Audiobook · read by volunteers
Aesop's Fables, Volume 07 (Fables 151-175)
Aesop (620–564 BC)
Read by Kim Braun, Marian Brown, Mike Phillips, rk, Paul Harvey, fenchurch, Gail, Christine Dewar, Desdemona, Melanie · 25 chapters · 33 min
About the book
A cock scratching in a farmyard turns up a jewel and wishes it were a grain of barley. A grasshopper begs the ants for food in winter. A boy set to watch the sheep raises a false alarm once too often. A miller and his son try so hard to please every passer-by that they end up losing their donkey. These are some of the best-loved of Aesop’s fables, and they gather in volume 7, which covers fables 151 to 175. There is also a quarrel between the parts of the body and the belly, a doctor who is no doctor at all, and, to finish, an archer and a lion. V. S. Vernon Jones’s English is plain and quick, with no wasted words, and a team of LibriVox volunteers shares the reading. Twenty-five short tracks add up to a little over half an hour, ideal for children and grown-ups alike.
Introduction
Aesop is one of those figures whose fame is far greater than our knowledge of him. Tradition dates him to the sixth century BC, and some scholars doubt that he existed as a single person. The stories that bear his name, however, are among the most widely told in the world, and many of them have given English some of its proverbs and figures of speech.
Volume 7 of the LibriVox series covers fables 151 to 175, in the English translation by V. S. Vernon Jones, published in 1912. Vernon Jones kept the stories short and plain, with a clean, spare prose, and let each tale end with its moral stated openly. The volume runs from The Cock and the Jewel to The Archer and the Lion, and it includes some of the most familiar of all: The Grasshopper and the Ants, The Wolf and the Boy, The Belly and the Members and The Miller, His Son and Their Ass.
The volume contains 25 fables, one to a track, and lasts a little over half an hour. A team of LibriVox volunteers shares the reading, so each fable has its own voice and character. Nothing links one tale to the next, so you can begin at any point. Some are only a few lines long and others unfold as little scenes with dialogue.
Why listen today? Because the lessons are still the ones we need: to be satisfied with what we have, to prepare ahead, to cooperate, and to be wary of trying to please everyone. Take them in order or at random, with children or on your own.
Public domain
Aesop died in 564 BC: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text