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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE DOG AND THE BLACKSMITHS

There was a dog living in the house of some blacksmiths. When the blacksmiths were working, the dog would go to sleep, but when they sat down to a meal he would wake up and approach his masters in a friendly fashion. The blacksmiths said to the dog, 'How is that you sleep undisturbed when our heaviest hammers are clanging away, but you are immediately awakened by the slightest sound of our teeth chewing?'
This fable shows that even inattentive people quickly notice anything that they think will benefit them, while they are completely unaware of things which are not their immediate concern.

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.


Perry 415: Gibbs (Oxford) 380 [English]
Perry 415: L'Estrange 117 [English]
Perry 415: Townsend 124 [English]
Perry 415: Chambry 345 [Greek]
Perry 415: Syntipas 16 [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.