AESOP'S FABLE

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Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media. The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him.

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The Frogs and the Well

Two frogs lived together in a marsh. But one hot summer the marsh dried up, and they left it to look for another place to live in: for frogs like damp places if they can get them.

By and by they came to a deep well, and one of them looked down into it, and said to the other, "This looks a nice cool place. Let us jump in and settle here."

But the other, who had a wiser head on his shoulders, replied, "Not so fast, my friend. Supposing this well dried up like the marsh, how should we get out again?"

Moral:

"Look before you leap."

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In the 19th Century, an English poet called Jeffreys Taylor turned the fable into verse:

The Two Frogs, by Jeffreys Taylor

THE day was hot,—the heat was dire,

Enough to make a post perspire;

The ponds were empty, pumps were dry,

The ducks were thirsty, so was I.

Two frogs resolved (quite right I think)

To take a tour in search of drink;

And long they sped them on their way,

And many a dangerous leap had they;

But there appear’d a well at length,

Which both approach’d with failing strength;

But when they gave an anxious peep,

Alas! ’twas twenty fathoms deep!

“Well,” said the youngest, “let’s descend;”

“No,” said the other, “youthful friend;

For should the water dry here too,

I ask thee what we then should do?”

Deep was the well, not quite so deep

Our moral lies,—”look ere you leap.

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It’s very close to the moral of the Seven P's: