The Bird in Borrowed Feathers is a fable of Classical Greek origin usually ascribed to Aesop. It has existed in numerous different versions between that time and the Middle Ages, going by various titles and generally involving members of the corvid family. The lesson to be learned from it has also varied, depending on the context in which it was told. Several idioms derive from the fable.
While the details of the fable have always been varied, [1] two main versions have been transmitted to European cultures in modern times. The first of these is mostly found in Greek sources and numbered 101 in the Perry Index. [2] It concerns a daw or crow that dresses itself in the feathers of other birds before competing against them, only to have them recognised and stripped away by their owners; in some versions all its own feathers are also torn away. The lesson to be learned is that borrowed finery brings humiliation.
The second version stems from the Latin collection of Phaedrus and is numbered 472 in the Perry Index. [3] In this a jackdaw (or jay in Caxton's telling) that has found some peacock feathers and stuck them among its own, looks down on its kind and joins the peacocks. When they realise the intruder is not one of themselves, they attack it, stripping away the borrowed finery and leaving its so dishevelled that it is afterwards rejected by its fellows. The moral of the story is not to reach above one's station.
Some mediaeval versions have different details. In Odo of Cheriton's telling the crow is ashamed of its ugliness and is advised by the eagle to borrow feathers from the other birds, but when it starts to insult them the eagle suggests that the birds reclaim their feathers. [4] Froissart's Chronicles have a certain Friar John advising church leaders that their possessions depend on temporal rulers and illustrating the lesson with a story of a bird that is born featherless until all the other birds decide to furnish it with some of their own. When it starts to act too proudly, they threaten to take their feathers back. [5]
Such stories addressed themselves to various kinds of pride and had given rise to the Latin idiomatic phrase esopus graculus (Aesop's jackdaw) that Erasmus recorded in his Adagia . [6] But the story has also been used to satirise literary plagiarists in Classical times. In one of his Epistles, the Roman poet Horace alludes to the Greek version of the fable when referring to the poet Celsus, who is advised not to borrow from others ‘lest, if it chance that the flock of birds should some time or other come to demand their feathers, he, like the daw stripped of his stolen colors, be exposed to ridicule.’ [7] It was in this sense too that the young William Shakespeare was attacked by the elder playwright Robert Greene as ‘an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers’. [8]
When Jean de la Fontaine adapted the story in his Fables Choisies (IV.9), it was the Latin version of a bird disguised as a peacock that he chose, but he followed Horace in applying it to 'The human jay: the shameless plagiarist'. [9] The very free version of John Matthews, his English translator, develops the suggestion much further:
However, when La Fontaine's fable was rewritten to fit a popular air in the 18th century Nouvelles Poésies Spirituelles et Morales sur les plus beaux airs, its focus was changed to dressing above one's station. [11]
It is the Latin version too that lies behind the popular idiom 'to adorn oneself (or strut) in borrowed plumes', used against empty pretensions. This is made more obvious by the reference to peacock feathers in the Italian equivalent, Vestirsi con le penne del pavone. [12]
Among Russian variants of the fable, Alexander Sumarokov's featured a kite in 1760, comparing it to a lowly person who has managed to enrich himself with bribes and is now holding himself as equal to nobility. Ivan Krylov's own variation was titled "The Crow" and gave rise to two expressions in Russian (after two different phrases in it): "Left the crows, but didn't join the peacocks" (От ворон отстала, а к павам не пристала) and "Neither peacock nor crow" (Ни пава, ни ворона). While keeping close to the fable at the start, Krylov ends by extending the application to the human example of a merchant's daughter marrying a noble and fitting neither with their family nor her own. [13]
In the 17th century, when paintings were popular home decorations but had to be justified by carrying a moral message, the Dutch artist Melchior d'Hondecoeter executed at least two of the Greek version of the fable in which many species of bird attack the daw. [14] He was followed in 1719 by Pieter Casteels III, whose "Fable of the Raven" shows flocks of brightly coloured birds descending for the attack. [15] English artists who have been influenced by their treatment of the subject include George Lance, whose "The vain jackdaw stripped of his borrowed plumes" was highly praised when he exhibited it at the British Institution in 1828. [16] In the 20th century, Edward Bawden's composite design of the same subject incorporates a broad variety of exotic species, including parrots and flamingoes. [17]
Many illustrations of La Fontaine's fables follow similar themes, [18] including Kano Tomo-nobou's Japanese woodcut version published from Tokyo in 1894. [19] Political cartoons celebrating the defeat of Napoleon also imply this imagery, with feathered kings and emperors snatching away his finery. [20] There was a slightly earlier Japanese woodprint by Kawanabe Kyosai in his Isoho Monogotari series (1870–80) which shows peacocks attacking a prostrate crow. [21] In general the artist was dependent on John Tenniel's illustrations of the fables for his interpretations, but in this case the print is similar to the picture in the Croxall edition of 1814. [22]
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov is Russia's best-known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors. Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he only discovered his true genre at the age of 40. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop's and La Fontaine's, later fables were original work, often with a satirical bent.
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
The Frog and the Ox appears among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 376 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a frog that tries to inflate itself to the size of an ox, but bursts in the attempt. It has usually been applied to socio-economic relations.
The Farmer and the Viper is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 176 in the Perry Index. It has the moral that kindness to evil will be met by betrayal and is the source of the idiom "to nourish a viper in one's bosom". The fable is not to be confused with The Snake and the Farmer, which looks back to a situation when friendship was possible between the two.
The Fox and the Crow is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 124 in the Perry Index. There are early Latin and Greek versions and the fable may even have been portrayed on an ancient Greek vase. The story is used as a warning against listening to flattery.
The Tortoise and the Birds is a fable of probable folk origin, early versions of which are found in both India and Greece. There are also African variants. The moral lessons to be learned from these differ and depend on the context in which they are told.
The Wolf and the Lamb is a well-known fable of Aesop and is numbered 155 in the Perry Index. There are several variant stories of tyrannical injustice in which a victim is falsely accused and killed despite a reasonable defence.
The Two Pots is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 378 in the Perry Index. The fable may stem from proverbial sources.
The title of The Woodcutter and the Trees covers a complex of fables that are of West Asian and Greek origins, the latter ascribed to Aesop. All of them concern the need to be wary of harming oneself through misplaced generosity.
The Cobbler and the Financier is one of La Fontaine's Fables that deals directly with a human situation rather than mediating it through the behaviour of animal stereotypes. An adaptation from a Classical Latin source, it gained some currency in England during the 18th century and later in Russia, via Ivan Krylov’s 19th-century adaptation. In France it eventually served as the basis for a number of dramatic adaptations as well.
The Ass and his Masters is a fable that has also gone by the alternative titles The ass and the gardener and Jupiter and the ass. Included among Aesop's Fables, it is numbered 179 in the Perry Index.
The Dove and the Ant is a story about the reward of compassionate behaviour. Included among Aesop's Fables, it is numbered 235 in the Perry Index.
The Crow and the Sheep is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 553 in the Perry Index. Only Latin versions of it remain.
The Frogs and the Sun is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 314 in the Perry Index. It has been given political applications since Classical times.
The Heron and the Fish is a situational fable constructed to illustrate the moral that one should not be over-fastidious in making choices since, as the ancient proverb proposes, 'He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay'. Of ancient but uncertain origin, it gained popularity after appearing among La Fontaine's Fables.
The situation of the Eagle Wounded by an Arrow vaned with its own feathers is referred to in several ancient Greek sources and is listed as fable 276 in the Perry Index. It is generally applied to the misery of realising that one has contributed to one's own injury but also as a warning against self-reliant pride.
The classical legend that the swan sings at death was incorporated into one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 399 in the Perry Index. The fable also introduces the proverbial antithesis between the swan and the goose that gave rise to such sayings as ‘Every man thinks his own geese are swans’, in reference to blind partiality, and 'All his swans are turned to geese', referring to a reverse of fortune.
The Fisherman and his Flute appears among Aesop’s Fables and is numbered 11 in the Perry Index. Wide variations on the theme have existed over the centuries.
"The Lion Grown Old" is counted among Aesop’s Fables and is numbered 481 in the Perry Index. It is used in illustration of the insults given those who have fallen from power and has a similar moral to the fable of The dogs and the lion's skin. Parallel proverbs of similar meaning were later associated with it.
The Fly and the Ant is one of Aesop’s Fables that appears in the form of a debate between the two insects. It is numbered 521 in the Perry Index.
