The Cock and the Jewel
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The Cock and the Jewel is a fable attributed to Aesop. It is one of a number of the fables which feature only a single animal figure in its "story", such as for example, The Fox and the Grapes.
In its most cogent, unelaborated form, the fable is very short. It presents, in effect, a riddle on relative values. A cockerel seeking food finds instead a precious gemstone, recognises the worth it has for others, but rejects it as having no practical use to himself since he puts greater value on simple corn. The rejection is generally shown in the form of a direct address by the cockerel to the gemstone.
One modern English translation runs thus:
A Cock, scratching the ground for something to eat, turned up a Jewel that had by chance been dropped there. "Ho!" said he, "a fine thing you are, no doubt, and, had your owner found you, great would his joy have been. But for me ! give me a single grain of corn before all the jewels in the world."
- Aesop's Fables, translated by V.S. Vernon Jones (1912)
As a trope in literature, the fable, in this short form, is reminiscent of stories used in zen such as the koan.
[edit] Literary tradition
In medieval Europe, The Cock and the Jewel had a strong de facto prominence by virtue of the fact it was the opening fable in the elegaic Romulus, one of the standard, most widely current fable manuscripts in that culture.[1] The Romulus, composed in Latin verse, was a common classroom text and frequently committed to memory in early school years. Literary translations of the fable, using the Latin Romulus as their source, include those by Marie de France, John Lydgate and Robert Henryson and translators tended to retain its first-place position.
The fable in the Romulus is typically short and given in eight lines of elegaic metre with a further two providing closure in a moral judgement. It portrays the cock as startled to discover such a beautiful object in the dirt (in sorde manens) and represents him as recognising that he is not the right creature to have found it. The writer's emphatic moral conclusion provided the standard medieval interpretation of the fable. It runs (in Latin):
- Tu Gallo stolidum, tu iaspide pulcra sophye
- Dona notes; stolido nil sapit ista seges.
- Cockerel, you represent a fool (stolido): jewel, you stand for the fine gift
- of wisdom (sophye); for the fool, this corn (seges) has no taste.
The explicit judgement of the cock's action as foolish, on the grounds that the jewel represents wisdom rather than mere allure or material wealth, may represent the standard medieval "answer" to Aesop's de facto "riddle", but variants in the tradition did exist. For example, Lydgate's version, written c.1410, appears to interpret the cockerel's action as wise on the grounds that he is content with what is sufficient for his needs.[2]
The most sophisticated literary expansion to survive from the era occurs in Robert Henryson's fable sequence, The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, written c.1480. Although Henryson creates his own original selection and ordering of fables, he still retains The Cock and the Jewel at the head of the cycle. His own moral conclusion follows the standard verse Romulus closure, making the jewel an unambiguous figure for wisdom and condemning the consequent materialism of the cockerel, but the larger structure of his poem adds complexity to this.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Léopold Hervieux, ed., Les Fabulistes Latins depuis le siècle d'Auguste jusqu'à la. fin du Moyen-Age. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1883-94; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1960, vol. 2, 316-7. In this work, the fable's Latin title is De Gallo et Jaspide.
- ^ Edward Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and his Followers. University Press of Florida, 2000. p.129.
- ^ See the discussion in Edward Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and his Followers. University Press of Florida, 2000. pp.155-58.
