Cattle

Cattle recur across the fables in contrasting roles: the strong Bull can crush a Frog without notice, Oxen can be threatened by the human trade that depends on them, and Bulls together can deter a Lion who becomes dangerous once they are divided. These stories use cattle both as animals with recognizable physical strength and as figures through which the collection considers power, judgment, and collective security.

Work, Danger, and Prudence

In “The Oxen and the Butchers,” the Oxen assemble to destroy the Butchers, whose profession is destructive to their kind. They sharpen their horns and prepare for a contest, but an exceedingly old Ox—one who has plowed many fields—cautions them against acting hastily. The Butchers, he acknowledges, slaughter Oxen, but do so with skill and without unnecessary pain. If the Oxen eliminate them, they may instead fall into the hands of less competent operators and suffer a worse fate. The warning ends with a practical constraint: even if the Butchers perish, people will still want beef. The fable’s maxim, not to hurry from one evil into another, makes the old Ox’s experience a form of foresight rather than simple submission.

The story sets collective resistance against the risk of an unintended replacement. The Oxen recognize a real threat, but their proposed remedy cannot remove human demand; it may only change who carries out the slaughter. Their elder’s argument therefore distinguishes opposition to a danger from the ability to abolish its underlying cause. Cattle appear here as a threatened group capable of deliberation, while the ending makes caution—not victory in the contest—the measure of sound judgment.

Strength and Vulnerability

“The Ox and the Frog” turns the Bull’s physical power into an accidental danger. While drinking at a pool, an Ox steps on a brood of young Frogs and crushes one. The mother arrives, notices that one of her sons is missing, and asks the others what happened. They explain that a huge four-footed beast killed him with its cloven heel. The mother tries to imagine the animal’s size by puffing herself up; her surviving son tells her to stop, warning that she would burst before she could imitate the monster’s proportions. The fable makes the contrast concrete: the Ox’s ordinary movement is enough to kill a small creature, while the Frog’s attempt to match his scale only exposes the limits of her own body.

In “The Lion and the Three Bulls,” cattle strength works differently: it lies in remaining together. Three Bulls have long pastured as a group, and a Lion waits in ambush, afraid to attack while they stay united. He uses guileful speeches to separate them; once each Bull is alone, the Lion can attack without fear and feast on them one by one. The short causal sequence—togetherness, deception, separation, individual capture—makes the closing maxim, “Union is strength,” integral to the action. The Bulls are not defeated because their strength disappears, but because the Lion changes the conditions under which they can use it.

Cattle in the Fables’ Moral Design

The collection’s preface describes fables as short narratives that convey instruction through fictitious characters, often animals, and argues that their lessons should arise naturally from the action. It identifies the Bull with strength among the familiar animal characteristics used by fable writers. The cattle stories draw on that recognizable feature but give it more than one meaning: a Bull’s strength can overwhelm a Frog, the Oxen’s collective action can be directed against their exploiters, and three Bulls’ shared strength can protect them only while they remain together.

The results also show how the moral works through circumstance rather than through a single fixed portrait of cattle. The old Ox’s experience supports restraint; the Frog episode shows the vulnerability created by unequal scale; and the Three Bulls’ fate turns unity into a practical defense against a stronger predator’s guile. Together, these episodes make cattle a recurring means of examining the difference between physical power, prudent action, and strength sustained by solidarity.