It is believed that Aesop lived from about 620 to 560 B.C. It’s not known exactly when the first of Aesop’s fables were written as the fables were originally handed down just like a myth or a legend.

Aesop’s fables were originally used to make thinly disguised social and political criticisms, the similarity to parables can be seen in most of his short tales.

I was given a copy of “Æsops Fables for Children” as a Christmas pressie this year from a young relative who obviously thinks I’m in my second childhood (Don’t you dare say it!).

Reading through it during the Queens Christmas Day speech (lets’ face it, anything is better than that!) I came across the following fable which I found was very relevant in these uncertain times:

A Goatherder, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some wild goats that had mingled with them, and shut them up together with his own for the night.

The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold. He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him and of making them his own. When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the wild goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains.

The Goatherder scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him, when during the storm he had taken more care of them than of his own herd. One of them, turning about, said to him “That is the very reason why we are
so cautious; for if you yesterday treated us better than the goats you have had for so long, it is plain also that if others came after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves.”

“Know what I mean? Eh? Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Saaay no more! ” – Monty Python