Sunday, October 11, 2015

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon - Aesop

Aesop was of Greek origin (620-564 BC) and was known as a storyteller or fabulist. He was a bit like the Panchatantra writers in that he used animals and birds and fish etc to tell his fables with a moral in the end.

So dolphins, whales and gudgeon (it's a smal fish), donkeys, goats, foxes, wolves, lions, pigeons, mice and in some cases even men pop in and out of really short stories that do not extend beyond a page. For instance in the story of the whales and dolphins the gudgeon pops up to settle a matter of diffrence between the two great creatures when the whale says they'd rather do battle than have their disagreements resolved by a small fry like him. So if you're a gudgeon you know what to do. And on and on.

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