User:JClanton12/The Boy Who Cried Wolf (draft)

The Boy Who Cried Wolf (copied), edits in bold and italics

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved.

The Fable

The tale, also known as “The Shepherd’s Boy and the Wolf,” concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking wolves are attacking his flock. This happens a total of three times, or three to four times depending on the version of the story. The last time he cries "'wolf!' is when the wolf actually appears. When this happens and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm resulting in the sheep being eaten by the wolf. In the versions of "The Boy who Cried Wolf" containing the three calls of 'Wolf!' by the Shepherd-boy, the rule of three is visible, which states that a pattern of three is effective in getting people to pay attention. In later English-language poetic versions of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in Fables for Five Year Olds (1830) by John Hookham Frere, in William Ellery Leonard's Aesop & Hyssop(1912), and in his interpretation of Aesop's Fables (1965) by Louis Untermeyer.

The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them". It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in which the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed". William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".

Fable's history

The Boy Who Cried Wolf was credited to Aesop, a Greek slave and fable writer. Not much is known about his history or the reason for why the fable was written, but there is speculation that Aesop himself did not physically commit the fable to writing himself. Instead, this fable and others the were part of oral traditions, which were then passed down and compiled from various sources who lived before Aesop's time. There are records of the fables in written form as early as 4th century BCE, which were also translated into other languages, making it possible that the fables were influenced by the tales and morals of other cultures. Most of the influence derives from the Greek version of the tales composed by Babrius, with influence from Arabic and Hebrew cultures due to later translations.

You do not need to repeat off-topic information available in the Aesop link. Sweetpool50 (talk) 20:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

The story dates from Classical times, but, since it was recorded only in Greek and not translated into Latin until the 15th century, it only began to gain currency after it appeared in Heinrich Steinhöwel's collection of the fables and so spread through the rest of Europe. For this reason, there was no agreed title for the story. Caxton titles it "Of the child whiche kepte the sheep" (1484), Hieronymus Osius "The boy who lied" ("De mendace puero", 1574), Francis Barlow "Of the herd boy and the farmers" ("De pastoris puero et agricolis", 1687), Roger L'Estrange "A boy and false alarms" (1692), and George Fyler Townsend "The shepherd boy and the wolf" (1867). It was under the final title that Edward Hughes set it as the first of ten "Songs from Aesop's fables" for children's voices and piano, in a poetic version by Peter Westmore (1965).

Modern Applications

In regards to teaching the fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf is used as a method of getting young children to realize that telling the truth is better than telling a lie. It is also used as a way to get young children to realize the benefits of honesty and the disadvantages of dishonesty. The fable typically reaches children through parents, school lessons, and media.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf and George Washington's Cherry Tree Tale

Teachers have used the fable as a cautionary tale about telling the truth, but research has been done on the fable's effectiveness at getting kids not to lie.  The article "Some Types of Fables may be Better at Teaching Children not to Lie" discusses the research and provide the results: children who hear "The Boy who Cried Wolf" are 35% more likely to be honest. When a fable with no moral about lying is told children are 30% likely to be honest. In comparison, those who heard the myth of George Washington chopping the cherry tree and telling his father "I cannot tell a lie," when asked if he chopped down the tree, resulted in a 48% rate of honesty. The concluding results are: positive stories about honesty are more effective than stories about the negative impacts of lying.

Adult Reception

The Boy Who Cried Wolf has been criticized as having multiple facets that lead the boy to his actions. Katie Loehrke in her article “Workplace Lessons from The Boy Who Cried Wolf” makes the claim that the boy was simply seeking entertainment because he was bored, comparing it to employees who are not self-motivated and thus distract their co-workers from doing their jobs. If the boy had something to do, he would not have tried to bother the villagers. Additionally, the version of the fable where the boy is not punished for his behavior is criticized here for not exemplifying the reality that actions do have consequences.

When dealing with the moral behaviour of adults, Samuel Croxall, known for his edition of Aesop's Fables and Others with included sections on application, asks the reader, referencing political alarmism, "when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?"