Matching Morals and Fables Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Ass Eating Thistles

There have been a number of closely related stories and fables featuring content involving an ass, luxury food items and thistles penned over the centuries, be it by the hand of Greek poets, Renaissance authors or more modern writers. 'The Ass Eating Thistles' - sometimes seen as 'An Ass Eating Thistles' - has featured in a number of Aesop anthologies, including Samuel Croxall's 'The Fables of Aesop and Others' (1722). Other sources classify this fable as apocryphal.

The gist of the fable is that an ass that has the burden of carrying luxury ingredients on its back prefers to eat mere thistles. As written in Croxall, "How many greedy epicures would think themselves happy, amidst such a variety of delicate viands as I now carry! But to me, this bitter, prickly thistle is more savoury and relishing, than the most exquisite and sumptuous banquet". The moral here is that taste is subjective; that is to say, one man's meat is another man's poison.

An ass belongs to the genus Equus, a taxonomic grouping that also consists of horses and zebras.

Answer: The Farmer and His Dogs

'The Farmer and His Dogs' is a fable that is included in the Perry Index and has the reference number Perry 52. This index was created by an American scholar in an attempt to sort the fables most likely to have been written by Aesop (or the group of authors contributing towards Aesop) from those fables that have crept into the corpus over time.

'The Farmer and His Dogs' is a cautionary tale of not trusting somebody to look out for your best interests when you can see that person openly betraying the trust of others. A farmer and his dogs are stranded in a prolonged storm with no food supplies to hand; the farmer proceeds to eat his sheep, his goats and even the oxen that toiled so hard for him. The dogs make their escape ahead of time, knowing that they would likely be next!

The Canis genus is assigned to the likes of dogs, wolves and coyotes.

Answer: The Fox Without a Tail

'The Fox Without a Tail' (Perry 17) - known in some Aesop anthologies as 'The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail' - is an interesting story in which a fox that lost his tail whilst escaping from a trap tries to convince other foxes in his community to give up their tails too!

The tailless fox provides explanations - that differ across the many versions of the story - as to why giving up their tails would improve the lives of the other foxes. The reality is that he wanted to dispense with his own embarrassment and drag others down to share in his misfortune. The wider group of foxes were alert to this and asked the tailless fox to turn around. This exposed the ruse and the tailless fox was ridiculed. Be aware of selfish motives!

The Vulpes genus is made up of species that are commonly referred to as "true foxes".

Answer: The Hares and the Frogs

'The Hares and the Frogs' (Perry 138) is an example of a fable attributed to Aesop that has many variants but the concept at the heart of the story is that hares are timid creatures and are constantly hopping away from threats, real or perceived. The hares eventually become so disheartened by their situation that they hop to a body of water with the intention of killing themselves.

As they reach the water, they disturb a group of frogs. The frogs jump into the water in fear of the hares and, in so doing, give the hares a perspective on life that they had hitherto been missing. The generalised moral is nicely captured in the version from 'The Fables of Aesop' (1894) by Australian folklorist, John Jacobs: "'Truly', said one of the Hares, 'things are not so bad as they seem'. There is always someone worse off than yourself".

Hares belong to the genus Lepus.

Answer: The Horse and the Lion

'The Horse and the Lion' is a fable about deception. In the version featured in 'Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists' (1692) by English pamphleteer and Member of Parliament for Winchester, Sir Roger L'Estrange, a hungry lion sets his sights on devouring a horse. The lion is aware that he lacked the agility to predate the horse on competitive and transparent terms and so elects to use artifice instead.

The lion pretends to be a physician and attempts to engage the horse in conversation. The horse could see straight through this quackery but rather than openly reveal his awareness, he decided to fight artifice with artifice. The horse pretends to have a thorn in his hoof, making him lame. The lion, thinking about what a wonderful meal awaits him, goes to inspect the hoof but the horse kicks the lion in the head and merrily trots off into the distance unscathed.

Classifying Aesop is a rather messy business (as I have found out over the course of two years trying to complete this quiz!) and many scholars have devoted a large part of their professional lives to making sense of what is out there in this domain. Whilst 'The Horse and the Lion' does not feature as an entry in the Perry Index, the fable is very similar to 'The Wolf Physician' (Perry 187) and the two have become closely linked.

The genus Panthera consists of five extant "big cats": jaguars, leopards, tigers, snow leopards and, of most relevance to this fable, lions.

Answer: The Lion and the Dolphin

George Fyler Townsend was a 19th century British translator remembered for translating fables into the English language and for compiling them into 'Three Hundred Aesop's Fables' (1867). One of Townsend's major contributions to this field of literature was the provision of a clear expression of the moral of a fable. Prior to this, the moral was often implied or ambiguous.

Townsend's 1867 compilation features 'The Lion and the Dolphin' (Perry 145) and the fable explores the dynamic between two powerful creatures, each sovereign over their own domain; the lion dominates the land, whilst the dolphin is king of the sea. The lion and the dolphin entered into an alliance and promised that one would help out the other should the need arise.

A situation arose on land and the lion requested the assistance of the dolphin; the latter was more than willing to help but the dolphin of course flourishes only in water. When the dolphin couldn't come to the aid of the lion, the lion assumed he had been betrayed. Townsend concluded the fable with the dolphin responding: "Nay, my friend, blame not me, but Nature, which, while giving me the sovereignty of the sea, has quite denied me the power of living on the land". The moral? Even where there is will, there must also be a way!

Delphinus is a monotypic genus (a genus with just one species), the only member of which is the common dolphin.

Answer: The Lioness

Occupying slot 257 in the Perry Index is 'The Lioness', a fable that goes by a number of other titles including 'The Lioness and the Fox' and, in the more archaic style of L'Estrange, 'A Lyoness and a Fox'. The reason why 'Fox' is not present in the title of some versions is that those fables do not refer to foxes, instead they refer more generically to beasts.

This fable is a very simple one and it is blunt and unapologetic in its message. A fox tries to humiliate a lioness for only giving birth to one cub at a time whereas a fox gives birth to a litter. The lioness simply retorts that the cub becomes a lion. The end.

The lioness is a majestic member of the Panthera genus.

Answer: The Wolf and the Shepherds

'The Wolf and the Shepherds' (Perry 453) is a very short fable. The Townsend version of the tale - as set out in 'Three Hundred Aesop's Fables' (1867) - is just two sentences long: "A wolf, passing by, saw some shepherds in a hut eating a haunch of mutton for their dinner. Approaching them, he said, 'what a clamour you would raise if I were to do as you are doing!'". An extremely brief lesson in hypocrisy!

The wolf belongs the genus Canis whereas the shepherds belong to the genus Homo (well, at least you'd like to think so).

Answer: The Thief and the Boy

One of the last few entries in the core Perry Index of fables attributed to Aesop is 'The Thief and the Boy' (Perry 581). In Samuel Croxall's articulation of this story in 'The Fables of Aesop and Others' (1722), a thief encounters a boy crying near a well and proceeds to ask the boy about what has upset him.

The boy tells the thief that he has lost a silver tankard in the well. Knowing this, the thief takes off his clothes and jumps into the well with the intention of stealing the tankard. The deceiving thief has himself been deceived; the boy had lied about the existence of the silver object and whilst the thief is in the well, the boy runs off with all of his clothes!

Both of the characters from this fable are humans and therefore of the genus, Homo.

Answer: The Monkey and the Camel

'The Monkey and the Camel' (Perry 83) is a literary reminder to play to your strengths. A monkey entertains an audience of beasts by dancing, an activity in which the monkey excels! Watching the enthralling spectacle is a camel - who out of envy of the attention being lavished upon the monkey - feels the need to compete. The camel rises and attempts to dance but fails spectacularly, much to the annoyance of the crowd who set upon the camel with clubs and hound him out of the area.

Unsurprisingly, the Camelus genus is made up of species of camel (dromedary, bactrian and wild bactrian).