Perry's Index to the Aesopica
Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:
THE CHICKENS AND THE CAT
A cat laid a trap for the chickens by hanging himself from a peg as if he were
a sack. When the quick-witted rooster with his hooked spurs noticed the cat,
he made this sharp remark: 'I've seen many sacks in my life, so I know what
they look like -- and not one of them ever had the teeth of a living cat!' |
 Source:
Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura
Gibbs.
Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New
cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.
| In Perry 79, the cat pretends
to be a sack in order to trap the chickens but a wise rooster sees
through the trick. In Perry 511, a weasel hides
herself by rolling flour in order to catch some mice, but an old mouse
sees through the trick (L'Estrange tells the story both about a cat
and about a weasel). |
Perry 79: Caxton 6.8 [English]
Perry 79: Gibbs (Oxford) 299 [English]
Perry 79: Townsend 140 [English]
Perry 79: Steinhowel 6.8 [Latin, illustrated]
Mannheim
University Library
Perry 79: Babrius 17 [Greek]
Perry 79: Chambry 13 [Greek]
You can find a compilation of Perry's index to the Aesopica in the gigantic appendix to his
edition of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library
(Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965). This book is an absolute must for anyone interested
in the Aesopic fable tradition. Invaluable.
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