Episode 18: Aesop’s Fables with Dr. Laura Gibbs

Aesop’s Fables are primarily read to children in today’s world, these famous stories, which have stood the test of time, were originally told amongst adults. In episode 18, Dr. Laura Gibbs, retired mythology and folklore professor from the University of Oklahoma, explores Aesop beyond Greece and Rome and guides us through the back and forth […]

The post Episode 18: Aesop’s Fables with Dr. Laura Gibbs appeared first on Fabric of Folklore.

Follow us:

Fabric of Folklore website

Youtube channel

Facebook Page

Facebook Group

Instagram

Twitter

Linkedin

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:42:07
Unknown
Welcome, buckaroos. Welcome to Fabric of Folklore. My name is Vanessa Rogers, and this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. And in this podcast, we really dive deep into the legends, the myths, the fables, the folk tales, and our traditions. We explore why these stories and traditions mean something, how they've changed and why they're significant and relevant to today, and why you should even care about it.

00:00:42:09 - 00:01:11:26
Unknown
So make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single one of these episodes. Go ahead and subscribe right now. Today, we're exploring Aesop Beyond Greece and Rome. The back and forth of the Aesop it is how say it Aesop or ASAP. The second introducing topic was what and how the stories from other places became assimilated into the later Aesop tradition in Europe.

00:01:11:27 - 00:01:35:21
Unknown
And our guest is Dr. Laura Gibbs, and she completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature at UC Berkeley and her dissertation was in Aesop and she taught at the University of Oklahoma in mythology and folklore for over 20 years before retiring in 2021. So thank you so much for joining us today. This is going to be a great episode.

00:01:35:23 - 00:02:01:13
Unknown
Well, thanks for the invitation. I love talking about your book. So tell us a little bit about you and how you found folklore and mythology to begin with or how it found you. Well, I was a Polish and Russian major at UC Berkeley way back in the day when I was an undergraduate. And of course, the fairy tale and folktale traditions of Eastern Europe were really marvelous.

00:02:01:14 - 00:02:26:11
Unknown
And so I'd gotten very interested in all of that. And then I went Latin and Greek mostly, to be honest, not because I was that interested in the ancient Greeks and Romans, but so that I could read Renaissance literature in Latin, because Latin was a great unifying language all over Europe, including Eastern Europe during the Renaissance. And then, you know, years go by.

00:02:26:13 - 00:02:54:25
Unknown
I was living and working in Nashville, Tennessee, and I'd gone to a bookstore. This is how I I discovered there was more to Aesop than I ever expected. So I got to a bookstore and my yoga teacher told me, Oh, you should read poetry by Rumi. Have you ever heard of Rumi? And no, I hadn't. This was back in the late eighties, and so I got a book of poetry by this Persian classical Persian poet translated into English that I found at our local bookstore in Nashville.

00:02:54:25 - 00:03:21:20
Unknown
Back then, before Amazon, everything. And I'm reading along in this book of poetry just sitting in the parking lot because it was so good, and I was just captivated by the whole idea of this book. And there was an Aesop's fable in there, the story of the frog in the mouse. And I thought, Wait, what is an Aesop's fable doing in this book of mystical classical Persian Sufi poetry?

00:03:21:27 - 00:03:45:15
Unknown
I don't understand. And so I started asking questions, and that's how I ended up going back to graduate school and studying Aesop and and working on these for the past, whatever it is, 30, 40 years. And I know some of the answers to the questions, but these are kind of big mysterious questions, some of them about how Aesop has traveled around.

00:03:45:18 - 00:04:12:03
Unknown
So that's where it started for me. And I'm still kind of at that moment, that juncture of how did it happen that these familiar fables from ancient Greece and Rome show up in these unexpected parts of the world? How interesting. So am. So tell us who Aesop was and how far back. Well, he lived. Like what? When did he who lived during his time period?

00:04:12:06 - 00:04:47:04
Unknown
Well, we're not we don't have any, strictly speaking, historical evidence for an actual historical person named is what we have is lots of evidence for the legend of Aesop for the idea of Aesop. It's a lot like the situation with Homer, not as ancient as Homer, probably, But what you probably have to imagine is that there were all these animal fables in circulation and also just jokes and stories short stories that are very easy to to just tell orally because are very short and also very easy for people to learn.

00:04:47:04 - 00:05:09:16
Unknown
Because since it's so short, like a joke or something, you just hear it once or twice and you're ready to tell it yourself. You know, the The Odyssey or the Iliad. You hear it once. You're not ready to tell it yourself, but a short fable or a joke you're ready to tell yourself. And so these stories spread, and they became associated already in ancient Greece with some storyteller named Aesop.

00:05:09:16 - 00:05:34:09
Unknown
So there probably was a storyteller somewhere at some point named Aesop, who had a reputation. And so stories just started to attach to his name, that type of story. Oh, that's an Aesop's fable about kind of like the way you see all kinds of quotations on the Internet attributed later to Mark Twain or the Dalai Lama. You know, he became a name that you attach things to.

00:05:34:11 - 00:06:03:10
Unknown
But there there is information about a historical Aesop, if you want to call it that, in Herodotus, but rather this ancient Greek historian, the father of lies, you know, not exactly a reliable historical source, but that gives you a sense of of how old the legend is that it was already circulating in ancient Greece and their references to to Aesop, a story teller, a former slave, that's the one I had heard that he was a former slave.

00:06:03:10 - 00:06:30:27
Unknown
That that. But that's a legend. It's it's it's a legend. But, you know, if if so many people believed it to be true, you can believe it to be true. Right? So if Aristotle thinks it's true, you might as well think it's true, too. So you find references to Aesop sometimes with an emphasis on his lowly origins, but sometimes not sometimes in an effort to present him more as a kind of storytelling artist, a philosopher.

00:06:30:27 - 00:06:55:26
Unknown
It there's a range of ways that he's represented. But, you know, centuries go by in the end. The Aesop Legends keep circulating. So wonderful collection of Aesop's Fables, the oldest extant collection that we have by a Roman poet named Phaedrus, who himself was a free man, a freed slave. But what's really interesting is that there's also a whole book about the legendary life of Aesop.

00:06:55:26 - 00:07:22:08
Unknown
It's sometimes called The Romance of Aesop or the Life of Aesop. And that's where this idea that he was a slave takes on a beautiful fall form. This is a whole novel in Greek about Aesop that starts with him being a slave, tells how he was a mute slave. He was physically deformed, and he also could not speak.

00:07:22:10 - 00:07:51:04
Unknown
But in this wonderful, miraculous moment, he shows kindness to a priestess of ices, and the goddess ends up granting him the power of speech. And so he becomes beloved of the muses and on and on. And with his power speech, he denounces the cruel overseer. He gets sold to a new master, a philosopher with whom he engages in all kinds of of contests, of speech.

00:07:51:07 - 00:08:14:26
Unknown
And that ancient Greek novel. It makes it clear that Aesop was not for children back in the day because it's filled with all kinds of sexual jokes and sexual innuendo. Definitely not safe for children. So if people are interested in reading The Life of Aesop, it was regularly included in collections of Aesop's Fables in the Renaissance in early modern tax.

00:08:14:26 - 00:08:38:26
Unknown
As late as someone like Roger Strange, a 17th century English author of Aesop's Fables, The Life of Aesop was considered fully a part of the psychic tradition and the Aesop at Corpus. But as the Fables became seen more and more for children, the life of Aesop was cast aside. But you can read it, like I said in Roger was strange.

00:08:38:26 - 00:09:05:12
Unknown
A 17th century Aesop. There's a wonderful book by a classicist who's also what folklorists named William Hanson. It's a collection called an Anthology of Greek Popular Literature, I think is what he calls it. And the life of Aesop is in there, along with Fables. It's an absolutely fabulous book, that anthology of ancient Greek popular with it. So what about his story?

00:09:05:12 - 00:09:40:14
Unknown
You said it was definitely not intended for for children. Or what about his his life? Was it that stands out to you in terms of that? The it wasn't intended for children. Oh, that Well, for example, in the in the when he is a bought by this philosopher and a slave market, the philosopher is buying a slave at the bidding of his wife who would like to have a young sexy male slave to sleep with.

00:09:40:19 - 00:10:09:16
Unknown
Oh. And when her husband brings home this appalling looking, foulmouthed, ugly slave, she is extremely disappointed. And they have a very explicit back and forth Aesop and the his new master's wife about her expectations and how she has been thwarted in her desire for a sex partner. And their rivalry continues throughout his of his stay at her house.

00:10:09:20 - 00:10:35:28
Unknown
So Well, there's just so many questions there that that's a hilarious story. Are there any other good stories like that in in his in his life? There are lots of good stories and I highly recommend the life of Aesop. It is not a sophisticated work of literature, but it is good fun from start to finish and people have gotten interested in it as a document about slavery in the ancient world too.

00:10:36:00 - 00:11:06:17
Unknown
So once again, in the same way that that that the legend of Aesop is not historical information, you know, the life of Aesop. It's a work of of a fantasy, of imagination, of literature. It's not a historical document about actual slaves in the ancient Greek world, but it gives you some insight into into how people imagine that world, kind of like the way Roman comedy does, where the Tricky Slave is a regular feature of Roman comedy.

00:11:06:19 - 00:11:33:28
Unknown
Aesop Falls into that tradition of the athlete his life was. He was that book written and, oh, hundreds of hundreds of years ago. So we're talking about this is probably something from, oh, I don't know what the dates are on it. It's late. You know, it's it's but so they would have had personal experience with what life was like during that during his time.

00:11:34:00 - 00:12:04:12
Unknown
That realism is not a part of the ancient Greek literary tradition in general and in particular with the life of himself. You're not there for the realism, but here, since we're supposed to be talking about Aesop beyond Greece and Rome, let me recommend an absolutely astounding modern novel by a writer from India named Suni t NOM Joshi, and the novel is called Foxy Aesop.

00:12:04:15 - 00:12:31:16
Unknown
And it's a it's a modern novel. Sure. And 120 pages and 50 pages, if I'm remembering correctly, about the life of Aesop. It was inspired by the incidents in the the novel life of Aesop, but also inspired by the clear connections between Aesop's Fables and India. And as I said, this is a wonderful writer born in India, grew up in India.

00:12:31:18 - 00:12:57:21
Unknown
She then immigrated to Canada. She now lives in the UK, where she takes the idea of Aesop having come from India, blends it with the plot of the ancient Greek novel about Aesop and then adds her own amazing twist at the end, especially regarding the legend of the death of Aesop at the hands of the people of the city of Delphi.

00:12:57:24 - 00:13:20:19
Unknown
Anyway, I highly recommend it. It's Foxy Aesop and you can think of on our page some fabric of folklore. It will make sure people in town have that. And what about the book that you mentioned before? Is that a book that is available to readers? Is it easily accessible? Well, and let me say something about that. It's accessible right now.

00:13:20:19 - 00:13:46:23
Unknown
The book by William Hanson at the Amazing Internet Archive. Archive.org, which currently has millions of books, millions of books that are available for borrowing online, like at a library, Right. You get a free account and you can check these books out and read them online. And anywhere you watch an account where exactly anybody in the world, it's a it's an absolutely amazing project.

00:13:46:23 - 00:14:12:00
Unknown
It's been going on for about eight years. The book Lending the Internet Archive has been online for about 25 years. That's where the Wayback Machine is. A lot of people know the Internet Archive from the Wayback Machine that archives old versions of Web pages. So they've had this library project going on for eight years where they have been getting either books that they buy or that are donated by libraries.

00:14:12:00 - 00:14:32:23
Unknown
Lots of library discards end up there. They scan the books and make them available for borrowing with a system called controlled digital Lending, so only one person can check out a book at a time, just like at a library. So if everybody rushes to go get the Anthology of Ancient Greek popular literature right now at the Internet Archive, only one person can check it out.

00:14:32:23 - 00:15:04:04
Unknown
In time, it will be told someone else has it checked out? You can come back later to read it. Unfortunately, in 2020, during the pandemic, the the big publishers like Hachette and Penguin sued the Internet Archive to get this one lending library shut down. That lawsuit is has dragged on for the past couple of years. I was a witness in the lawsuit speaking on behalf of the Internet Archive because I love this library.

00:15:04:06 - 00:15:34:24
Unknown
And the judge recently issued a decision in favor of the publishers against the Internet Archive. Long story, but that library may be shut down so that the copyrighted books that you can check out there, like William Hansen's book, won't be available perhaps within the next few weeks. We're still waiting for the actual details of the judgment, but the Internet Archive also has enormous quantities of public domain books.

00:15:34:26 - 00:16:06:22
Unknown
So books that are 100 or more years old. So all the beautiful renaissance editions of Aesop's Fables, the the first English version, a 15th century version of Aesop's Fables in English, published by William Jackson, which includes the life of Aesop with illustrations. All of those are available with the Internet Archive, archive.org and one of the projects I'm working on right now is to do a reader's guide to Aesop Resources at the Internet Archive, because it really is spectacular.

00:16:06:23 - 00:16:37:13
Unknown
So going back to the lawsuit, I'm confused as to why the publishers would be suing the archive because isn't that what a regular library does? They have books that are copyrighted enabling them out to lenders and they bring them back. How is that any different than what happens at a regular library? Well, one thing to to speculate on is I don't think publishers would have allowed regular libraries to come into existence if it were happening right now.

00:16:37:20 - 00:17:07:25
Unknown
Fortunately, libraries were established in a day and a time before we had these mega corporate publishers, but they can't do anything to stop libraries from doing what they're doing, which is to limit physical books. The real argument right now is about e-books. You know, libraries right now can buy a physical book, and when a library buys a physical book, they have all kinds of rights that go with that ownership, which is what allows them to lend the books out.

00:17:07:27 - 00:17:43:24
Unknown
Publishers. As a general rule, the big publishers will not sell e-books to libraries. They learned their lesson from those physical books. They will not sell the e-books. They will only rent them to libraries, and often at very exorbitant prices. And so there's a much larger legal contest, let's call it, going on about e-books and price gouging by publishers with regard to those e-books.

00:17:43:26 - 00:18:04:06
Unknown
And so the Internet archive's lawsuit sort of got swept up in that in the sense that even though what the Internet Archive is doing is not the same as an e-book, these are just page scans of physical book right? So the Internet Archive starts with a physical book. Some person sits at a scanner and scans them page by page.

00:18:04:06 - 00:18:31:18
Unknown
All those millions of works have been scanned page by page. And what you can do is look at the scan you can't highlight, you can't read it on that phone. It's it's very limited. But because of the press event that it sets of the digitizing of a physical book and the extension of that idea of ownership of the physical book morphing into ownership of the digital version of that physical book.

00:18:31:18 - 00:18:58:21
Unknown
That's what the publishers were very anxious to stop, to stop libraries of any kind, such as the Internet Archive, from being able to digitize their own books and then lend the digital versions they as they would when the physical books. There's some there's some great people who've written about this. Kyle Courtney, a librarian at Harvard who really pioneered the idea of controlled digital lending.

00:18:58:24 - 00:19:22:04
Unknown
So you can find lots of resources online. If you just Google Internet Archive publishers, you'll you'll find a lot of information about the what's it like I said, it's still ongoing. There's definitely going to be an appeal of the judgment that was issued. But I'm very worried that the access to all those books is going to be shut down and it's just a tragedy if it is because it's a library that everybody can access.

00:19:22:11 - 00:19:48:05
Unknown
I'm fortunate. Awesome. I have an amazing local public library. Not everybody does. And like I said, there are millions of books right now that you can borrow with the Internet Archive this way. It's a mythology and folklore paradise. In terms of mythology, that's very books, photo books. It's absolutely amazing. Well, wonderful. Well, that's an interesting story to definitely watch.

00:19:48:08 - 00:20:15:03
Unknown
And I, I, I know that that is a complicated issue because I know that there are publishing companies that are going out of business. I know that there's a give and take, but I love my library. I, I get I get so many books in the libraries. It is always concerning when libraries don't have access to books. And the Internet Archive has become my library of choice, just because I love the idea that everything is just a click away for anybody.

00:20:15:05 - 00:20:34:27
Unknown
So what I can get at my local library and maybe other people can't get at their local library, but we can all, at least right now, use the Internet Archive as our our, our global library, not our local library. So tell us a little bit about who do you know who was the first person to start collecting these historic fables?

00:20:34:27 - 00:21:01:23
Unknown
How did that how did they start being put together in books? Well, I'm not the kind of person, to be honest, who is interested in who did things first, because, you know, when it comes to something like an oral tradition, everybody was collecting Aesop's Fables. You know, it's not the the the fables are not the prerogative of a specific writer or specific collective a collector.

00:21:01:25 - 00:21:43:23
Unknown
They existed in the in the cultural shared space of ancient Greece and ancient Rome and Africa and India. You know, these things, these kinds of short fables are really a global storyteller phenomenon. But we are fortunate that the Greeks did like to collect things. They collected all kinds of things, and they did collect tables and proverbs and and the best place to find out about this for people who really want the nitty gritty details, there's a an English folklorist, a very famous English folk course of the 19th century, Joseph Jacobs, who many people might know from his very popular fairy tale books, English fairy tales, Celtic fairy tales.

00:21:43:23 - 00:22:20:23
Unknown
Joseph Jacobs. He was extremely interested in Aesop's Fables, and he did a beautiful two volume edition in the 19th century of the first printed Aesop in English Paxton's Aesop, where he reprints Paxton's Aesop and Modern Type, which makes it much easier to read because 15th Century Typeface, I tell you, it is not easy to read, but in the first volume of that book, he does a history of Aesop's Fables, as it was known to him as a scholar in the 19th century.

00:22:20:23 - 00:22:55:07
Unknown
He worked very diligently on a lot of these questions about who did what first, which fables are the oldest. And that's a very accessible introduction, really well written, really clear and since that's a 19th century book that's available, the Internet Archive Unaffected by The Lancet. So I'll make sure I get you a link to the book, because Joseph Jacobs, he would not just who was the first to collect fables in ancient Greece, but just looked at all the different collections and how they interacted with each other.

00:22:55:09 - 00:23:25:29
Unknown
He was especially interested in Jewish traditions and the way that Jewish writers and provided a kind of conduit for Aesop's Fables as they circulated out into the Middle East and then back from the Middle East to medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe, especially England. So it's it's a fascinating story that goes way beyond just who was the first collector in ancient Greece.

00:23:25:29 - 00:23:51:21
Unknown
Like I said, the oldest extant collection that we have is a set of poems by a Roman poet named Phaedrus, and that's very well attested. You can find editions of Phaedrus for what you can do. Yes, he was a freedmen of the household of the Emperor Augustus. And so we don't have we don't have dates. But he writes about contemporary romance.

00:23:51:21 - 00:24:17:26
Unknown
He writes about Tiberius, for example, in his his fables. And so you can find lots of English translations of Phaedrus. And like I said, you can also find lots of school book editions of Phaedrus because he was regularly used as a kind of school text for learning Latin in the Middle Ages Renaissance, and even today there there's some great 20th and there might be some 21st century school editions of Phaedrus.

00:24:17:29 - 00:24:47:23
Unknown
So why is it called Aesop's Fables? If they're not from one specific person? Why is that label attached to the word fables? Well, and and so, you know, of a formula is is any kind of story, any kind of what we would call a fictitious story. Okay. And it's from the the Latin word fabulous, which is related just to the word for speaking.

00:24:47:25 - 00:25:25:02
Unknown
And in the romance languages, that's where we get for example, the Spanish hablar is is from Fable. So the idea of not just telling stories, but this whole kind of communicating with one another, we do it through speaking, through telling stories as we speak. That's where you get the word of LA and Spanish. And interestingly, in other romance languages, like in French or Italian, the word to speak calamari in Italian is from parable Lara to tell parables, which is the Greek equivalent of fabulous, right?

00:25:25:05 - 00:25:55:00
Unknown
So this idea of the fable lie and the the parables, it's very deep in the language, very important part of what people did when they spoke to each other and makes a fable. Aesop It as opposed to other kinds of, of, of myths and fables is that it's short and it usually has some kind of punchline at the end or a moral something that kind of sums it up in a really pithy way at the end.

00:25:55:02 - 00:26:21:23
Unknown
And one of my favorite things about the written collections of Aesop's Fables is how you can see the shift between what happened in an oral performance of an Aesop's Fables and what happens when you've got the editorial space that the written fables give you. And so in that written space, the fables can get longer and longer in a way that they really didn't do in the oral space.

00:26:21:26 - 00:26:47:27
Unknown
And you can also have more authority commentary than you do in a typical kind of oral performance. What do you mean? What do you mean? Can you give us an example of an editorial commentary that you. Oh, if you if you look at it at Phaedrus, for example, sometimes he just goes on, he has his pet peeves, people that he's angry at, political disputes, squabbles.

00:26:47:29 - 00:27:19:21
Unknown
And so he'll just go on, you know, So he would tell a story and then he would like his commentary would be longer than the story. Right. And even more so, though, than than Phaedrus, who's writing poetry, you know? So he's keeping things under control more or less. If you look at the medieval Aesop, one of the things that happens there is Aesop gets turned into allegories by medieval preachers who recognize the value of Aesop's fables that people could use in sermons.

00:27:19:24 - 00:27:42:18
Unknown
Very useful to have these memorable stories that you could stick into a sermon to illustrate some kind of point, emphasize some kind of moral virtue, say, and in the Middle Ages, what some of them would do was they would have the Aesop's fable, and then they would have a whole allegory attached to it. Where did you define allegory for us so that we can be exactly allegories?

00:27:42:18 - 00:28:04:28
Unknown
Kind of like treating a stories as a secret code. So, for example, there's an Aesop's fable about the fox and the crow. When the Chinese write famous fable, a lot of people might already know it wouldn't tell the story. Story? I'm going to tell it all in your short shorts and inside to tell. So. So this crow has found a piece of cheese.

00:28:04:28 - 00:28:32:29
Unknown
Oh, the crow is very happy. The crow flies up into the top of the tree to enjoy his piece of cheese. Well, along comes a fox who would also like to eat that cheese. Crow is obviously not going to give it up voluntarily. So the fox has to to trick the crow. Right? Foxes are trickster. And so the fox says, Oh, cruel, look at you up there looking so beautiful as usual with your beautiful plumage.

00:28:33:01 - 00:28:52:20
Unknown
I'm sure that your voice, it must be just as beautiful as is, is your plumage. Maybe you could sing a song. And the crow is so flattered because no one says the crow is beautiful. No one really likes to hear the crow saying this year the fox and the fox wants to create a singing. So the crow opens his mouth and starts to sing.

00:28:52:20 - 00:29:15:03
Unknown
And of course, the cheese falls out and the fox takes it and runs away. Now where are you going to insert the moral right? So in some cases, the fox, as she's running off with the cheese, might say, Oh, crow, you would have done better not to have opened your mouth at all because now your mouth is empty and my mouth is full of cheese or something like that.

00:29:15:05 - 00:29:43:20
Unknown
Well, in the Middle Ages to allegories, that is like who? Who is the fox? The fox is the devil. The fox is the devil coming to tempt you with flattery, with praises, trying to get you to open your mouth to to to say things you shouldn't say and to end to lose the sweet cheese of salvation that you hold in your mouth.

00:29:43:23 - 00:30:14:11
Unknown
So he's out because it's kind of silly now. Allegorical interpretations are not in vogue, let's say, but they were in vogue for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And so the fables of Aesop were allegories that the stories of others, for example, were allegories, because this is a way that Christian writers could take on these pagan stories and Christianize them.

00:30:14:13 - 00:30:53:21
Unknown
By providing these allegories, you were able to put an alien story, story from another culture inside your culture, giving it a Christian framework. And so that's something that is happening at that point to thousand years after Aesop. And it would be amazing. It would be wonderful if we could see what what Aesop would say about all that. There are some parallels between ancient Greek and Roman culture and how they saw divine symbols, divine messages around them in the world.

00:30:53:23 - 00:31:15:23
Unknown
And there's even a funny Aesop fable I'll tell in just a second. The definitely not fit for children. That shows how in the ancient world, too, they did these kinds of interpretations, right? It wasn't about allegories of the devil and Jesus, but it were other kinds of interpretations. So this is the Aesop's fable. I think this one's really funny.

00:31:15:26 - 00:31:35:08
Unknown
So, you know, in the ancient world, there were things called portents like string age, things that happened that were weird or bizarre, and and you had to interpret them so that you could fix whatever was wrong, Right? This this portent was a sign that that something had gone wrong. And you might need to go and make a sacrifice to a God or goddess.

00:31:35:08 - 00:31:57:15
Unknown
You might need to make a pilgrimage. You might need to change something in your house, you might need a ritual prayer, you would need something. Because this portent is letting you know that something really terrible has happened. And Aesop was reputed to be a very wise person. So one day there's a Aesop is walking along and this man comes running up him like Aesop.

00:31:57:15 - 00:32:24:21
Unknown
Aesop, you have to help me. There's there's this terrible portent that's happened at my house. They're these lambs that have been born with human heads. What? What am I going to do? You know, the gods are clearly offended, but. But I don't know what to do. Can you help me? Aesop and Aesop says, Yeah, I think so. Probably the best thing you could do is get wives for your shepherds wives.

00:32:24:24 - 00:32:57:21
Unknown
Oh, so he's telling it? Not in terms of you Look at the God's being manifest in the portrait of this strange birth, but making a joke about the habits of Shepherd out on their own without wives. So anyway, you're not going to find that in any of the right fables for children. But that's an example of how there are already allegorical and interpretive tendencies, let's say, in Aesop's Fables and I mentioned Rumi at the beginning.

00:32:57:24 - 00:33:47:06
Unknown
Rumi Oh my gosh. Classical Persian Sufi poet does an absolutely beautiful job of allegories, saying Aesop's fables and all kinds of other stories in Islamic context showing how their deep messages about Islamic salvation and Islamic spirituality in these animal stories. And Rumi's is that a male or female? A Rumi is a man. He is the the founder of a mystical order in Sufism that people might have heard of the whirling dervishes because a ritual sacred dance was part of their ecstatic worship of God, as well as the ecstatic utterances of poetry.

00:33:47:09 - 00:34:17:12
Unknown
And so that's what Rumi is, is there he would would he take these fables and he would write them into poetry, into allegory. Exactly. So he would do these poems, and some of them he would utter ecstatically. But they're also written down and very elaborate large collections. And he interweaves beyond the interpretation, the allegorical interpretation, as he tells the story stage by stage.

00:34:17:12 - 00:34:41:02
Unknown
And he also does something absolutely beautiful that you don't find so much in the Greek and Roman traditions where he nests stories within stories. So sometimes you feel like a kind of like in that thousand one nights where you feel kind of lost, It's like, wait, where we didn't We start with a a lion and a fox. I don't remember how we even started, you know, And he has to work his way back out.

00:34:41:04 - 00:35:19:22
Unknown
And you can find that tradition of nested fables, nested animal stories. It goes back to ancient India, and that's another one of the sources for Aesop type fables later in Europe. Because what happens is that those very popular collections of fables from the Middle East that well, they started in India, they spread throughout the Middle East, and then they came to Europe, especially the Jewish writers who would take the versions they knew from Arabic or from Hebrew and translate them into Latin.

00:35:19:25 - 00:35:43:04
Unknown
Those stories enter the Aesop Arabic tradition detached from their frameworks. Unfortunately, because it's such a pleasure to read these wonderful nested stories, the nested stories never really caught on in that Aesop tradition because Aesop's Fables all about short, all about simple. But some of the stories that are known from those nested books of those show up in Aesop's Fables.

00:35:43:04 - 00:36:15:28
Unknown
And I have to say something about goodness of what we're talking about allegories and things. This is what religious traditions do, right? They look at popular culture and find ways to bring that popular culture into a religious framework of understanding where the oldest collection of folktales I want to say that we have in the world are the Buddhist Jataka tales, which are stories of the Buddha supposedly told, and the way he interprets those stories to bring them into a Buddhist framework.

00:36:15:28 - 00:36:41:25
Unknown
And there they're folktales of of India, often with animal characters, very much like Aesop's Fables, is that they are the stories of his past lives. And so that's what the John talk and meets his his past lives. And so the Buddha would tell these stories in his community to his followers, helping to explain some problem. But they're having to teach a lesson that will help the community to improve.

00:36:41:28 - 00:37:03:25
Unknown
And at the end of these stories, he would say yes. And in that story I was the virtuous tree spirit, or I was the brave little quail. And so and so was this character in the story. And so the way he does the the allegory or the interpretation is in terms of his past lives, which is really cool.

00:37:03:27 - 00:37:23:07
Unknown
Yeah. And so some of the stories in Ancient Greek Aesop's fables are the same stories that you find in the Buddhist giant Cockatiels. And we're never really going to know that the stories go from India to Greece. That's very possible. Do the stories go from Greece to India also extremely possible. We're never going to get the written evidence.

00:37:23:07 - 00:37:48:13
Unknown
We need to answer that question. All we can say is they went one way or the other because there they are. So we don't know. We don't know the origins of where they started from and how they how they spread. We know what how they spread in terms of the geography. We're not going to get a chronology. So we want this to be all historical and written down.

00:37:48:19 - 00:38:34:25
Unknown
You're going to be disappoint it. But if you just enjoy the stories, there are hundreds and hundreds of Aesop's fables attested in ancient Greece and Rome. And then when you get into the Renaissance, there are hundreds more that become part of the Aesop tradition and are pretty much absorbed into it. And then when you get to the 17th and 18th centuries, people start writing new Aesop's Fables just inspired by the tradition as as storytellers, often as poet storytellers, they write even more so that if you were to do a compendium and I kind of hope to do one of the European Aesop in its biggest form, I'm for sure I'll be able to get to

00:38:34:25 - 00:38:58:07
Unknown
1500. Maybe I'll be able to get to 2000. I did a book a few years ago, maybe ten years ago, called 1001 Fables, inspired by the thousand and One Nights. I thought, okay, I'll do a book of 1001 fables in Latin. And I did. So that's a that's a free ebook you can find at my website or so, but it's written in Latin, so you have to be able to read the Latin in order to read it.

00:38:58:09 - 00:39:19:14
Unknown
See now is that not an incentive to learn it? Want to learn Latin? Most of them do appear somewhere somehow in English translation, but that's that is one of the things I want to do now is go back to that book now that I'm retired and make sure that their English translations of them. And so if they're not, I'll do an English translation.

00:39:19:14 - 00:39:44:21
Unknown
But you know, now people really want, oh, the oldest Aesop's fables, the authentic Greek ones. I'm really just interested in any good fable. And that was the case also in the Renaissance. And 16th sometime 18th century that they were really interested in all the fables. They didn't have a historical origins kind of obsession about it. And so there actually some English translations, like Sir Roger was strange.

00:39:44:21 - 00:40:25:29
Unknown
A 17th century Aesop is full of Aesop's fables that are are medieval or Renaissance in origin. It's a great English translation. Really fun to read. Can you give us a fable and show us how it was in different places and how it looked different in different continents and different countries? Is there a fable that you can walk us through this back and forth with to give us a concrete example of one that's a lot of fun because it reflects different practices in keeping domestic animals, pets.

00:40:26:02 - 00:40:54:12
Unknown
There's a famous fable that you'll find in English versions of Aesop that's about a man who falls in love with his cat, and he's just desperately in love with his. And so he prays to the goddess Venus to turn his cat into a woman. And in different fables, give different interpretations of Venus's motivations and her attitude about all this.

00:40:54:12 - 00:41:25:06
Unknown
But she does agree. And and so she turns the cat into a beautiful woman. Beautiful cat, beautiful woman. And so there's the wedding. And so the man is so happy they have this lavish wedding. And then a mouse runs across the floor of the room. And the bride seeing this mouse gets down on all fours and goes chasing after the mouse because he's still a cat inside.

00:41:25:08 - 00:41:45:12
Unknown
And Venus is just totally disgusted and says, oh, if she wants to chase mice, I'm just going to turn her back into a cat. And so the moral of the story is that people are how they are. There's a strong conservative tendency in itself, like that that you can't change people's natures. Well, ancient versions of that. People are not about a cat.

00:41:45:14 - 00:42:10:10
Unknown
They're about a weasel because. The ancient Greeks and Romans did not keep cats. That was a Egyptian thing to do. But they kept weasels from mice. Control. And, you know, weasels are just pretty cool. So they had weasels and a weasel like a ferret. I'm trying to figure out what a weasel is. Yeah, exactly exactly. So a weasel is like a ferret.

00:42:10:10 - 00:42:36:00
Unknown
Exactly. And some people do keep ferrets as pets. Even now, it's not inconceivable about the the nice weasels. And so that's an example of a fable that's at that that Simpson and changes based on historical context. If you wanted to tell the fable about a weasel, you could. But it would be kind of weird because people wouldn't be able to connect to it.

00:42:36:00 - 00:43:06:00
Unknown
But a story about a cat that totally works, and so it becomes a story about a cat. And there's great art of this, of course, because one of the lovely things about modern Aesop, especially as it becomes imagine for children, but not just in children's books, there's there are often illustrations to go with these fables, right? Since the fable is so short, you can encapsulate the whole idea of the story in a single image.

00:43:06:00 - 00:43:34:06
Unknown
So there, for example, with this cat, there's a an illustration I can see in my mind's eye right now, and the mouse doesn't show up at the wedding banquet. This is actually in the bedroom later where the the woman is jumping off the marriage bed and her poor husband is they're shocked in the bed and and she's she's still a woman, but she's looking really fierce and her fingers are kind of bent like cats claws going after this mouse.

00:43:34:08 - 00:44:06:02
Unknown
And I should say about illustrated Aesop's at the New York Public Library online. You can see a beautiful scan of their Medici, Aesop, which is a really fascinating book. You know, the Renaissance is about Greek culture and Greek language coming back to Western Europe. And one of the things that happened was we got Greek texts of Aesop in Western Europe during the Renaissance, but most people couldn't read Greek right?

00:44:06:09 - 00:44:39:05
Unknown
And so the Ménages got themselves a beautiful manuscript, Greek manuscript of Aesop's Fables by Greek scholar. This is lovely, but of course they can't read it, so they get illustrations done for each of the fables in this manuscript and the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. They are full color painted, basically tiny miniature paintings in this Aesop's fables. So you can just imagine the Medicis, you know, flipping through their manuscript.

00:44:39:05 - 00:45:18:19
Unknown
They can't read the Greek. This like I recognize that one. That's that's Jupiter and and the eagle and the and the dung beetle. I recognize it. So you can see that absolutely gorgeous manuscript online at the New York Public Library. So that's something, just a beautiful resource, really exciting to see. One of the things I found and I, I mentioned to you before that I had been reading some true fables to my children, and some of them I find the morals are kind of strange, like they don't culturally fit with how we are today.

00:45:18:19 - 00:45:47:11
Unknown
So one of them is the Cat Bell, and it's all about how there's this family of mice and they're happy until a farmer gets a cat. And the cat, the cat's job is to eat the mice and the end of the cat is so good at sneaking up on the mice because he's so quiet. And so they all get together and decide we need to decide to do something to get so that we aren't always caught off guard by this cat.

00:45:47:16 - 00:46:06:09
Unknown
And someone says, Let's put a bell around the cat. And someone's like, Oh, well, that's a good idea, but who's going to do it? And that's the end of the story. And they say the moral of the story is you can have a good idea, but if no one's going to, I'm not usually those morals are like very succinct, but I can't remember the exact line.

00:46:06:11 - 00:46:33:13
Unknown
But I feel like culturally that's not it doesn't jive with where we would would start the story. Well, and part of the that's such a great example and I love that you brought that up because Belling the Cat is one of those fables that's become part of the people recognize it as an Aesop's Fables, and it shows up in all kinds of books now, But that's not attested in the ancient Greek and Roman collections of Aesop's Fables.

00:46:33:13 - 00:46:57:27
Unknown
And it's also a great example of a story, as you as you realize, it's it's a little bit lame as a story, right? I mean, like, it doesn't exactly have a climax. It's got a let down rather than a climax. And that's probably a story that really circulated more as a proverb. And there's a strong connection, a really strong connection between Aesop's fables and proverbs.

00:46:57:29 - 00:47:17:06
Unknown
And so we have this word fable, and we have this proverb, but there's some things that's sort of like in between. They're kind of fable and they're kind of like a proverb. And if you look at other languages, like, one of the things I've been working on a lot is, is looking at fables in African folk traditions and or literature, if you will, in Africa.

00:47:17:13 - 00:47:39:19
Unknown
And there are some African languages where they have the same word for both. What we would call a fable and what we would call a proverb that the connection between fables and proverbs is so strong that they don't even have separate words for them. So something like belling the cat is is is a kind of proverb that doesn't express a moral, it doesn't express a precept.

00:47:39:21 - 00:48:08:14
Unknown
It's just a very elegant way to describe a situation that that happens. Yeah, that's belling the cat. The lion's share is another really good example where the lion's share very well attested, very ancient Aesop's fable. You have that phrase the lion share. That's really the proverb. Be an expression of that fable. The lion. Sure, that's all you have to say because it's supposed to remind you of the story.

00:48:08:14 - 00:48:32:24
Unknown
It's not even the story that you would tell necessarily, and just say the lion share, and that the moral, if you will, or the observation is a kind of negative one, like with Belling the cat with the lion share. You know, that's the fable about the animals who go hunting with the lion and then foolishly expect that they're going to share at the end what they caught equally.

00:48:32:29 - 00:49:15:25
Unknown
No, that's not going to happen. The Lions are going to take everything and the lion's share is not care at all. That's the whole point. There is everything. And so if you're foolish enough to hunt with a lion, the lion's share, another one that that circulates like that just in a very abbreviated kind of proverbial form, a sour grapes and sour grapes is an interesting one because I would sometimes when I was teaching back when I first started and I was in a classics department when I first started, I would check on my students what they call proverbial competency, which is something that anthropologists who study Proverbs are interested in.

00:49:15:26 - 00:49:44:03
Unknown
You know, just just how well do people actually understand proverbs to recognize the proverbs in their culture? Can they apply them properly? And sour grapes is one that really surprised me. That's from the Aesop's fable about the fox who's going along and she sees the beautiful grapes hanging from the trellis. Beautiful, ripe grapes hanging from the trellis. So she jumps, she jumps and she jumps and she can't reach the grapes.

00:49:44:03 - 00:50:14:17
Unknown
And so she goes off all huffing and puffing and says, Oh, you want sour anyway. And sour grapes then becomes this amazing little two word phrase that encapsulates the idea that people speak badly about something they want that they can't get. You know, talk about an elaborate psychological thing being expressed in just two words. But my students would say, oh, sour grapes, that means something is bad, right?

00:50:14:17 - 00:50:35:29
Unknown
Because they're just they don't have the story in their heads anymore. They just have the phrase sour grapes and they're trying to guess what it means, the wine. And some of them would say, Oh, the lion's share. That's the biggest chair, right? No, the whole point of. The lion's share is it's not a share at all. The whole point of sour grapes is that the grapes aren't sour, but the fox can't get to them.

00:50:35:29 - 00:51:03:08
Unknown
So there's all kinds of things that go on in that space that we call, say, the moral of the fable that doesn't have anything to do with morality. Actually, some kinds of fables, you know, teach a kind of virtue. But by and large, Aesop's fables are pretty negative. They're usually about a mistake that someone makes, usually a fatal mistake, and it's often making fun of that person or animal who makes the mistake even when it's fatal.

00:51:03:10 - 00:51:31:20
Unknown
And it's what's called a negative example. So any collection of Aesop's fables, maybe not so much the children's ones, because the children's collections try to emphasize the positive, which is a distortion really, of the Islamic tradition and say, older collections of Aesop. So the ancient medieval Renaissance collections, the number of naked of exemplar far outnumber the the positive exemplar.

00:51:31:20 - 00:51:56:11
Unknown
The stories that teach you what to do by showing you what happens if you do the wrong thing. So don't be like the foolish animals that went hunting with the lion. Don't like the foolish fox and the fable of that fox and the crow and the chase. The moral of the story is not, Oh, that bad Fox. The moral of the story is don't be an idiot with Fox's tricks.

00:51:56:13 - 00:52:42:12
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the problem is not the trickster. The problem is you fall in tricks. So talk a little bit about how the fables were not originally intended for children, but now they're all entirely marketed towards children. How did that and what was the word you use in civilization that the deaf used? Yeah, it is at the core, it's very much about what happens when we develop literate culture, academic culture, scientific culture.

00:52:42:15 - 00:53:30:06
Unknown
All of those things are sort of meant to be claimed to be superior for traditional oral popular cultures. And so if we're going to keep Aesop around and Aesop is from the classical world, you know, the venerable great classical world. So, you know, Aesop has some claims to being kept around the idea then is that the what position is Aesop going to assume in this new world, this world where we're literate, this world where we experts, this world where we have scientific truth, where we have reality and realism?

00:53:30:09 - 00:53:57:01
Unknown
Well talking animals, fantasy like that, that's for kids. And so it's really the talking animals that did Aesop in more than anything else. You know, so if you look at, say, Proverbs, people don't don't take Proverbs as seriously, say as they used to do. And they basically don't know as many proverbs as they used to. But there's not a sense that Proverbs are for children.

00:53:57:03 - 00:54:32:24
Unknown
Proverbs have just been kind of marginal lines. They haven't really been Fanta wise, but Aesop's Fables, because of those talking animals, you've got talking animals, the kids have got stuffed animals in their bedrooms. They're talking to their stuffed animals. You know, it just ends up there. And it's kind of heartbreaking for me because even a great scholar like Joseph Jacobs, who really appreciates the whole vast, complex, beautiful history of Aesop's fables, that the way that Aesop's fables were important in so many cultures for so many reasons.

00:54:32:27 - 00:55:00:12
Unknown
He also thinks that in the modern world, Aesop's fables are just for children. He doesn't see that they have any value now. So in your intro to the the podcast, at the beginning you talked about the relevance of, of, of folktales and folklore for the world now. And I think Aesop's fables are incredibly relevant for now. And what makes you think that they're relevant?

00:55:00:14 - 00:55:31:21
Unknown
Because make it a convincing argument for us? Well, one of the most important things that some of the fables did and say in the ancient world was to give a way for slaves to to complain bitterly and vociferously about their lot in life. You know, it was a form of expression that was clearly used by marginalized people, slaves, for example, to complain about the injustice of the world that they lived in.

00:55:31:21 - 00:56:01:22
Unknown
So there's a whole group of Aesop's fables that are very much about the injustice done to people, like a really intense, sad, The horrifying one is, is this poor donkey. And the donkey often stands in for the slave. You can see why, because the donkey is this beast of burden. And so this donkey is complaining about, oh, my life, my life is so awful.

00:56:01:29 - 00:56:45:10
Unknown
It's just so awful to be a donkey. You know, I just the only thing that's going to set me free from this awful life is when I die. Okay, so the donkey dies, and what do they do? They make his skin into a drawing so that he is beaten even after he dies. That that, you know. So for people who want to say, normalize slavery in the ancient world and translate the word slave just as servant is like you look at a fable like that and you realize that there was an overwhelming grief and rage about slavery and it comes out in this little fable and you can see, like there aren't illustrations of Aesop's

00:56:45:10 - 00:57:10:20
Unknown
fables from the ancient world. But when you look at, say, an illustration of that fable and in Caxton, Aesop, that 15th century English, Aesop, it collapses the fable into one frame. And so you often see that happen. The whole plot of the fable is told in a single picture. So you see this very sad looking donkey with his head sort of cast down, and then you see a man just playing a drum right next to that donkey.

00:57:10:20 - 00:57:40:04
Unknown
So there it all is in one picture that the donkey is still going to be beaten even after he dies. So. So the Aesop's Fables are this kind of contested space. You have these these that are very much about injustice, but because it's a contested space, you also have these fables that were clearly told by the in power, by by financiers, by slave owners, fables that were designed to keep the slaves in their place.

00:57:40:06 - 00:58:03:19
Unknown
And so I mentioned before, there are some fables that are extremely conservative in their and their philosophy and their their outlook on the world, because those are the people who we're being told to try to keep slaves down to to to not exceed their station. So, for example, here's another donkey fable. And my students always used to just get angry about this one because it's like, yes, this is total injustice.

00:58:03:19 - 00:58:27:25
Unknown
So there's this don't We actually loves his master and he sees the master little pet dog. And the little pet dog runs and jumps on the master's lap and licks the master's face and the master lawsuit. When the donkey does when the dog does this and pets the dog is like, Oh, my dog, you really love me. Well, the donkey loves him, too, loves his master.

00:58:28:02 - 00:58:52:19
Unknown
And so he's going to show his master that he really loves him. So he goes running in and he puts his hopes up in the master's lap and starts licking his face. And of course, the master is outraged and he calls for his his his human slaves to come and beat that donkey in some versions, beat the donkey death because you should not rise above your station.

00:58:52:19 - 00:59:14:09
Unknown
If you're a failed slave, you're going to stay out in the field. You are not going to try to be the masters pet. How about that? Right. So yeah, that's how I get away. That would be heartbreaking. Right? And so when I said that the the fables aren't just for children is partly because there are some fables that are about sex and incest and rape and they're horrible.

00:59:14:12 - 00:59:37:29
Unknown
But then there are also peoples like this one, which are heartbreaking and a negative example, you know, that's intended to be teaching the lesson of failed slaves day out there in the field. But of course, we don't respond to it that way. We respond to it with this sense of outrage And protest is like, how can that be the end of the story?

00:59:37:29 - 01:00:03:12
Unknown
And so you can find, for example, sometimes the the sermons that get attached to these stories later on try to change the meaning. And you can also find some some stories where the the plot gets even flipped or extended. Like there's a great example already in Phaedrus because Phaedrus had he was a freedman, he had a real sense of of of the indignity of slavery and what it was like to be a slave.

01:00:03:15 - 01:00:34:12
Unknown
So there's a story that he tells and there are all kinds of stories about, oh, wolves and sheep, where the sheep are the victim of the wolves. And so there's this story about a a sheep. I won't go into the details, but she ends up having to sell off all her her wool because she's been falsely accused and a court case witnesses have lied and so she's had to shave off her wool and some versions of the fable She dies of cold because she doesn't have the wool.

01:00:34:15 - 01:00:54:09
Unknown
But I'm pretty sure it's in Phaedrus. I hope I'm remembering this right. But whatever. Somewhere out there, I'm pretty sure. And phaedrus she goes along and she sees her accuser, the wolf dead in the ditch. There's no explanation of how the wolves ended up dead in the ditch, but she sees him dead in the ditch and she says, Serve you right, you know, so that it really doesn't fit this topic.

01:00:54:09 - 01:01:19:20
Unknown
Model The jury should just be the the crow lost his cheese, the sheep lost or wool. This is what happens when you fall into the clutches of of of of schemers. But feed somehow wanted to give a more righteous ending to that to that fable. So he puts the schemer in the ditch and lets the sheep have the last word floating over that that wolf.

01:01:19:20 - 01:01:49:28
Unknown
And this happens the shifting, the changing with the fables, you know, because it's it's oral. There's not one official version. You know, every storyteller tells it their own way for their own audience, for their own purposes. And you see that in every version of Aesop's Fables. How interesting. So what is the most shocking revelation to you or something that we we haven't covered that you feel like is really important that we we talk about?

01:01:50:01 - 01:02:21:19
Unknown
I would just say that the most important thing that I wanted to share with everybody is that the Aesop's Fables is a tradition that really embraces the whole world. You find Aesop's Fables everywhere. And so I would really hope that we could keep using the the label. Aesop because it's a handy way to talk about these, you know, short fables with a punch line or a point of but, but not think that somehow it's, it's the special cultural possession of ancient Greece.

01:02:21:21 - 01:02:43:05
Unknown
You know, it's just a kind of a label and some people have proposed other labels like Beast fable you'll see sometimes used. But but I guess I would like to say that we could use this. Aesop Like, stable label for all stories. And I've been working a lot, like I said, on African stories and finding all kinds of Aesop's fables.

01:02:43:05 - 01:03:17:17
Unknown
There, including like familiar Aesop's fables that either came to Africa or like in the example from India before stories that came to Africa or came from Africa, you know, Greeks and Romans running all over Northern Africa. So it's it's not really clear which way the stories will going, but they're Aesop's Fables in Africa. And for listeners out there, whatever cultural tradition you belong to, if they're some Aesop type fables in your culture, let me know because I love to collect them, find out about them.

01:03:17:20 - 01:03:41:13
Unknown
I'm easy to find it at Twitter. I blog all the time. Law Gibbs dot net and I would just be fascinated to know about Aesop type fables in anybody else's cultures, and we'll definitely put your link up on our our page, which is a fabric of folklore dot com so that anyone can get in contact with you and and find all of your your links that you mentioned today and anything that's not on your website.

01:03:41:13 - 01:04:04:27
Unknown
Well we'll put it on our website as well. Fantastic. I did have a question when you were talking about the African fables. Well, the stories that stuck out in my head from my childhood, which is how the elephant got its nose and I can not find that. But it's as if it was someone grabbed on his nose and pulled on the crocodile.

01:04:04:29 - 01:04:22:05
Unknown
The crocodile grabbed his nose. And that's how the elephant get to says, Is that an example of a fable? Because it's a longer tale. It's not short. A Well, it could be told in a very short manner. And and that actually launches into another subject. Maybe I could come back some time and talk about India. That's the thing.

01:04:22:07 - 01:04:54:18
Unknown
The most famous version of that is from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. You know, Kipling grew up in India and and his work is infused with with, with all elements of Indian culture. He did Jungle Book with the Animals, but at the same time, it's not folklore. And so the whole position of Just So stories is an example of a literary imitation of the type of fable that's called an etiological fable.

01:04:54:18 - 01:05:17:12
Unknown
And there actually are lots of etiological fables. And it's up to we didn't talk about that, so I'm glad you brought that up. But that type of story of how a certain animal got its physical feature or why a certain animal does what it does, you'll find out those types of stories in Aesop's Fables, but you also find them in in all kinds of other myths and stories.

01:05:17:12 - 01:05:47:03
Unknown
But but but that one about the the elephants knows that people usually know that from Kipling's just so stories which are pretty long literary type stories. And there's a wonderful book I want to recommend a recent book called Not So Stories, where writers from India and maybe other places in South Asia. I don't remember, decided that they wanted to do a book of stories to sort of reclaim this tradition from colonizer.

01:05:47:03 - 01:06:11:04
Unknown
Rudyard Kipling To reclaim it for themselves, for their own. It's called Not So Stories, and I'm pretty sure it's available to Kindle. Okay, great. Yeah, we'll put that, that link up because that would be quite a great book to read to my kids. I mean, is it it, it's intended for children. Some of some of the stories are, some not.

01:06:11:06 - 01:06:37:01
Unknown
But I'll tell you, a Kipling is so really not for children because he's it's it sounds very old fashioned now so I would recommend take a look at the not so stories but I could tell you so many amazing books of folktales from India that are for children. So honestly, if you want to have me come back because I say, okay, well, we'll have and then we'll have you on later on too, to talk about this topic to our group.

01:06:37:04 - 01:06:59:03
Unknown
Thank you so much for coming on. This is a fascinating topic. Well, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. And thank you vocal Roos for following us on this quest of Aesop's fables around the world. Hopefully you enjoyed yourself as much as I did. And like we said, with all the links that we've mentioned today will be on w w w s dot com.

01:06:59:03 - 01:07:33:14
Unknown
And we also have an Instagram page and a Facebook community page where this is a page that we've created for you to have dialog with us, to tell us what you thought about today's show, what you want to hear about and in future episodes. So this is really an engagement page for you that we've created. So we want to hear your thoughts about our shows and what your favorite part of the episode was and if you're enjoying our show, one of the best ways that you can help us is to share, comment, rate and review and anyone who gives us a review.

01:07:33:14 - 01:07:55:09
Unknown
I am going to give a shout out on the next episode, so please give us all the stars and a fantastic review and I will give you a thank you on our episode. So if you are looking for different ways to share, you can make a TikTok video about your new favorite podcast, Fabric of Folklore and antiques. I got it really understand.

01:07:55:09 - 01:08:18:14
Unknown
I'm not really on Tik tok, but people seem to do a lot of dancing and pointing at a dialog dialog boxes. So that's all you have to do is point out a dialog box. So thanks so much for joining us. While we unravel the mysteries of folklore, keep the vocalized and into the next time.