'The Cocks and the Partridge', an illustration by John Vernon Lord
in Aesop's Fables, Jonthan Cape, 1989, page 53.
The text, in a translation of La Fontaine's version of the fable:
The Cocks and the Partridge
With a set of uncivil and
turbulent cocks,
That deserved for their noise to
be put in the stocks,
A partridge was placed to be
rear’d.
Her sex, by politeness revered,
Made her hope, from a gentry
devoted to love,
For the courtesy due to the
tenderest dove;
Nay, protection chivalric from
knights of the yard.
That gentry, however with little
regard
For the honours and knighthood
wherewith they were deck’d,
And for the strange lady as little
respect,
Her ladyship often most horribly
peck’d.
At first, she was greatly
afflicted therefor,
But when she had noticed these
madcaps at war
With each other, and dealing far
bloodier blows,
Consoling her own individual woes.
-
‘Entail’d by their customs,’ said
she, ‘is the shame;
Let us pity the simpletons rather
than blame.
Our Maker creates not all spirits
the same;
The cocks and the partridges
certainly differ,
By a nature than laws of civility
stiffer.
Were the choice to be mine, I
would finish my life
In society freer from riot and
strife.
But the lord of this soil has a
different plan;
His tunnel our race to captivity
brings,
He throws us with cocks, after
clipping our wings.
’Tis little we have to complain of
but man.’
Moral: It is a little easier to
endure the taunts of others when they even quarrel among themselves.
Text: Elizur Wright 1841 (La Fontaine 10/8).
Selected Parallels: L’Estrange 84. Chambry 21. Perry 23. TMI J1025.
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