<< Home Page | Oxford (Gibbs) Index

Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

304. THE WEASEL AND THE FILE
Perry 59 (Syntipas 5)

A weasel went into a blacksmith's shop and there she came across an iron file. She began to lick the file with delight, scraping her tongue in a mad effort to overpower the instrument of iron. The weasel's tongue started to bleed, making her even happier; the taste of blood made her think she was actually devouring the file. So the weasel kept on licking until her tongue was completely gone.
This story shows that people who think there is a profit in some useless activity will get so carried away by what they are doing that they destroy themselves.

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.