The Fox and the Crow (Aesop)
Encyclopedia
"The Fox and the Crow" is one of Aesop's Fables
, numbered 124 in the Perry Index
. There are early Latin and Greek versions and the fable may even have been portrayed on an ancient Greek vase. The story is used as a warning against listening to flattery.
has found a piece of cheese and retired to a branch to eat it. A fox, wanting the cheese for himself, flatters the crow, calling it beautiful and wondering whether its voice is as sweet to match. When the crow lets out a caw, the cheese falls and is devoured by the fox.
The earliest surviving versions of the fable, in both Greek and Latin, date from the 1st century of the Common Era
. Evidence that it was well know before then comes in the poems of the Latin poet Horace
, who alludes to it twice. Addressing a maladroit sponger called Scaeva in his Epistles, the poet counsels guarded speech for 'if the crow could have fed in silence, he would have had better fare, and much less of quarreling and of envy'..
Then in a Satire on legacy-hunting, we find the lines
The poem has generally been taken as a caution against listening to flatterers. Phaedrus prefaces his Latin poem with the warning that the one 'who takes delight in treacherous flattery usually pays the penalty by repentance and disgrace'. One of the few who gives it a different interpretation is Odo of Cheriton
, whose lesson is that virtue is forgotten in the pursuit of ambition. Babrius
has the fox end with a joke at the crow's credulity in his Greek version of the story: 'You were not dumb, it seems, you have indeed a voice; you have everything, Sir Crow, except brains.' In Jean de la Fontaine
's French version (I.2), the fox delivers the moral by way of recompense for the tidbit. In Norman Shapiro's translation:
As was the case with several others of La Fontaine's fables, there was dissatisfaction in Christian circles, where it was felt that morality was offended by allowing the fox to go unpunished for its theft. Therefore a sequel was provided in the form of a popular song of which a version is recorded in Saskatchewan
. In this the fox’s funeral is dolefully described but ends with the crow cawing from its branch,
An alternative discomfiture of the fox was provided in one of the many adaptations of the fable in advertisements for various products on French blotting pads. In the case of Kodavox tapes, the crow is cheered up by the assurance that his performance can now be recorded - with no fear of losing its cheese to flattering foxes in future!
A similar story of flattery rewarded exists in the Buddhist scriptures as the Jambhu-Khadaka-Jataka
. In this a jackal praises the crow's voice as it is feeding in a rose-apple tree
. The crow replies that it requires nobility to discover the same in others and shakes down some fruit for the jackal to share. What seems to be a depiction of the story on a painted vase discovered in excavations at Lothal
from the Indus Valley Civilisation suggests that the story may have been known there at least a thousand years earlier than any other source.
There was also a setting of the French words by the Dutch composer Rudolf Koumans in Vijf fabels van La Fontaine (op. 25, 1968) for school chorus and orchestra. In 1995 Xavier Benguerel i Godó set a Catalan translation of the fable for recitation with orchestra in his 7 Fábulas de la Fontaine. And in an English version by Peter Westmore, it was set for children's voices and piano by Edward Hughes as the second of his ten Songs from Aesop's Fables (1965). A purely musical version was composed by Canadian musician Richard Poirier in 2010.
The fable was also given a jazz interpretation by Dynastie Crisis (1970) and a rap version was made for children by Don Pedro et ses Dromadaires in 1998. Among musical video interpretations is the one by Sesame Street
, designed by Etienne Delessert and presented in musical fashion by a folk singer. The song group mewithoutYou
recorded a slightly updated version of the story in "The Fox, The Crow, and The Cookie". Its main point is to use the framework of the fable to weave a verbally inventive text but in the video made to accompany it the underlying story becomes clearer. A fox tries to snatch a cookie from the vendor's barrow. While the latter is distracted with chasing off the fox, the crow swoops down and steals two. The fox then asks the crow for a share and, when this does not work, resorts to flattery: Your lovely song would grace my ears...Your poems of wisdom, my good crow, what a paradise they bring! And the fox gets his cookie.
and it has been speculated that a political commentary is intended. The picture is that of an ungainly bird sitting in a tree under which an animal is lying. They are looking at each other with their mouths open, and there is some object in the air between them. The reason for pointing to this particular fable is quite clear. Harold's vanity has led him to overreach himself and so lose everything. A later tapestry on which the story is portrayed came from the Gobelins Manufactory
and was designed by Jean-Baptiste Oudry
.
In later centuries the fable was used on household china, on tiles, on vases, and figured in the series of La Fontaine medals cast in France by Jean Vernon. A less conventional use was the hydraulic statue built for the Versailles Labyrinth
that was constructed for Louis XIV
, one of thirty nine sets of statues in the maze illustrating Aesop's fables. The fox and the crow eventually figured, among many other beasts, on the grandiose monument to La Fontaine designed by Achille Dumilâtre in 1891. This stood at the angle of the Jardins de Ranelagh between the Avenue Ingres and Avenue du Ranelagh in Paris XVI and was melted down during World War 2. It was replaced by Charles Correia's present monument in 1983. This portrays the fabulist standing and looking down at the cheese-bearing crow at his feet, while the fox gazes up at it from the steps to the pedestal.
Given the circumstances of the replacement, it is not surprising that the design is so traditional and, indeed, reminiscent of Pierre Julien
's 18th century statue of La Fontaine in the Louvre
. But the monuments incorporating the fable in the former Soviet territories have been more inventive and modernist. There it is the Russian adaptation by Ivan Krylov
, "The Fox and the Raven" (in this case little different from his master's version), that is being alluded to. It figures among several others on panels around Andrey Drevin's monument beside the Patriarch Ponds in Moscow
. There is a similar disjunction between the fox and the raven in the 1965 sculpture by Stefan Horota in Rostock Zoo. Another piece of street sculpture brings them strikingly together in the stylised monument to the famous Soviet processed cheese brand Druzhba (Friendship) on Rustaveli Street in Moscow.
In the United States the fable figured at one time as one of six bronze gate panels commissioned for the William Church Osborne Memorial Playground in Manhattan’s Central Park
in 1952. The work of sculptor Paul Manship
, it is now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum
. The seated fox looks up at the crow in an attractive piece that makes the most of the decorative possibilities of the reeds and oak-leaves that play a prominent part in the overall design. The challenge with this subject is always to avoid the limitations imposed by a fable that has more dialogue than action. André Deluol also manages to vary the formula in the stone sculpture he created outside the La Fontaine infant school in the Croix-de-Vernailles quarter of Etampes
in 1972. There the fox look back over its shoulder at the crow in a design held together by the large leaves of a stylised tree. Possibilities are more restricted in the two dimensional plane of a picture: whether printed or painted, these have presented an almost uniform monotony of design over whole centuries. One of the rare variations is the painted panel by Léon Rousseau (fl.1849-81) which pictures the fox crouching with one paw on the fallen cheese and bending his head directly upwards to taunt the agitated crow.
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
, numbered 124 in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
. There are early Latin and Greek versions and the fable may even have been portrayed on an ancient Greek vase. The story is used as a warning against listening to flattery.
The Story
In the fable a crowCrow
Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...
has found a piece of cheese and retired to a branch to eat it. A fox, wanting the cheese for himself, flatters the crow, calling it beautiful and wondering whether its voice is as sweet to match. When the crow lets out a caw, the cheese falls and is devoured by the fox.
The earliest surviving versions of the fable, in both Greek and Latin, date from the 1st century of the Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
. Evidence that it was well know before then comes in the poems of the Latin poet Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
, who alludes to it twice. Addressing a maladroit sponger called Scaeva in his Epistles, the poet counsels guarded speech for 'if the crow could have fed in silence, he would have had better fare, and much less of quarreling and of envy'..
Then in a Satire on legacy-hunting, we find the lines
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- A season’d Scrivener, bred in Office low,
- Full often mocks, and dupes the gaping crow.
-
-
-
-
-
-
The poem has generally been taken as a caution against listening to flatterers. Phaedrus prefaces his Latin poem with the warning that the one 'who takes delight in treacherous flattery usually pays the penalty by repentance and disgrace'. One of the few who gives it a different interpretation is Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton
Odo of Cheriton was a Roman Catholic preacher and fabulist.He visited Paris, and it was probably there that he gained the degree of Master...
, whose lesson is that virtue is forgotten in the pursuit of ambition. Babrius
Babrius
Babrius was the author of a collection of fables written in Greek. He collected many of the fables that are known to us today simply as Aesop's fables .Practically nothing is known of him...
has the fox end with a joke at the crow's credulity in his Greek version of the story: 'You were not dumb, it seems, you have indeed a voice; you have everything, Sir Crow, except brains.' In Jean de la Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
's French version (I.2), the fox delivers the moral by way of recompense for the tidbit. In Norman Shapiro's translation:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Flatterers thrive on fools' credulity.
- The lesson's worth a cheese, don't you agree?"
- The crow, shamefaced and flustered swore,
- Too late, however: "Nevermore!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
As was the case with several others of La Fontaine's fables, there was dissatisfaction in Christian circles, where it was felt that morality was offended by allowing the fox to go unpunished for its theft. Therefore a sequel was provided in the form of a popular song of which a version is recorded in Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
. In this the fox’s funeral is dolefully described but ends with the crow cawing from its branch,
-
-
- I’m not at all sorry, now that he’s dead,
- He took my cheese and ate it in my stead,
- He’s punished by fate - God, you’ve avenged me.
-
An alternative discomfiture of the fox was provided in one of the many adaptations of the fable in advertisements for various products on French blotting pads. In the case of Kodavox tapes, the crow is cheered up by the assurance that his performance can now be recorded - with no fear of losing its cheese to flattering foxes in future!
A similar story of flattery rewarded exists in the Buddhist scriptures as the Jambhu-Khadaka-Jataka
Jataka
The Jātakas refer to a voluminous body of literature native to India concerning the previous births of the Buddha....
. In this a jackal praises the crow's voice as it is feeding in a rose-apple tree
Syzygium
Syzygium is a genus of flowering plants that belongs to the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. The genus comprises about 1100 species, and has a native range that extends from Africa and Madagascar through southern Asia east through the Pacific...
. The crow replies that it requires nobility to discover the same in others and shakes down some fruit for the jackal to share. What seems to be a depiction of the story on a painted vase discovered in excavations at Lothal
Lothal
Lothal is one of the most prominent cities of the ancient Indus valley civilization. Located in Bhāl region of the modern state of Gujarāt and dating from 2400 BCE. Discovered in 1954, Lothal was excavated from February 13, 1955 to May 19, 1960 by the Archaeological Survey of India...
from the Indus Valley Civilisation suggests that the story may have been known there at least a thousand years earlier than any other source.
Musical Versions
Since the fable stands at the beginning of La Fontaine's fables, generations of French children commonly learned it by heart. This will explain the many settings by French composers. They include- Jacques OffenbachJacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
in Six Fables de La Fontaine (1842) for soprano and small orchestra - Charles Lecocq in Six Fables de Jean de la Fontaine for voice and piano
- Charles GounodCharles GounodCharles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
in a setting for a capella voices (1857) - Benjamin GodardBenjamin GodardBenjamin Louis Paul Godard was a French violinist and Romantic composer.-Biography:Born in Paris, Godard was a student of Henri Vieuxtemps. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1863 where he studied under Vieuxtemps and Napoléon Henri Reber and accompanied Vieuxtemps twice to Germany...
in Six Fables de La Fontaine for voice and piano, op.17 (c.1871) - André CapletAndré CapletAndré Caplet was a French composer and conductor now known primarily through his orchestrations of works by Claude Debussy.-Biography:...
in Trois Fables de Jean de la Fontaine (1919) for voice and piano, in a forcefully dramatised version - Maurice DelageMaurice DelageMaurice Delage was a French composer and pianist.Delage was born and died in Paris. A student of Ravel and member of Les Apaches, he was influenced by travels to India and the East. Ravel's "La vallée des cloches" from Miroirs was dedicated to Delage.Delage's best known piece is Quatre poèmes...
in Deux fables de Jean de la Fontaine (1931) - Georges Van ParysGeorges Van ParysGeorges Van Parys was a French composer of film music and operettas. Among his musical influences were the group Les Six, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy...
in Les Frères Jacques rencontrent La Fontaine (1964), a comedy performance recorded with this quartet. - Isabelle AboulkerIsabelle AboulkerIsabelle Aboulker is a French composer, particularly known for her operas and other vocal works. In 1999 she gained a prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts and in 2000 the music prize of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques for her numerous lyric pieces.-Life and work:Isabelle...
, among seven in her children's operetta La Fontaine et le Corbeau (1999).
There was also a setting of the French words by the Dutch composer Rudolf Koumans in Vijf fabels van La Fontaine (op. 25, 1968) for school chorus and orchestra. In 1995 Xavier Benguerel i Godó set a Catalan translation of the fable for recitation with orchestra in his 7 Fábulas de la Fontaine. And in an English version by Peter Westmore, it was set for children's voices and piano by Edward Hughes as the second of his ten Songs from Aesop's Fables (1965). A purely musical version was composed by Canadian musician Richard Poirier in 2010.
The fable was also given a jazz interpretation by Dynastie Crisis (1970) and a rap version was made for children by Don Pedro et ses Dromadaires in 1998. Among musical video interpretations is the one by Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, designed by Etienne Delessert and presented in musical fashion by a folk singer. The song group mewithoutYou
MewithoutYou
Me Without You, stylized as mewithoutYou and abbreviated as mwY, is an American rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The band consists of vocalist Aaron Weiss, guitarist Michael Weiss, bassist Greg Jehanian and drummer Rickie Mazzotta. MewithoutYou's music is generally dominated by...
recorded a slightly updated version of the story in "The Fox, The Crow, and The Cookie". Its main point is to use the framework of the fable to weave a verbally inventive text but in the video made to accompany it the underlying story becomes clearer. A fox tries to snatch a cookie from the vendor's barrow. While the latter is distracted with chasing off the fox, the crow swoops down and steals two. The fox then asks the crow for a share and, when this does not work, resorts to flattery: Your lovely song would grace my ears...Your poems of wisdom, my good crow, what a paradise they bring! And the fox gets his cookie.
Other artistic applications
The fable is depicted no less than three times in the border of the Bayeux TapestryBayeux Tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth—not an actual tapestry—nearly long, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings...
and it has been speculated that a political commentary is intended. The picture is that of an ungainly bird sitting in a tree under which an animal is lying. They are looking at each other with their mouths open, and there is some object in the air between them. The reason for pointing to this particular fable is quite clear. Harold's vanity has led him to overreach himself and so lose everything. A later tapestry on which the story is portrayed came from the Gobelins Manufactory
Gobelins manufactory
The Manufacture des Gobelins is a tapestry factory located in Paris, France, at 42 avenue des Gobelins, near the Les Gobelins métro station in the XIIIe arrondissement...
and was designed by Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, engraver, and tapestry designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game.-Biography:...
.
In later centuries the fable was used on household china, on tiles, on vases, and figured in the series of La Fontaine medals cast in France by Jean Vernon. A less conventional use was the hydraulic statue built for the Versailles Labyrinth
The labyrinth of Versailles
The labyrinth of Versailles was a maze in the Gardens of Versailles with groups of fountains and sculptures depicting Aesop's fables. André Le Nôtre initially planned a maze of unadorned paths in 1665, but in 1669, Charles Perrault, advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains each...
that was constructed for Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
, one of thirty nine sets of statues in the maze illustrating Aesop's fables. The fox and the crow eventually figured, among many other beasts, on the grandiose monument to La Fontaine designed by Achille Dumilâtre in 1891. This stood at the angle of the Jardins de Ranelagh between the Avenue Ingres and Avenue du Ranelagh in Paris XVI and was melted down during World War 2. It was replaced by Charles Correia's present monument in 1983. This portrays the fabulist standing and looking down at the cheese-bearing crow at his feet, while the fox gazes up at it from the steps to the pedestal.
Given the circumstances of the replacement, it is not surprising that the design is so traditional and, indeed, reminiscent of Pierre Julien
Pierre Julien
Pierre Julien was a French sculptor who worked in a full range of rococo and neoclassical styles.He served an early apprenticeship at Le Puy-en-Velay, near his natal village of Saint-Paulien, then at the École de dessin of Lyon, then entered the Parisian atelier of Guillaume Coustou the Younger...
's 18th century statue of La Fontaine in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
. But the monuments incorporating the fable in the former Soviet territories have been more inventive and modernist. There it is the Russian adaptation by Ivan Krylov
Ivan Krylov
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov is Russia's best known fabulist. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine, later fables were original work, often satirizing the incompetent bureaucracy that was stifling social progress in his time.-Life:Ivan Krylov was born in...
, "The Fox and the Raven" (in this case little different from his master's version), that is being alluded to. It figures among several others on panels around Andrey Drevin's monument beside the Patriarch Ponds in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. There is a similar disjunction between the fox and the raven in the 1965 sculpture by Stefan Horota in Rostock Zoo. Another piece of street sculpture brings them strikingly together in the stylised monument to the famous Soviet processed cheese brand Druzhba (Friendship) on Rustaveli Street in Moscow.
In the United States the fable figured at one time as one of six bronze gate panels commissioned for the William Church Osborne Memorial Playground in Manhattan’s Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
in 1952. The work of sculptor Paul Manship
Paul Manship
Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
, it is now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
. The seated fox looks up at the crow in an attractive piece that makes the most of the decorative possibilities of the reeds and oak-leaves that play a prominent part in the overall design. The challenge with this subject is always to avoid the limitations imposed by a fable that has more dialogue than action. André Deluol also manages to vary the formula in the stone sculpture he created outside the La Fontaine infant school in the Croix-de-Vernailles quarter of Etampes
Étampes
Étampes is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southwest from the center of Paris . Étampes is a sub-prefecture of the Essonne department....
in 1972. There the fox look back over its shoulder at the crow in a design held together by the large leaves of a stylised tree. Possibilities are more restricted in the two dimensional plane of a picture: whether printed or painted, these have presented an almost uniform monotony of design over whole centuries. One of the rare variations is the painted panel by Léon Rousseau (fl.1849-81) which pictures the fox crouching with one paw on the fallen cheese and bending his head directly upwards to taunt the agitated crow.
Philately
The fable has been a favourite with stamp designers. Among the countries that have featured it are the following:- AlbaniaAlbaniaAlbania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
issued a 1995 set with several fables on each stamp; the fox and the crow is featured on the 3 leke stamp. - FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
commemorated the third centenary of La Fontaine's death in 1995 with a set of six stamps featuring individual fables, of which this was one. - GreeceGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
issued a 1987 set dedicated to Aesop's fables; the fox and the crow figures on the 32 drachma stamp. - HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
issued sets dedicated to the fables in both 1960 and 1983; in the former the fox and the crow was on the 2 forint stamp and on the 80 forint stamp in the latter. - The MaldivesMaldivesThe Maldives , , officially Republic of Maldives , also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean formed by a double chain of twenty-six atolls oriented north-south off India's Lakshadweep islands, between Minicoy Island and...
issued a set in 1990 in which Walt DisneyWalt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
characters act out the fables; the fox and the crow appears on the 1 rufiyaa stamp. - MonacoMonacoMonaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
celebrated the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jean de la FontaineJean de La FontaineJean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
with a 50 centimes composite stamp on which the fox and the crow was one of the fables illustrated. - NigerNigerNiger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
also celebrated this 350th anniversary with a set of air mail stamps which also incorporated the fable's moral; the fox and the crow figures on the 25 franc stamp and the design adapts elements of Léon Roussaeu's panel - PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
issued a set dedicated to folk tales in 1980 and featured this fable on the 40 groszy stamp.
External links
- 15th-20th century illustrations from books