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The Tortoise and the Hare
The Tortoise and the Hare is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE )〕 The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. It is itself a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery (rather than doggedness) are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.
==An ambiguous story==
The story concerns a Hare who ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise. Tired of the Hare's boastful behaviour, the Tortoise challenges him to a race.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Story Arts - Aesop's ABC - The Tortoise and The Hare )〕 The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him. The later version of the story in La Fontaine's Fables (VI.10), while more long-winded, differs hardly at all from Aesop's.〔A translation is (here )〕
As in several other fables by Aesop, there is a moral ambiguity about the lesson it is teaching. Later interpreters have asserted that it is the proverbial 'the more haste, the worse speed' (Samuel Croxall) or have applied to it the Biblical observation that 'the race is not to the swift' (Ecclesiastes 9.11). In Classical times it was not the Tortoise’s plucky conduct in taking on a bully that was emphasised but the Hare’s foolish over-confidence. An old Greek source comments that 'many people have good natural abilities which are ruined by idleness; on the other hand, sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence.〔''Aesop's Fables: a new translation by Laura Gibbs'', Oxford 2002, (fable 237 )〕
In the 19th century and after the fable was given satirical interpretations. In the social commentary of Charles H. Bennett's ''The Fables of Aesop translated into Human Nature'' (1857), the hare is changed to a thoughtful craftsman prostrate under the foot of a capitalist entrepreneur.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lepus et Testudo )〕 Lord Dunsany brings out another view in his "The True History of the Tortoise and the Hare" (1915). There the hare realises the stupidity of the challenge and refuses to proceed any further. The obstinate tortoise continues to the finishing line and is proclaimed the swiftest by his backers. But, continues Dunsany, ''the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest. They sent the Tortoise.''
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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