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The Wolf and The Lamb

27 March 2019 (last updated)

Tyrants need no excuse. A Wolf catches

a Lamb by a river and argues to justify
killing it. Doesn’t matter as the Wolf
needs no excuse.

Tyrants need no excuse.

Eliot/Jacobs Version

A Wolf was drinking at a spring on a hillside.

On looking up he saw a Lamb just beginning
to drink lower down. “There’s my supper,”
thought he, “if only I can find some excuse to
seize it.” He called out to the Lamb, “How dare
you muddle my drinking water?”

“No,” said the Lamb; “if the water is muddy

up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs
down from you to me.”

“Well, then,” said the Wolf, “why did you call

me bad names this time last year?”

“That cannot be,” said the Lamb; “I am only

six months old.”

“I don’t care,” snarled the Wolf; “if it was not

you, it was your father;” and with that he
rushed upon the poor little Lamb and ate her
all up.

Caldecott

Design: Randolph Caldecott,

Engraving: J.D. Cooper, 1883 Design: Randolph Caldecott,
Engraving: J.D. Cooper, 1883

A Wolf seeing a Lamb drinking at a brook, took

it into his head that he would find some
plausible excuse for eating him. So he drew
near, and, standing higher up the stream,
began to accuse him of disturbing the water
and preventing him from drinking.

The Lamb replied that he was only touching

the water with the tips of his lips; and that,
besides, seeing that he was standing down
stream, he could not possibly be disturbing the
water higher up. So the Wolf, having done no
good by that accusation, said: “Well, but last
year you insulted my Father.” The Lamb
replying that at that time he was not born, the
Wolf wound up by saying: “However ready
you may be with your answers, I shall none
the less make a meal of you.”

Design: Randolph Caldecott,

Engraving: J.D. Cooper, 1883 Design: Randolph
Caldecott, Engraving:
J.D. Cooper, 1883

Aesop For Children

Milo Winter (1919)

stray Lamb stood drinking early one morning

on the bank of a woodland stream. That very
same morning a hungry Wolf came by farther
up the stream, hunting for something to eat.
He soon got his eyes on the Lamb. As a rule
Mr. Wolf snapped up such delicious morsels
without making any bones about it, but this
Lamb looked so very helpless and innocent
that the Wolf felt he ought to have some kind
of an excuse for taking its life.

“How dare you paddle around in my stream

and stir up all the mud!” he shouted fiercely.
“You deserve to be punished severely for your
rashness!”

“But, your highness,” replied the trembling

Lamb, “do not be angry! I cannot possibly
muddy the water you are drinking up there.
Remember, you are upstream and I am
downstream.”

“You do muddy it!” retorted the Wolf savagely.

“And besides, I have heard that you told lies
about me last year!”

“How could I have done so?” pleaded the

Lamb. “I wasn’t born until this year.”

“If it wasn’t you, it was your brother!”

“I have no brothers.”

“Well, then,” snarled the Wolf, “It was

someone in your family anyway. But no matter
who it was, I do not intend to be talked out of
my breakfast.”

And without more words the Wolf seized the

poor Lamb and carried her off to the forest.

Moral

The tyrant can always find an excuse

for his tyranny.

The unjust will not listen to the

reasoning of the innocent.

Jefferys Taylor

WOLF and lamb once chanced to meet

Beside a stream, whose waters sweet
Brought various kinds of beasts together,
When dry and sultry was the weather;
Now though the wolf came there to drink,
Of eating he began to think,
As soon as near the lamb he came,
And straight resolved to kill the same;
Yet thought it better to begin
With threat’ning words and angry mien.

“And so,” said he to him below,

“How dare you stir the water so?
Making the cool refreshing flood
As brown as beer, and thick as mud.”

“Sir,” said the lamb, “that cannot be,

The water flows from you to me;
So, ’tis impossible, I think,
That what I do can spoil your drink.”

“I say it does, you saucy puss:

How dare you contradict me thus?
But more than this, you idle clack,
You rail’d at me behind my back
Two years ago, I have been told;”
“How so? I’m not a twelvemonth old,”
The lamb replied; “so I suspect
Your honour is not quite correct.”

“If not, your mother it must be,

And that is all the same to me,”
Rejoin’d the wolf—who waited not,
But kill’d and ate him on the spot.

Some, like the wolf, adopt the plan

To make a quarrel if they can;
But none with you can hold dispute
If you’re determined to be mute;
For sure this proverb must be true,
That ev’ry quarrel must have two.

Samuel Croxall

ONE hot, sultry day, a Wolf and a Lamb

happened to come, just at the same time, to
quench their thirst in the stream of a clear
silver brook, that ran tumbling down the side
of a rocky mountain. The Wolf stood upon the
higher ground; and the Lamb at some distance
from him down the current. However, the
Wolf, having a mind to pick a quarrel with
him, asked him, What he meant by disturbing
the water, and making it so muddy that he
could not drink; and, at the same time
demanded satisfaction. The Lamb, frightened
at this threatening charge, told him, in a tone
as mild as possible, That, with humble
submission, he could not conceive how that
could be; since the water which he drank ran
down from the Wolf to him, and therefore it
could not be disturbed so far up the stream. Be
that as it will, replies the Wolf, you are a rascal,
and I have been told that you treated me with
ill language behind my back, about half a year
ago. Upon my word says the Lamb, the time
you mention was before I was born. The Wolf,
finding it to no purpose to argue any longer
against truth, fell into a great passion, snarling
and foaming at the mouth, as if he had been
mad; and drawing nearer to the Lamb, Sirrah,
says he, if it was not you it was your father,
and that’s all one.—So he seized the poor,
innocent, helpless thing, tore it to pieces, and
made a meal of it.

THE APPLICATION

C. Whittingham (1814)

The thing which is pointed at in this fable is so

obvious, that it will be impertinent to multiply
words about it. When a cruel, ill-natured man
has a mind to abuse one inferior to himself,
either in power or courage, though he has not
given the least occasion for it, how does he
resemble the Wolf! whose envious, rapacious
temper could not bear to see innocence live
quietly in its neighbourhood. In short,
wherever ill people are in power, innocence
and integrity are sure to be persecuted; the
more vicious the community is, the better
countenance they have for their own villanous
measures: to practise honesty, in bad times, is
being liable to suspicion enough; but if any one
should dare to prescribe it, it is ten to one but
he would be impeached of high crimes and
misdemeanors: for, to stand up for justice in a
degenerate and corrupt state, is tacitly to
upbraid the government; and seldom fails of
pulling down vengeance upon the head of him
that offers to stir in its defence. Where cruelty
and malice are in combination with power,
nothing is so easy as for them to find a
pretence to tyrannize over innocence, and
exercise all manner of injustice.

Townsend Version

Wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the

fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him,
but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the
Wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him:
“Sir, last year you grossly insulted me.”
“Indeed,” bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone
of voice, “I was not then born.” Then said the
Wolf, “You feed in my pasture.” “No, good
sir,” replied the Lamb, “I have not yet tasted
grass.” Again said the Wolf, “You drink of my
well.” “No,” exclaimed the Lamb, “I never yet
drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is
both food and drink to me.” Upon which the
Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well!
I won’t remain supperless, even though you
refute every one of my imputations.”

Moral

The tyrant will always find a pretext

for his tyranny.

JBR Collection

A hungry Wolf
one day saw a
Lamb drinking
at a stream, and
wished to frame
some plausible
excuse for
making him his
prey. “What do
you mean by
muddling the
water I am going
to drink?”
fiercely said he
to the Lamb.
“Pray forgive Ernest Griset (1874)
me,” meekly
answered the Lamb; “I should be sorry in any
way to displease you, but as the stream runs
from you towards me, you will see that such
cannot be the case.” “That’s all very well,” said
the Wolf; “but you know you spoke ill of me
behind my back a year ago.” “Nay, believe
me,” replied the Lamb, “I was not then born.”
“It must have been your brother then,”
growled the Wolf. “It cannot have been, for I
never had any,” answered the Lamb. “I know it
was one of your lot,” rejoined the Wolf, “so
make no more such idle excuses.” He then
seized the poor Lamb, carried him off to the
woods, and ate him.

L’Estrange Version

As a wolf was lapping at the head of a

fountain, he spy’d a lamb, paddling at the
same time, a good way off down the stream.
The wolf had no sooner the prey in his eye, but
away he runs open-mouth to’t. Villain (says
he), how dare you lye muddling the water that
I’m a drinking? Indeed, says the poor lamb, I
did not think that my drinking there below,
could have foul’d your water so far above.
Nay, says t’other, you’ll never leave your
chopping of logick till your skin’s turn’d over
your ears, as your fathers was, a matter of six
months ago, for prating at this sawcy rate; you
remember it full well, sirrah. If you’ll believe
me, sir, (quoth the innocent lamb, with fear
and trembling) I was not come into the world
then. Why thou impudence, cries the wolf, hast
thou neither shame, nor conscience? But it runs
in the blood of your whole race, sirrah, to hate
our family; and therefore since fortune has
brought us together so conveniently, you shall
e’en pay some of your fore-fathers scores
before you and I part; and so without any more
ado, he leapt at the throat of the miserable
helpless lamb, and tore him immediately to
pieces.

Moral

‘Tis an easie matter to find a staff to

beat a dog. Innocence is no protection
against the arbitrary cruelty of a
tyrannical power: but reason and
conscience are yet so sacred, that the
greatest villanies are still countenanc’d
under that cloak and color.

Crane Poetry Visual

A Wolf, wanting lamb for his dinner,

Growled out “Lamb you wronged me, you
sinner;”
Bleated Lamb – “Nay, not true!”
Answered Wolf – “Then ’twas Ewe…
Ewe or lamb; you will serve for my dinner.”

Fraud and violence have no scruples.

Agnus et Lupus, Bibentes

Lupus et agnus, siti compulsi, ad eundem

rivum venerant. Superior lupus, longe inferior
agnus stabat. Tunc improbus latro, iurgii
causam quaerens, “Cur,” inquit, “aquam mihi
bibenti turbulentam fecisti?” Agnus,
perterritus, “Quomodo,” inquit, “hoc facere
possum? Aqua a te ad me decurrit.” Lupus,
veritate rei repulsus, “Sex menses abhinc,”
inquit, “mihi maledixisti.” “Illo tempore,”
respondit agnus, “equidem nondum natus
eram.” “Hercle igitur,” inquit lupus, “pater
tuus de me male locutus est!” Atque ita
correptum agnum dilaniat.

Perry #155

Tagged With: Sheep, Wolf

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claim as nobody really knows how many Aesop's Fables exist.
Fables are added to the site as they are found in public domain
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