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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

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

THE BAT AND THE SONGBIRD

A songbird was hanging in a cage in a window. A bat flew up and asked the songbird why she sang at night but was silent during the day. The songbird said that she had her reasons: it was while she had been singing once during the day that she had been captured. This had taught her a lesson, and she had vowed that she would sing only at night. The bat remarked, 'But there is no need for that now, when it won't do you any good: you should have been on your guard before you were captured!'
The story shows that it is useless to repent after disaster has struck.

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 48: Gibbs (Oxford) 288 [English]
Perry 48: L'Estrange 162 [English]
Perry 48: Chambry 75 [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.