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1001 Stories Collection

The Fox and the Stork

Added on 30th June 2020

Oral tradition Ancient fable with Greek and Mongolian versions
Creator Aesop

A fable with a moral about understanding and respecting others.

Story

A fox invites a stork to dinner but serves soup on a flat plate and with his long beak the stork cannot eat it. In return the stork invites the fox for dinner and serves rice in a tall vase. The fox cannot get his nose in far enough to reach the rice.

Why we chose it

Fox and Stork was one of the stories chosen for our World Stories project with St Ebbes School in 2016. Fox and Stork is an interesting fable with a moral that can be read in a number of ways

Where it came from

The story is well known in many cultures. It was included in Aesop’s fables where the moral is that the one bad turn deserves another. However in a Mongolian version the moral centres on the difficulties involved in understanding and respecting cultural differences.

Where it went next

The story has featured in European art since the Middle Ages. It appears in Jean la Fontaine’s collection of fables in France in 1668. Fontaine collected fables from all over the world and retold them in verse.

Associated stories

Fox is a popular character in folk tales and fables, often portrayed as a trickster. Other examples include Aesop’s The Fox and the Crow, the Chinese fable The Fox and the Tiger and the French stories of Reynard the Fox also told by Jean la Fontaine.

Added on 30th June 2020

Oral tradition Ancient fable with Greek and Mongolian versions
Creator Aesop