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The Boy Who Cried Wolf
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This article is about the fable of Aesop. For the song by The Style Council, see Boy Who Cried Wolf (song). For album by Passenger, see The Boy Who Cried Wolf (album). For song by futures, see The Holiday (album). For the film segment in a Chinese short film, see Crossed Lines (film).
Not to be confused with Cry Wolf, Boy Cried Wolf, or The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.
Francis Barlow's illustration of the fable, 1687
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index.[1] From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable[2] and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 The fable
2 Fable's history
3 References
4 External links
The fable[edit]
The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking wolves are attacking his flock. When a wolf actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In later English-language poetic versions of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in Fables for Five Year Olds (1830) by John Hookham Frere,[4] in William Ellery Leonard's Aesop & Hyssop (1912),[5] and in his interpretation of Aesop's Fables (1965) by Louis Untermeyer.[6]
The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them". It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in which the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed".[7] William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".[8]
Fable's history[edit]
The story dates from Classical times, but, since it was recorded only in Greek and not translated into Latin until the 15th century, it only began to gain currency after it appeared in Heinrich Steinhöwel's collection of the fables and so spread through the rest of Europe. For this reason, there was no agreed title for the story. Caxton titles it "Of the child whiche kepte the sheep" (1484), Hieronymus Osius "The boy who lied" ("De mendace puero", 1574), Francis Barlow "Of the herd boy and the farmers" ("De pastoris puero et agricolis", 1687), Roger L'Estrange "A boy and false alarms" (1692), and George Fyler Townsend "The shepherd boy and the wolf" (1867). It was under the final title that Edward Hughes set it as the first of ten "Songs from Aesop's fables" for children's voices and piano, in a poetic version by Peter Westmore (1965).
Teachers have used the fable as a cautionary tale about telling the truth but a recent educational experiment suggested that reading "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" increased children's likelihood of lying. On the other hand, reading a book on George Washington and the cherry tree decreased this likelihood dramatically.[9] The suggestibility and favourable outcome of the behaviour described, therefore, seems the key to moral instruction of the young. However, when dealing with the moral behaviour of adults, Samuel Croxall asks, referencing political alarmism, "when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?"[10]
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Mythfolklore
Jump up ^ The Concise Dictionary...(Cassel Publications 1992)
Jump up ^ "wolf". Compact Oxford English Dictionary. askoxford.com. OUP. June 2005. Retrieved 19 September 2007.
Jump up ^ Fable 5, "Of the boy and the wolf"
Jump up ^ "The Shepherd-boy and the Wolf"
Jump up ^ "The boy and the wolf"
Jump up ^ Translated by C. D. Yonge: Section XI (apophthegms) of the life of Aristotle
Jump up ^ "Of the child whiche kepte the sheep" at mythfolklore.net
Jump up ^ Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman, New York 2009. Nurture Shock – New Thinking about Children. pp. 83–84. ISBN 978-0-446-50412-6.
Jump up ^ The Fables of Aesop, Fable CLV; available on Google Books, p. 263
External links[edit]
Works related to The Boy Who Cried Wolf at Wikisource
Laura Gibbs' gallery of 15th–20th century book illustrations of the fable
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Aesop
Aesop's
Fables
The Ant and the Grasshopper
The Ass and his Masters
The Ass and the Pig
The Ass Carrying an Image
The Ass in the Lion's Skin
The Astrologer who Fell into a Well
The Bear and the Travelers
The Belly and the Members
The Bird-catcher and the Blackbird
The Bird in Borrowed Feathers
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Cat and the Mice
The Cock and the Jewel
The Cock, the Dog and the Fox
The Crow and the Pitcher
The Crow and the Snake
The Deer without a Heart
The Dog and Its Reflection
The Dog and the Wolf
The Dove and the Ant
The Farmer and the Stork
The Farmer and the Viper
The Fir and the Bramble
The Fisherman and the Little Fish
The Fowler and the Snake
The Fox and the Crow
The Fox and the Grapes
The Fox and the Lion
The Fox and the Mask
The Fox and the Sick Lion
The Fox and the Stork
The Fox and the Weasel
The Fox and the Woodman
The Frog and the Ox
The Frogs Who Desired a King
The Goat and the Vine
The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
The Honest Woodcutter
The Horse and the Donkey
The Lion and the Mouse
The Lion, the Bear and the Fox
The Man with two Mistresses
The Mischievous Dog
The Miser and his Gold
The Mountain in Labour
The Mouse and the Oyster
The North Wind and the Sun
The Oak and the Reed
The Old Man and Death
The Old Woman and the Doctor
The Rose and the Amaranth
The Satyr and the Traveller
The Sick Kite
The Snake and the Crab
The Snake in the Thorn Bush
The Tortoise and the Hare
Town Mouse and Country Mouse
The Travellers and the Plane Tree
The Trees and the Bramble
The Two Pots
The Walnut Tree
Washing the Ethiopian white
The Wolf and the Crane
The Wolf and the Lamb
The Woodcutter and the Trees
The Young Man and the Swallow
Apocryphal
An ass eating thistles
The Bear and the Gardener
Belling the cat (also known as The Mice in Council)
The Blindman and the Lame
The Boy and the Filberts
Chanticleer and the Fox
The Dog in the Manger
The drowned woman and her husband
The Elm and the Vine
The Fox and the Cat
The Gourd and the Palm-tree
The Hawk and the Nightingale
Jumping from the frying pan into the fire
The milkmaid and her pail
The miller, his son and the donkey
The Monkey and the Cat
The Priest and the Wolf
The Scorpion and the Frog
The Shepherd and the Lion
Still waters run deep
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Related
Jataka tales
Panchatantra
Perry Index
The labyrinth of Versailles
The Lion's Share
Aesop's Fables (album)
Screen
adaptations
Aesop's Film Fables
The Grasshopper and the Ants
Print
adaptations
Ysopet
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian
"The Cock and the Jasp"
"The Taill of how this forsaid Tod maid his Confessioun to Freir Wolf Waitskaith"
"The Taill of Schir Chanticleir and the Foxe"
"The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous"
La Fontaine's Fables
Translators
Demetrius of Phalerum
Phaedrus
Babrius
Avianus
Dositheus Magister
Alexander Neckam
Adémar de Chabannes
Odo of Cheriton
John Lydgate
Kawanabe Kyōsai
Laurentius Abstemius
Roger L'Estrange
Gabriele Faerno
Hieronymus Osius
Marie de France
Robert Henryson
Jean de La Fontaine
Ivan Krylov
Nicolas Trigault
Zhang Geng
Robert Thom
Zhou Zuoren
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The Boy Who Cried Wolf from Aesop's Fables by Aesop
Songs
"Boy Who Cried Wolf" (1985)
"Cry Wolf" (1986)
"Cry Wolf" (1987)
Other
"Marge Gets a Job"
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