The term “fairy tale” is not easy to define, but we recognize one when we see it. “The Frog Prince,” a story that most would consider a fairy tale, was traditionally the leading story in the Grimm collection. A handsome prince is imprisoned by a curse, turned into a frog. One day, a princess loses her favorite ball in a well where the frog dwells. The princess accepts an offer by the frog to retrieve the ball, and she promises to keep him and love him and be his companion for life — a promise she has no intention of honoring. Her father, the king, makes her keep her word. In her anger, she throws the frog against the wall. But a frog does not get up from the ground; a handsome prince does. The curse has been broken. (Many readers will be more familiar with the modern version of the tale, in which the princess kisses the frog to break the curse.)

There are, in Chesterton’s view, necessary ethical lessons to be learned by children and adults from fairy tales. Jack and the Beanstalk teaches the reader to launch an assault against pride; Cinderella, to embrace humility; Beauty and the Beast, to overcome prejudice with love. In “The Frog Prince,” the king makes the princess reject her selfish behavior and keep her word. These moral lessons are fundamental to learning to live honorably and compassionately towards others.

But Chesterton believed the fairy tale had a more important value than just the ethical lessons. (After all, adults do not need magical frogs to learn how not to lie.) At a higher level, the fairy tale placed in Chesterton’s heart the conviction “that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful” (67). Chesterton believed that what modern people called incontrovertible and unalterable scientific facts were in reality mysterious. He explains the difference between this “scientific fatalism” (67) and the views of the “fairy-tale philosopher” (68):

[Learned men in the modern world] talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. […] You cannot imagine two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees […] growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. (59)

Fairy tales challenge the reader to imagine magical worlds different from our own. We are reminded by the fairy tale of the thing we never should have forgotten — that our world might have been different and is magical the way it is: unexplainable, unpredictable, wild, and surprising. With our imaginations awakened, we can see with new eyes our own world filled with wonder once again.

Unlike the fairy-tale philosopher, the scientific fatalist does not believe in this unpredictable magic: everything either already has or eventually will have a law-abiding explanation. Everything in nature is predictable and can be counted upon to happen. Things could not have been any other way than they are, and nothing is surprising or wild. Chesterton believed that the fairy-tale philosophy prompted a better response to reality than the one constructed by anti-supernaturalistic versions of scientific inquiry.

When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a “law.” […] It is not a necessity. […] We have no right to say that it must always happen. (60)

There are thousands of years of the fairy tale tradition, but the folks who have the most to say about it are those who defended it through the period we now call modernity (very roughly, from the Enlightenment until the 1960s) — the rise of scientific fatalism. The fairy tale is a protest against the Enlightenment, for the writers and defenders of fairy tales like Chesterton (and C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle after him) were writing worlds of magical refuge in the midst of modernity. Without the magic of the fairy tale, the magic of life disappears in a morass of strictly rational, naturalistic facts, theories, propositions, experiments, and arguments. The fairy tale frees us from the law-based, unchangeable world of the scientific fatalist, where explanations are everywhere but wonder is lost.

References

• Chesterton, G.K. “The Ethics of Elfland.” Orthodoxy. 1908. Grand Rapids: Regent College Publishing, 2004. (Full text of this chapter available online.)

1. “Religious”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority. God is good, and His actions are beyond human scrutiny.
2. “Humanistic”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked. If man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

I have previously looked at two myths involving characters disobeying divine commands: Satan in Paradise Lost and Iblis in the Qur’an. For each of these stories, we have seen two main lines of interpretation — one approving the disobedient character’s actions and one disapproving them — and explored how these interpretations reflect those two themes. I will now conclude this series by looking at another such story of disobedience, the Aesopic fable of Zeus and the turtle.

This fable exists in many different versions spanning hundreds of years, but the basic plot in each is the same. Zeus invites the animals to his wedding. All the animals attend except the turtle, who either skips the wedding altogether or shows up incredibly late. When Zeus later asks the turtle why she did not attend, she replies with some proverbial expression similar to the English, “There’s no place like home.” Zeus gets angry at the turtle and makes her carry her home with her wherever she goes. This type of fable is called “aetiological” (from Greek aition, “cause”) because it explains the origin or cause of something — in this case, how the turtle got her shell.

Aesopic fables have not received the same volume of literary criticism or commentary as Paradise Lost and the Qur’an. To find interpretations of this fable, I will look at a variety of sources: the morals attached to different versions of the fable, an essay from the seventeenth century, and recent work in Aesopic scholarship.

The oldest written version of the fable exists in a collection most likely dating from the second or third century CE. The author of this collection interprets the fable in a single-sentence moral following the story:

The fable shows that people often prefer to live simply at home than to live lavishly at someone else’s house. (Gibbs 235)

In this interpretation, the turtle is not criticized for judging the divine command and then choosing to disobey it. The moral does not explicitly praise the turtle’s actions, but the lack of criticism reflects in part what I am calling the “humanistic theme.” The turtle confined to her shell could be seen as somewhat analogous to Prometheus unjustly chained to the rocky crags, whom I mentioned in the first article in this series.

This interpretation appears in the oldest written version of the fable, but Aesopic fables existed in oral form for at least five hundred years before this. The aetiological fables originally worked like folktales to explain the world, and morals were most likely attached to them at a later time (Rodríguez Adrados 162). The Latin grammarian Servius, writing near the end of the fourth century CE, tells a version of the fable without a moral. (This comes in his grammatical commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid , referring to line I.505 that contains a form of the word testudo, Latin for “turtle.”) In this version, the turtle begins as a nymph named Khelônê (Greek for “turtle”). She says nothing about the value of her own house but simply mocks the wedding from afar. When Mercury (Jupiter’s wedding coordinator in this version) discovers her absence, he punishes her by turning her into an animal and throwing her house on top of her.

An important difference between this fable and the stories of Satan and Iblis is the lack of a religious context. Zeus’s invitation is not exactly a command, it relates to a social function and not to any form of worship, and the turtle’s punishment does not seem to be a spiritual one. Many interpreters allegorize Aesopic fables with gods to place them in a more secular context. Ancient Greek society was governed by relationships of reciprocity, and some interpreters in antiquity would most likely have understood this fable as a criticism of the turtle for neglecting her social responsibilities (Zafiropoulos 105). Though it does not appear in any surviving ancient texts, this interpretation does appear in a version published in 1604 by Candidus Pantaleon. The turtle arrives at the wedding late, espousing her proverbial expression to Jupiter there. Pantaleon criticizes the turtle on three points in his moral:

[1] There are some who are accustomed to have practically preferred paltry things to the great splendors of palaces. [2] You should be afraid to provoke nobles by delaying. […] [3] You should be quick to placate your wrong actions with speech. (105)

Though these interpretations can hardly be said to reflect the religious theme in full — Zeus is not portrayed as transcendent good beyond all human scrutiny — they do reflect it in part. The turtle has an obligation to respect and obey Zeus; she is criticized for disobeying his command and for doing what she incorrectly thought was right.

Sir Roger L’Estrange collected and translated a large number of fables into English in 1692, attaching to each fable a short essay inspired by it. In the fable of Zeus and the turtle, he recognizes both interpretations:

We are to learn from hence (says the old Moral) that [1] there’s no trifling, dallying, or delaying with Men in Power: And that [2] Contentment in a mean Condition at Home, is beyond all the luxurious Treats in the World. (198)

L’Estrange prefers the second interpretation, and his essay proceeds to praise the turtle for his sensibility and common sense and to criticize the vanity, pomp, over-indulgence, and wickedness represented by Jupiter and his palace. L’Estrange’s interpretation reflects fully what I have been calling the “humanistic theme,” in which the disobedient character is praised for scrutinizing and disobeying the divine command. Ironically, however, L’Estrange concludes his essay by placing this interpretation in a religious context by introducing Providence over and above Jupiter:

What was the Punishment? [Jupiter] sent [the Tortoise] Home again. That is to say, [Jupiter] remanded [the Tortoise] to […] his [own] Choice. […] Providence turns the very Punishment of a good Man, into an Equivalence to a Reward, by improving that to his Advantage, which was intended for his Ruin. (199)

These two themes summarize well the range of insights found in Western myths concerning man’s relationship to the divine. These myths of disobedience against a divine command, along with their contrary interpretations, demonstrate the importance of these two themes in the Western tradition. Furthermore, these differing interpretations should caution us against presuming that individual myths have “meanings” in any absolute sense. Even stories like Paradise Lost that appear to be overtly religious can inspire in readers a secular or humanistic sentiment. We should not dismiss any of these interpretations as “incorrect” but should seek instead to understand the personal, cultural, and universal human factors that have led to these various interpretations.

References

• Gibbs, Laura. Aesop’s Fables. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco. A History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Trans. Leslie A. Ray. New York: Brill, 1999.
• Maurus Servius Honoratus. Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil. (Latin text available online.)
• Zafiropoulos, Christos A. Ethics in Aesop’s Fables: The Augustana Collection. New York: Brill, 2001.
• Candidus Pantaleon. Centum et Quinquaginta Fabulae. 1604. Unpublished translation by Laura Gibbs. (Latin text available online.)

By the time Rumi was composing his massive poem, the Mathnawi, Aesop’s fables had already been circulating throughout the Mediterranean world for two thousand years. The fables were not seen as distinctively Greek, but had been adopted wholeheartedly by Arabic and Persian storytellers, such as Rumi. Like other Sufi teachers, Rumi made use of these secular stories side by side with religious parables and legends in order to reveal esoteric doctrines to his followers.

To give you an example of how Rumi appropriates an Aesop’s fable for mystical religious teaching, let us take Rumi’s version of the famous fable of the “lion’s share.” First, let’s start with a traditional Greek version of the fable, which features a lion who goes hunting with a donkey and a fox:

A lion and a donkey and a fox joined as partners, promising to go hunting together. They made a big catch, and the lion ordered the donkey to divide it among them. Making three equal portions, the donkey asked him to choose, but the lion was infuriated, feasted upon the donkey and then ordered the fox to make the division. The fox put everything into one pile, leaving just a tiny bit for herself, and told the lion to choose. When the lion asked her how she learned to apportion things in this way, the fox replied: “From the donkey’s misfortune.” (Chambry #209)

This Greek story is a typical Aesop’s fable: witty, vicious, and wise. It certainly does not seem to contain profound revelations about the right relations of God and man, but this is precisely what Rumi discovers in the story. As soon as Rumi identifies the lion not with secular authority but with absolute divine authority, the way to a mystical understanding of the fable becomes clear.

Here is how Rumi begins his version: “Melt away your existence, as copper in the elixir, in the being of Him who fosters existence. You have fastened both your hands tight on ‘I’ and ‘we’: all this ruin is caused by dualism.” In the Aesopic tradition, you often find a moralizing preface to the telling of a fable, so it is not unusual to find a moral stated at the beginning of a fable like this. What is unusual is the profoundly religious theme that Rumi wants to illustrate with this fable: somehow the story of the lion and his hunting companions is going to turn into a lesson about the annihilation of dualism and unity with God.

Just as in Aesop, the three animals — in Rumi’s version, a lion, a wolf, and a fox — go hunting together, and when it is time to divide the spoils, the wolf and the fox foolishly expect that the lion will share with them, not realizing just whom they are dealing with. There they are, in the presence of God, and they do not even recognize him. The lion, in fact, finds it a bit embarrassing to consort with these limited beings: “A moon like this is disgraced by the stars: it is amongst the stars for generosity’s sake,” as Rumi explains. “The spirit has now become the body’s fellow-traveller.” For Rumi, the animals’ hunting expedition is a metaphor for the human condition itself, in which the spirit (the lion) is shackled to the body, trapped in this corporeal partnership.

The lion then orders the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf divides the spoils into three parts, one for each of the partners in the hunt. Outraged, the lion tears off the wolf’s head, just as the lion tore the donkey to pieces in the Aesop’s fable. Yet, unlike the lion in Aesop who simply munches on the donkey in silence, the lion offers an explanation of his actions: “Since the sight of me did not transport thee out of thyself, a spirit like this must needs die miserably.” To die thus at the claws of the lion is actually a blessing for the wolf: “Since thou wert not passing away from thyself in my presence, ’twas an act of grace to behead thee.”

Then, just as in the Aesop’s fable, the lion turns to the fox and orders him to divide up the spoil. The fox does not save even a morsel for himself in this version of the story; he gives everything to the lion. Again as in Aesop, the lion asks the fox where he learned to divide the spoils in this way, and the fox replies: “O king of the world, I learned it from the fate of the wolf.”

But this is not the end of the story. In Rumi’s version, the lion then gives the whole of the spoils to the fox, and  speaks these words of blessing: “Inasmuch as thou hast become pledge to love of me, pick up all of it and take it and depart. O fox, since thou hast become entirely mine, how should I hurt thee when thou hast become myself?” The fox then thanks the lion for giving him the privilege of having gone second, after the wolf; otherwise, he would surely have met the same fate as the wolf. This allows Rumi to conclude that we are lucky to be living now, with the examples of past generations to guide us: “So that we have heard of the chastisements which God inflicted upon the past generations in the preceding time, that we, like the fox may keep better watch over ourselves from considering the fate of those ancient wolves.”

Rumi has thus taken a traditional Aesop’s fable and turned it into a meditation on oneness with God and obedience to divine authority. This approach exemplifies what Randy has called the “religious theme” in myths and legends about the confrontation between the human and the divine.  Rumi’s fox worships at the feet of the lion, addressing him with the words “O king of the world,” and is duly rewarded for this devotion. In Aesop, on the other hand, there is a much more strongly humanistic theme: after seeing what happened to the would-be rebel who defied the lion, the fox concedes the lion’s share, but the words she speaks are not words of worship. Instead, the fox uses her wit to provide a sly critique of the lion, even if she cannot challenge his authority directly. If you were to use just one word to characterize the attitude of Aesop’s fox, it would have to be “cynical.” In my next article, I’ll consider the archetypal Cynic philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, and the famous legend of “Diogenes and his lamp.” This, too, is a story that shows up both in Aesop’s fables and in the mystical poetry of Rumi, providing us with another opportunity to consider the shifting fortunes of the religious and humanistic themes in the Greek and Muslim traditions.

References

• Chambry, Emile (editor). Fables / Esope. 1926. (The full Greek text of this fable is available online, along with an English version, at Aesopica.net.)
• Nicholson, Reynold A. (editor and translator). The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi. 1926 (reprinted 1990); The Mathnawi of Jalaluddin Rumi: Commentary. 1937 (reprinted 1985). The fable of the lion is found in Book I, beginning at line 3009.