The Rose and the Amaranth is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 369 in the Perry Index. [1] It stands in contrast to those plant fables like The Oak and the Reed and The Trees and the Bramble in which the protagonists arrogantly debate with each other. But in this story, the lowly amaranth praises the rose for its beauty and reputation and is answered, equally humbly, that a rose's life is brief while the amaranth (the name of which means literally 'the undying flower') is everlasting. [2]
In Classical times there were only Greek versions of the story and it spread into Western Europe comparatively late. One of the first to give a version in English was Brook Boothby in a poem that concludes
The fable's moral is that beauty does not last, and that enviable conditions often have a downside.
An American musical illustration of the fable occurs as a section of Liz Nedela's Fables for Oboe and Piano. [4]
Amaranthus is a cosmopolitan group of more than 50 species which make up the genus of annual or short-lived perennial plants collectively known as amaranths. Some of the better known names include "prostrate pigweed" and "love lies bleeding". Some amaranth species are cultivated as leaf vegetables, pseudocereals, and ornamental plants.
"Sleeping Beauty", also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years before being awakened by a handsome prince. A good fairy, knowing the princess would be frightened if alone when she wakes, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace and forest asleep, to awaken when the princess does.
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. The surviving work is dated to about 200 BCE, but the fables are likely much more ancient. The text's author is unknown, but it has been attributed to Vishnu Sharma in some recensions and Vasubhaga in others, both of which may be fictitious pen names. It is likely a Hindu text, and based on older oral traditions with "animal fables that are as old as we are able to imagine".
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 varied and unclear 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.
"Beauty and the Beast" is a fairy-tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins.
The Happy Prince and Other Tales is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde, first published in May 1888. It contains five stories that are highly popular among children and frequently read in schools: "The Happy Prince," "The Nightingale and the Rose," "The Selfish Giant," "The Devoted Friend," and "The Remarkable Rocket."
Fables is an American comic book series created and written by Bill Willingham, published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. Willingham served as sole writer for its entirety, with Mark Buckingham penciling more than 110 issues. The series featured various other pencillers over the years, most notably Lan Medina and Steve Leialoha. Fables was launched in July 2002 and concluded in July 2015. It was revived in 2022 with a 12-issue continuation to the main series, as well as a 6-issue spin-off miniseries Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf in Gotham, both published under DC Black Label.
"Everlasting Love" is a song written by Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden, originally a 1967 hit for Robert Knight and since covered numerous times. The most successful version in the UK was performed by Love Affair and the highest-charting version in the U.S. was performed by Carl Carlton. Other cover versions were done by Town Criers, Rex Smith & Rachel Sweet, Sandra Cretu, U2 and Gloria Estefan.
The Monkey and the Cat is best known as a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine under the title Le Singe et le Chat that appeared in the second collection of his Fables in 1679 (IX.17). It is the source of popular idioms in both English and French, with the general meaning of being the dupe of another.
A wolf in sheep's clothing is an idiom from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew. It warns against individuals who play a duplicitous role. The gospel regards such individuals as dangerous.
"Amarantine" is a single by Irish musician Enya, taken from the album of the same name. The word is taken from ancient Greek and means everlasting or immortal. The single was released in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2005.
Amaranth is a reddish-rose color that is a representation of the color of the flower of the amaranth plant. The color shown is the color of the red amaranth flower, but there are other varieties of amaranth that have other colors of amaranth flowers; these colors are also shown below.
Rosa 'American Beauty' is a deep pink to crimson rose cultivar, bred by Henri Lédéchaux in France in 1875, and was originally named 'Madame Ferdinand Jamin'.
The Homelands are the mythical lands from fairy tales, folklore, and nursery rhymes in the comic book series Fables. The majority of those listed have been conquered by the mysterious Adversary, as he has conquered most of the European Fable lands. This is a list of the Homelands that have been directly referenced in Fables and its spin-offs Jack of Fables, Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, Cinderella: Fables are Forever and Fairest.
Pink colors are usually light or desaturated shades of reds, roses, and magentas which are created on computer and television screens using the RGB color model and in printing with the CMYK color model. As such, it is an arbitrary classification of color.
A blue flower was a central symbol of inspiration for the Romanticism movement, and remains an enduring motif in Western art today. It stands for desire, love, and the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable. It symbolizes hope and the beauty of things.
The Floure and the Leafe is an anonymous Middle English allegorical poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems. The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value. The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, John Gower, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the Kingis Quair.
The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance a variant appeared in which a pine took the palm-tree's place and the story was occasionally counted as one of Aesop's Fables.
The Fox and the Mask is one of Aesop's Fables, of which there are both Greek and Latin variants. It is numbered 27 in the Perry Index.