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The story is recorded in both Greek and Latin sources. In the former, the farmer dies reproaching himself "for pitying a scoundrel", while in the version by Phaedrus the snake says that he bit his benefactor "to teach the lesson not to expect a reward from the wicked." The latter sentiment is made the moral in Medieval versions of the fable.
The Snake and the Farmer is a fable attributed to Aesop, of which there are ancient variants and several more from both Europe and India dating from Mediaeval times. The story is classed as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 285D, and its theme is that a broken friendship cannot be mended. [ 1 ]
In the 1546 edition of the Emblemata by Andrea Alciato the story is modified. There the bird vomits and is told by its parent that it is losing nothing of its own, since all it has eaten was stolen. [2] The fable is used to illustrate the Latin proverb male parta, male dilabuntur (ill-gotten, ill-spent).
The moral drawn in Mediaeval Latin retellings of the fable such as those of Adémar de Chabannes and Romulus Anglicus [7] was that one should learn from the misfortunes of others, but it was also given a political slant by the additional comment that "it is easier to enter the house of a great lord than to get out of it", as William Caxton expressed it in his English version. [8]
The story is told of a fowler out hunting and concludes, 'Thus the man dies, who looks to the stars with drawn-back bow'. [3] The preceding emblem had illustrated the fable of the Astrologer who Fell into a Well and this continues the lesson there of the need to keep one's attention focussed on the things of this world.
Samuel Howitt's print of the fable, published in 1810 The hedgehog and the snake , alternatively titled The snakes and the porcupine , was a fable originated by Laurentius Abstemius in 1490. From the following century it was accepted as one of Aesop's Fables in several European collections.
Shahmaran is a mythical creature, half-snake and half-woman, portrayed as a dual-headed creature with a crown on each head, possessing a human female head on one end, and a snake's head on the other, possibly representing a phallic figure. [3] The human part is also decorated with a large necklace. [4] [5]
The Enchanted Snake or The Snake (Neapolitan: Lo serpe) [1] is an Italian fairy tale written by author Giambattista Basile in the Pentamerone, as the fifth story of the second day. [2] The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband , wherein a human maiden marries a prince cursed to ...