Sparrow

Sparrow is a recurring small bird in this collection, appearing both as an individual whose confidence is overturned by misfortune and as one of several creatures dependent on a tree for shelter. These brief roles show how the fables make animals carry human judgments: a speaker’s apparent safety can vanish, while the value of a life or place may be recognized only when it serves self-interest.

Appearance and Narrative Roles

The collection gives Sparrow two distinct narrative functions. In The Sparrow and the Hare, a Sparrow comments on another creature’s distress; the sudden reversal makes the commentator vulnerable in turn. In The Peasant and the Apple-Tree, Sparrows are part of a group living in a tree that bears no fruit but provides them with a harbor. There they do not drive the action through individual cleverness: their appeal, alongside that of the Grasshoppers, fails to persuade the Peasant to spare the tree.

The Sparrow and the Hare

An Eagle pounces on a Hare, who sobs and cries out. Sparrow upbraids her by asking where her celebrated speed has gone and why her feet have failed her. The rebuke treats the Hare’s usual advantage as though it should protect her even in a moment of danger, turning a familiar attribute into a measure by which to shame her.

While Sparrow is speaking, a Hawk suddenly seizes and kills him. The reversal places the critic in the same peril he had just used against the Hare. As Sparrow dies, the Hare is comforted; she observes that the creature who had exulted over her calamity while feeling safe now has reason to grieve a similar misfortune. The fable’s close makes their positions parallel: Sparrow’s confidence proves as temporary as the Hare’s speed is useless against the Eagle’s attack.

The Apple-Tree and Its Dependents

In the second fable, a Peasant owns a garden Apple-Tree that bears no fruit and serves only as a harbor for Sparrows and Grasshoppers. He resolves to cut it down and strikes at its roots with an axe. The creatures ask him to spare the tree that shelters them, offering to sing to him and lighten his labors, but their promise does not change his course: he strikes the tree a second and a third time.

Only when the Peasant reaches the tree’s hollow and finds a hive full of honey does his judgment change. After tasting the honeycomb, he throws down his axe, regards the tree as sacred, and takes great care of it. Sparrow’s place in this episode is collective and dependent: the bird is among those whose appeal cannot secure the tree’s safety, while the tree itself is protected once it yields a private benefit to its owner. The appended lesson, that self-interest alone moves some men, gives the reversal its pointed force.

Place in the Fable Tradition

The collection’s preface describes fable as a short narrative that uses fictitious characters to convey instruction, often clothing human motives in the speech and conduct of animals. It also emphasizes the importance of preserving the animals’ popularly recognized characteristics, while acknowledging that not every story achieves equal unity between narrative and moral. Sparrow’s two appearances fit the form in different ways: one builds its lesson through an abrupt reversal between speaker and sufferer; the other makes a bird’s dependence on shelter part of a critique of self-interest.

The preface further cautions that the collection contains tales from different periods and sources rather than being wholly the immediate work of Aesop. Its account of oral transmission, later collections, and changing versions places individual animal fables within a broader tradition. Sparrow’s appearances are therefore best understood as roles within this instructional collection, not as evidence of a continuous personal history across its stories.