Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/244

214 very popular in the Middle Ages. Lydgate founded his Chorle and Bird upon it.

Inserted among a selection from Poggio's Facetiae by Stainhöwel, who derived it from Romulus, iv. 18, so that it was probably once extant in Phædrus. A similar fable occurs as the Kukuta Jātaka which is figured on the Buddhist Stupa of Bharhut. I have reproduced the figure in my History, p. 76, and suggest there that the medieval form represents the original of the Jātaka better than that occurring in the present text, from considerations derived from this illustration.

All the preceding fables occur in the Stainhöwel, and so in Caxton's Æsop. The remainder have come into the popular Æsops from various sources, some of which are by no means easy to trace.

Avian 4, but not included by Caxton in his Selections from Avian. L'Estrange has it as his Fable 223. It occurs also in Babrius, 18, whence it came to the Greek prose Æsop. An epigram of Sophocles against Euripides contains an allusion to this fable (Athen. xiii. 82). The fable is applied to the behaviour of wives by Plutarch: ''Conj. Praec.'' chap. xii. It is given by La Fontaine vi. 3, Lôqman (the Arabic Æsop) xxxiv., and Waldis' Esopus i. 89.

Avian 32. Babrius 20. Greek Æsop, ed. Halm, 81. Not included by Caxton in his Selections. "Put your shoulder to the wheel" obviously comes from this fable, and thus ultimately from Avian's line: