Hill countryside east of Millstone Edge, Walter Baxter. Photo: geograph.org.uk / via Wikimedia Commons.
Aesop’s fables
Catherine Henderson shares stories designed to make you think
Once a traveller was walking along a track high up in the hills, heading home to her village. There were no trees up there and she could see for miles, all across the valley. She drew her cloak tightly around her so she was almost invisible amongst the grass and rocks and sheep.
But she had been spotted. It was that time of year when the sun and the wind were constantly squabbling. One moment the sun was warming new shoots, coaxing them out of the ground. The next moment the wind was blasting the blossom from the trees and sending sudden squalls so that the animals huddled together for shelter.
Seeing the traveller, the wind said: ‘Let’s see which of us can get that traveller’s cloak off first. It’s bound to be me – just watch and see.’ And he blew such an icy blast that the traveller snatched at her cloak and just stopped it from being whisked away down the track.
‘My turn,’ said the sun, and he shone so strongly that the clouds melted away and mist rose around the traveller’s feet. She stopped to rest and wiped her forehead. Then, after a while, she loosened her cloak and draped it over her arm. ‘Well, I don’t like to boast,’ said the sun, ‘but I do think gentle persuasion works better than brute force.’
But the wind didn’t hear. He’d torn off angrily down the valley, herding the storm clouds ahead of him towards the village, to see what damage he could do.
***
This is a very old story, one of the fables told by the storyteller Aesop more than 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece. You may know others, such as The Hare and the Tortoise or The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Aesop’s fables weren’t written down until around 300 years after his death, and were already old and well-known when he was born.
They were passed on by people telling and retelling them in their own ways, in their own languages, over hundreds of years. Each version was different, but the basic story remained the same. Stories like this aren’t ‘by’ anyone; they belong to us all.
You might like to tell, or act out, your own version. Or you could make a picture of the sun or the wind. Here are two examples. One is a painting of the sun made about 400 years ago on the ceiling of a church in France. The other is a rather scary picture of a Japanese wind god, painted on a folding screen.
A fable makes you think; it makes you ask questions. What is the best way of doing things? If you want something, is threatening behaviour going to make it happen, or will gentle persuasion work better? You can probably think of people who bully other people to get their own way. Sometimes it seems to work – the bullies get what they want – but, actually, the people being bullied get upset and angry, and those feelings don’t go away.
This is true for governments of countries, too. They can behave in a threatening way, like the wind in the story, or they can choose a gentler approach, like the sun.
Korea is a country split in two. Nearly seventy years ago the two halves, North and South Korea, were at war. They each wanted to govern the whole country. In the end, after three years of fighting, they agreed to stay as two separate countries.
In Korea there is an old belief that it is better to talk with your enemies and to give them presents. Some years after the end of the Korean war the South Korean government wanted to cooperate more with their neighbours in North Korea. They wanted to work together peacefully, so as to make things better for people in both countries. They decided to call this approach the ‘Sunshine Policy’, after Aesop’s fable, hoping that, in time and with a lot of patience, behaving like the sun rather than the wind would bring about a peaceful solution.
