The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry's numbering system).[1] The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by calling out "wolf". Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they'd wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock. In some fairy-tale versions, when the villagers ignore him the wolf eats him, and in other versions he simply mocks the boy, saying now no one will help him, and that it serves him right for playing tricks. The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:
- "Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth."
In reference to this tale, the phrase to "cry wolf" has long been a common idiom in English, described in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [2], and modern English dictionaries [3][4].
In the American intelligence community, "crying wolf syndrome" is labeled as a condition where threat analysts are reluctant to report on an imminent threat, such as a terrorist attack, due to the fact that if the threat is unfounded or greatly inflated, future threats will not be believed.
Adaptations
- The last names of the two main characters in Big Fat Liar, Jason Shepherd and Marty Wolf, are allusions to the two main characters of the fable. Jason Shepherd, a persistent liar, was not believed when he said that Marty Wolf stole his English paper, the same way the shepherd boy was not believed when the wolf really did show up to eat his entire flock.
- Sesame Street had a version of the fable called The Boy Who Cried Monster, narrated by Sonia Manzano (Maria), in which a little village, fed up with being terrorized by a theiving monster who steals the villagers' cookies, decides to implement a new system whereby if anyone sees the monster anywhere in the village, they will shout "MONSTER," and the rest of the villagers will come running to confront the monster. Unfortunately, a mischievous boy with a bag of cookies abuses this system twice; he shouts "MONSTER! HELP!!" and the villagers come running, expecting to confront the monster but finding only the little boy enjoying himself at their expense...and no monster. Then the monster, Cookie Monster, shows up and confronts the boy. At first the boy is fearless because he remembers the new system and uses it once again, shouting "MONSTER! HELP!!" But, just like in the original fable, the villagers in this version also think the boy is only fooling them again, so they won't come running to him this time, and the boy is completely at Cookie Monster's mercy. Cookie Monster then snatches the boy's bag and devours his cookies while the boy regrets tricking the whole village like he did.
See also
- Aesop's Fables
- Cassandra, a seer in Greek mythology who made accurate warnings but was not believed.
- False alarm
- The Girl Who Cried Monster
- King You of Zhou's folly fooled the nobles repeatedly so they would not rescue him in a real danger.
- Shouting fire in a crowded theater
References
- ^ Ben Edwin Perry (1965). Babrius and Phaedrus. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. p. 462, no. 210. ISBN 0-674-99480-9.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898 - Wolf at bartleby.com, accessed 19 September, 2007
- ^ Compact Oxford English Dictionary - wolf, at askoxford.com. OUP, June, 2005, accessed 19 September, 2007
- ^ Merriam Webster Online dictionary - Definition of cry from the Merriam-Webster website, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, July, 2003, accessed 19 September, 2007
External links
- The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf', translated by Laura Gibbs
- Boy Who Cried Wolf -exact fable version