It is difficult to say what are and what are not the Fables of Æsop.
Almost all the fables that have appeared in the Western world have been
sheltered at one time or another under the shadow of that name. I could
at any rate enumerate at least seven hundred which have appeared in
English in various books entitled _Æsop’s Fables_. L’Estrange’s
collection alone contains over five hundred. In the struggle for
existence among all these a certain number stand out as being the most
effective and the most familiar. I have attempted to bring most of
these into the following pages.
There is no fixed text even for the nucleus collection contained in
this book. Æsop himself is so shadowy a figure that we might almost be
forgiven if we held, with regard to him, the heresy of Mistress
Elizabeth Prig. What we call his fables can in most cases be traced
back to the fables of other people, notably of Phædrus and Babrius. It
is usual to regard the Greek Prose Collections, passing under the name
of Æsop, as having greater claims to the eponymous title; but modern
research has shown that these are but medieval prosings of Babrius’s
verse. I have therefore felt at liberty to retell the fables in such a
way as would interest children, and have adopted from the various
versions that which seemed most suitable in each case, telling the
fable anew in my own way.
Much has been learnt during the present century about the history of
the various apologues that walk abroad under the name of “Æsop.” I have
attempted to bring these various lines of research together in the
somewhat elaborate introductory volume which I wrote to accompany my
edition of Caxton’s _Æsop_, published by Mr. Nutt in his _Bibliothèque
de Carabas_. I have placed in front of the present version of the
“Fables,” by kind permission of Mr. Nutt, the short abstract of my
researches in which I there summed up the results of that volume. I
must accompany it, here as there, by a warning to the reader, that for
a large proportion of the results thus reached I am myself responsible;
but I am happy to say that many of them have been accepted by the
experts in America, France, and Germany, who have done me the honour to
consider my researches. Here, in England, there does not seem to be
much interest in this class of work, and English scholars, for the most
part, are content to remain in ignorance of the methods and results of
literary history.
I have attached to the “Fables” in the obscurity of small print at the
end a series of notes, summing up what is known as to the _provenance_
of each fable. Here, again, I have tried to put in shorter and more
readable form the results of my researches in the volume to which I
have already referred. For more detailed information I must refer to
the forty closely-printed pages (vol. i. pp. 225-268) which contain the
bibliography of the Fables.