<< Home Page | Oxford (Gibbs) Index

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

433. THE WIDOW AND HER HEN
Perry 58 (Syntipas 42)

There was a widow who had a hen that laid one egg each and every day. The woman then began to feed the hen more lavishly, thinking that if the hen ate more grain she would lay two eggs. The hen got so fat from eating all the food that she stopped laying eggs entirely.
The fable shows that people who grasp at more than they need lose the little that they held in their hands.


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.