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Talk:The Scorpion and the Frog

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 64.91.108.162 (talk) at 03:06, 27 May 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This fable — or rather an earlier version of it, concerning a scorpion and a turtle — is to be found in the Baharistan (or Beharistan) of Jami (1414-1492). Whether or not it is original to that work, I don't know. Though often ascribed to Aesop (as indicated in the article), it is not in any edition of his fables that I have consulted.

Max Kappa 17:42, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The curator of an online Aesop collection says this story isn't in Aesop: http://mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/reading/aesop/pages/15.htm I'll change 'attributed' to 'often mis-attributed'. BillMcGonigle 13:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]


A similar story appears in the Tractate Nedarim, a Talmudic treatise dating from about A.D. 200 or earlier:

We are told that Samuel once saw a frog carrying a scorpion on its back across a river, upon the opposite bank of which a man stood waiting ready to be stung. The sting proving fatal, so that the man died; upon which Samuel exclaimed, "Lord, they wait for Thy judgments this day: for all are Thy servants."*

The earliest appearance known to me of the scorpion-and-frog fable that is the subject of this article is in the film Mr Arkadin (1955), written and directed by Orson Welles and based on a novel that bears Welles's name but which in later years he denied having written and claimed never to have read. (It includes the fable, and was published in 1955, about the time of the film's release.) When asked by Peter Bogdanovich what the origin of the fable was, he answered: "Who knows? I heard it from an Arab."†

It seems probable that the scorpion-and-turtle fable mentioned above by my friend Max Kappa has at sometime been conflated with the Talmudic story.

* A Talmudic Miscellany (1880, compiled and translated by Paul Isaac Hershon), p. 12. Samuel is quoting Psalm 119: 91.

† This Is Orson Welles (1992, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum), p. 232.

alderbourne 01:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The paragraph about Black Scorpion (which the author misnamed The Scorpion) has nothing to do with the topic. I'm cutting it. JDspeeder1 18:53, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure this fable appears in the book The Game. --64.91.108.162 (talk) 03:06, 27 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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