in which a number of other animals figure in a story with the same basic situation involving the unfortunate effects of greed. Of Greek origin, it is counted as one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 24 in the Perry Index. ==Versions== In Greek versions of the story, a lean and hungry fox finds food left by shepherds in the hollow of a tree but is unable to get out again because it has eaten so much. Another fox hears its cries of distress and advises it that it will have to remain there until it becomes as thin as when it entered. Because there were no Latin sources, the fable remained unknown to other European countries until the revival of Greek learning in the Renaissance. A different version was known in Rome, although no fable collection in which it figured has survived. However, it was perpetuated in one of Horace's poetical epistles to Maecenas (I.7, lines 29-35):〔''Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica'', Loeb Classics, London 1942, p. 297, (Internet archive )〕 It was this version which was to influence most of those that came later, although there are a variety of them, depending on the country where they are told. But, as in the context of Horace's poem, all teach the lesson of moderating one's ambitions since superfluity only brings trouble. One of the earliest appearances in English sources was in John Ogilby's editions of Aesop's fables in which a fox becomes trapped in a larder and is advised by a weasel that is also present there.〔Illustrated in editions of the 1660s by Francis Cleyn, then by Wenceslas Hollar; (see the British Museum site )〕 In Roger l'Estrange's retelling only a few decades later, the fox is trapped in a hen-roost and receives the advice from a weasel that is passing outside. Samuel Croxall tells his moralised story of ‘a little starveling, thin-gutted rogue of a mouse‘ who, rather more plausibly than Horace's fox, creeps into a corn basket and attracts a weasel with its cries for help when it cannot get out.〔''The Fables of Aesop'', Google Books, (Fable 36 )〕 More or less the same story was told at the start of the following century by Brooke Boothby in verse〔Fables and Satires, Edinburgh 1809, (p.152 )〕 and Thomas Bewick in prose.〔The 1818 edition of the fables, Google Books, (pp.271-2 )〕 In French versions it is a weasel that becomes trapped in a granary. In La Fontaine's Fables, the advice to slim is given by a rat within the building〔''Fables'' III.17, see Elizur Wright's translation (on Gutenburg )〕 while in Edmé Boursault's drama ''Esope à la ville'' the advice comes from a passing fox.〔Google Books (I.2, pp.7-8 )〕 The English playwright John Vanbrugh based his comedy of ''Aesop'' on the latter (1697) but unaccountably makes yet another animal the protagonist. His Aesop relates that a famished goat squeezes into a well-stocked barn and realises without any intermediary that fasting is its only chance of getting back out.〔''Plays'' I, London 1776, (p.227 )〕 Nevertheless, Boursault's version was sufficiently known in England as to figure five years later in Thomas Yalden's pamphlet of political verses, ''Aesop at Court''.〔Aesop at Court or State Fables, London 1702, (pp.18-19 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Fox and the Weasel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|