Monthly Archives: August 2013
121.The Farmer and the Stork
A FARMER placed nets on his newly-sown plough-lands and caught a number of cranes, which came to pick up his seed. With them he trapped a stork that had fractured his leg in the net and was earnestly beseeching the farmer to spare his life.
“Pray save me, master,” he said, “and let me go free this once. My broken limb should excite your pity. Besides, I am no crane, I am a stork, a bird of excellent character; and see how I love and slave for my father and mother. Look too, at my feathers – they are not the least like those of a crane.”
The farmer laughed aloud and said,
“It may be all as you say, I only know this: I have taken you with these robbers, the cranes, and you must die in their company.”
❖ Birds of a feather flock together.
❖ Using your head is safer than just trusting to robbers.
120.The Farmer and the Snake
ONE WINTER a farmer found a snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound.
“Oh,” cried the farmer with his last breath, “I deserved that . . . for pitying a scoundrel.”
❖ The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.
❖ When you see a snake, think twice before getting close to it.
❖ Standing and walking on your own two feet with long and thick woolen socks on, is hardly a nasty mistake in a European snake terrain.
119.The Farmer and the Fox
A FARMER, who bore a grudge against a fox for robbing his poultry yard, caught him at last, and being determined to take an ample revenge, tied some rope well soaked in oil to his tail, and set it on fire. The fox by a strange fatality rushed to the fields of the farmer who had captured him. It was the time of the wheat harvest; but the farmer reaped nothing that year and returned home grieving sorely.
❖ The innocent may also run rampant.
❖ It seems unwise to seek an outlet for negative feelings at the cost of solving a problem with integrity.
118.The Farmer and the Cranes
SOME CRANES made their feeding grounds on some ploughlands newly sown with wheat. For a long time the farmer, brandishing an empty sling, chased them away by the terror he inspired; but when the birds found that the sling was only swung in the air, they ceased to take any notice of it and would not move. The farmer, on seeing this, charged his sling with stones, and killed a great number. The remaining birds at once forsook his fields, crying to each other,
“It is time for us to be off to Liliput: for this man is no longer content to scare us, but begins to show us in earnest what he can do.”
❖ Quietly the gentle reflect before killing others.
