The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar

The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar (Joseph Jacobs's Version)

You must know that sometimes old women like a glass of wine. One of this sort once found a Wine-jar lying in the road, and eagerly went up to it hoping to find it full. But when she took it up she found that all the wine had been drunk out of it. Still she took a long sniff at the mouth of the Jar. “Ah,” she cried,

“What memories cling ’round the instruments of our pleasure.”

(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)


The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar (George Fyler Townsend's Version)

An Old Woman found an empty jar which had lately been full of prime old wine and which still retained the fragrant smell of its former contents. She greedily placed it several times to her nose, and drawing it backwards and forwards said, “O most delicious! How nice must the Wine itself have been, when it leaves behind in the very vessel which contained it so sweet a perfume!”

The memory of a good deed lives.

(From the book Three Hundred Æsop’s Fables Literally Translated from the Greek by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend, M.A. — Public Domain)


The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar (V. S. Vernon Jones's Version)

An old Woman picked up an empty Wine-jar which had once contained a rare and costly wine, and which still retained some traces of its exquisite bouquet. She raised it to her nose and sniffed at it again and again. "Ah," she cried, "how delicious must have been the liquid which has left behind so ravishing a smell."

(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)