Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/246

216

Greek Prose Æsop. L'Estrange, 147.

La Fontaine, ii. 2, who probably got it from Abstemius, who may have derived it from the Fables of Bidpai. L'Estrange, 391. It is admirably told in the Prologue to Piers Plowman, texts B. and C. M. Jusserand, in his recent monograph on Piers Plowman (Eng. ed. p. 43), gives a representative of this fable found on the misericord of a stall at Great Malvern, the site of the poem. In a conspiracy against James III. of Scotland, Lord Grey narrated the fable, when Archibald Earl of Angus exclaimed "I am he who will bell the cat." Hence afterwards he was called Archibald Bell-the-Cat (Scott, Tales of a Grandfather, I. xix.). The Cat in Plowman's apologue is John of Gaunt. Skelton alludes to the fable in his Colin Clout. We get the expression "bell the cat" from it.

L'Estrange, 133. It occurs as a folk-tale in Grimm, and among the Folk in England.

Greek ÆEsop, ed. Halm, 90. Lôqman, 14. La Fontaine, i. 16. L'Estrange, 113. The similar fable of the Messengers of Death (on which cf. Dr. Morris in Folklore Journal) is certainly derived from India.

An original fable of Gay's, which has perhaps retained its popularity owing to the couplet