The Fox and the Crow

4-6 min read
13 pages

The fox and the crow, Aesop's fable to read aloud. She has the cheese and he has nothing — so he starts telling her how well she sings.

A crow found a piece of cheese on a windowsill at the back of a farmhouse, and she took it before anyone could come out, and she flew up into an ash tree with it.

She settled on a branch about halfway up, which was high enough that nothing on the ground could be any trouble to her, and she put the cheese down carefully in front of her feet.

A fox came along the hedge below. He smelled the cheese before he saw it, and then he saw it, and then he sat down under the tree and thought for a while.

He could not climb. He could not jump that high. The cheese was going to be eaten in about a minute by somebody, and he preferred that it should be him.

«Good morning,» said the fox pleasantly. The crow did not answer, because her beak was where the cheese was and she was not a fool.

«I only stopped,» said the fox, «because I have heard about you. They say in the village that there is a crow in this wood who sings better than any bird in the county. I did not believe it.»

The crow shifted her feet on the branch.

«They say,» the fox went on, looking up at the leaves rather than at her, «that the blackbird stops to listen. That people open their windows. Well. I have walked a long way for nothing before now.»

The crow looked down at him. Then she looked away across the field, the way you do when something has been said that you would like said again.

«Of course,» said the fox, getting up as if to leave, «anyone can say a thing like that about a bird nobody has heard. Good day to you.»

«Wait,» said the crow.

It was a very short word, and it was enough. The cheese came off the branch before she had finished saying it, and it fell through the leaves and landed in the grass, and the fox did not hurry, because there was no longer any need.

«Thank you,» he said, with his mouth full. «Your voice is exactly as they describe it. It is your judgement they say nothing about.»

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Text source: Fable by Aesop (6th century BC), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

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The Fox and the Crow

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