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"The Frog and the Mouse" is one of Aesop's Fables and exists in several versions. It is numbered 384 in the Perry Index.〔(Aesopica site )〕 There are also Eastern versions of uncertain origin which are classified as Aarne-Thompson type 278, concerning unnatural relationships.〔D.L. Ashliman, (Folklore and Mythology )〕 The stories make the point that the treacherous are destroyed by their own actions. ==The Greek fable and its variations== The basic story is of a mouse that asks a frog to take her to the other side of a stream and is secured to the frog's back. Midway across, the frog submerges and drowns the mouse, which floats to the surface. A passing kite picks it from the water and carries the frog after it, eventually eating both. Other versions depict them as friends on a journey together or else exchanging hospitality. The story appears in the early Mediaeval fable collections of Odo of Cheriton and Marie de France, dating from the end of the 12th century. Marie's story is the more circumstantial and concludes differently from most others. The mouse lives contentedly in a mill and offers hospitality to a passing frog. The frog then lures the mouse into crossing the stream on the pretence of showing her his home. While he is trying to drown his passenger, the pair are seized by the kite, who eats the frog first because it is fat. Meanwhile the mouse struggles free of its bonds and survives.〔(Google Books )〕 At the start of the 15th century, the poet John Lydgate expanded Marie's story even further.〔Edward Wheatley, ''Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and His Followers'', University of Florida 2000, (pp.124-31 )〕 The most significant additional detail is the mouse's moralising on the happiness of being satisfied with one's lot. It is as a result of this that the frog is preferred by the kite for its fatness, since the virtuous mouse, being content with little, is 'slender and lean'.〔''Isopes Fabules'', (Fable 3 )〕 Lydgate's collection was followed by two more vernacular versions in Britain during the 15th century. In William Caxton's collection of the fables, it is a rat on pilgrimage who asks the frog's help to cross a river.〔(''Fables of Esope'' 1.3 )〕 A Scottish poem under the title The Paddock and the Mouse appears among Robert Henryson's Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. It too is an expanded version, in the course of which the frog offers to carry the journeying mouse over to the grain fields on the stream's other bank. Henryson interprets the tale in his concluding ballade, making the point that 'Foul mind is hid by words both fair and free' and that it is better to be content with one's lot 'Than with companion wicked to be paired'.〔(A slightly modernised version )〕 In the Renaissance the situation at the start of the mock epic Batrachomyomachia was sometimes merged into the fable, making the two creatures enemies. There a frog carrying a mouse on its back had submerged from fear of a snake and inadvertently drowned his rider. In revenge, the mice declare war on the frogs. The Neo-Latin poet Hieronymus Osius records both versions in his ''Phryx Aesopus'' (1574).〔(Aesopica site )〕 In the first of these the two animals are presented as friends; in the second they are enemies disputing rulership of the marsh and are carried off by the kite as they fight. It was the latter version that appeared in the English fable collections of Francis Barlow (1687),〔(Fable 35 )〕 Roger L'Estrange (1692)〔(Fable 4 )〕 and Samuel Croxall (1722).〔(fable 98 )〕 In the aftermath of civil strife and revolution, it was a welcome opportunity to preach civil concord. Meanwhile in France Jean de la Fontaine had recorded the first version, in which the frog invites the mouse to a meal, among his ''Fables'' (IV.11, 1668). The fable was among those translated into German by Martin Luther in 1530. In modern times it was included among those set by Hans Poser in his ''Die Fabeln des Äsop'' for accompanied choir (0p.28, 1956). 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 Frog and the Mouse」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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