The Wolf and the Crane
The Wolf and the Crane (Joseph Jacobs's Version)
A Wolf had been gorging on an animal he had killed, when suddenly a small bone in the meat stuck in his throat and he could not swallow it. He soon felt terrible pain in his throat, and ran up and down groaning and groaning and seeking for something to relieve the pain. He tried to induce every one he met to remove the bone. “I would give anything,” said he, “if you would take it out.” At last the Crane agreed to try, and told the Wolf to lie on his side and open his jaws as wide as he could. Then the Crane put its long neck down the Wolf’s throat, and with its beak loosened the bone, till at last it got it out.
“Will you kindly give me the reward you promised?” said the Crane.
The Wolf grinned and showed his teeth and said: “Be content. You have put your head inside a Wolf’s mouth and taken it out again in safety; that ought to be reward enough for you.”
Gratitude and greed go not together.
(From the book The Fables of Aesop: Selected, Told Anew, and Their History Traced by Joseph Jacobs, done into pictures by Richard Heighway — Public Domain)
Title Here (George Fyler Townsend's Version)
(From the book Three Hundred Æsop’s Fables Literally Translated from the Greek by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend, M.A. — Public Domain)
Title Here (V. S. Vernon Jones's Version)
(From the book Aesop's Fables: A New Translation by V. S. Vernon Jones, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton and illustrations by Arthur Rackham — Public Domain)
Title Here (Milo Winter's Version)
(From the book The Æsop for Children, with pictures by Milo Winter — Public Domain)
Title Here (J. H. Stickney's Version)
(From the book Æsop’s Fables: A Version for Young Readers by J. H. Stickney, illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull — Public Domain)
Title Here (Samuel Croxall's Version)
(From the book Æsop's Fables, Embellished with One Hundred and Eleven Emblematical Devices. Translator: Samuel Croxall — Public Domain)
Title Here (Thomas Bewick's Version)
(From the book The Fables of Æsop, and Others, with designs on wood by Thomas Bewick — Public Domain)
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