View source for The Boy Who Cried Wolf

{{Short description|Aesop's fable}}
{{Other uses}}
[[File:Boycriedwolfbarlow.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|[[Francis Barlow (artist)|Francis Barlow]]'s illustration of the fable, 1687]]
'''The Boy Who Cried Wolf''' is one of [[Aesop's Fables]], numbered 210 in the [[Perry Index]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/151.htm|title=151. The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf' (Laura Gibbs, translator)|website=mythfolklore.net}}</ref> 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''<ref>''The Concise Dictionary...''(Cassel Publications 1992)</ref> and glossed by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/wolf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201184310/http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/wolf|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 1, 2008|work=Compact [[Oxford English Dictionary]]|title=wolf|publisher=askoxford.com. [[OUP]] |date= June 2005 |access-date= 19 September 2007}}</ref>
==Fable==
The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly fools villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town's flock. When an actual wolf appears and the boy calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In a later English-language poetic version of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in ''Fables for {{not a typo|Five Years Old}}'' (1830) by [[John Hookham Frere]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/fable-3-boy-and-wolf|title=Poem: Fable 3, Of the Boy and the Wolf by John Hookham Frere|website=www.poetrynook.com|accessdate=Apr 4, 2023}}</ref> in [[William Ellery Leonard]]'s ''Aesop & Hyssop'' (1912),<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/shepherd-boy-and-wolf|title=Poem: The Shepherd-Boy and the Wolf by William Ellery Leonard|website=www.poetrynook.com|accessdate=Apr 4, 2023}}</ref> and in [[Louis Untermeyer]]'s 1965 poem.<ref>[https://raynhalfpint.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/the-boy-who-cried-wolf "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"] by [[Louis Untermeyer]], raynhalfpint.wordpress.com</ref>
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".<ref>Translated by C.D. Yonge: Section XI (apophthegms) of [http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlaristotle.htm the life of Aristotle] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110221113849/http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlaristotle.htm |date=2011-02-21 }}</ref> [[William Caxton]] similarly closes his version with the remark that "{{Not a typo|men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer}}".<ref>[http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/caxton/610.htm "{{Not a typo|Of the child whiche kepte the sheep}}"] at mythfolklore.net</ref>
==History==
The story dates from [[Classical antiquity|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 "{{Not a typo|Of the child whiche kepte the sheep}}" (1484), [[Hieronymus Osius]] "The boy who lied" ("{{Lang|la|De mendace puero}}", 1574), [[Francis Barlow (artist)|Francis Barlow]] "Of the herd boy and the farmers" ("{{Lang|la|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).<ref>''Songs from Aesop's Fables'', [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/681853115 details on WorldCat]</ref> It also features as the second of "Aesop's Fables for narrator and band" (1999) by Scott Watson (b. 1964)<ref>[https://www.jwpepper.com/Aesop%27s-Fables/2702965.item performance and score]</ref>
Teachers have used the fable as a cautionary tale about telling the truth, but an educational experiment in the first decade of the 21st century suggested that reading "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" increased children's likelihood of lying; reading about [[George Washington and the cherry tree]], however, decreased this likelihood dramatically.<ref>{{cite book |title=Nurture Shock – New Thinking about Children|author1=Po Bronson|author2=Ashley Merryman|location=New York|publisher=Grand Central Publishing|year=2009|isbn=978-0-446-56332-1|pages=83–84}}</ref> The suggestibility and favourable outcome of the behaviour described, therefore, seems the key to moral instruction of the young. However, when dealing with the moral behaviour of adults, [[Samuel Croxall]] asks, 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?"<ref>''The Fables of Aesop'', Fable CLV; [https://books.google.com/books?id=sFhMAAAAYAAJ&q=The+Shepherd%27s+boy available on Google Books, p. 263]</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
{{Portal|Children's literature}}
* {{Wikisource-inline|The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf|The Boy Who Cried Wolf}}
* {{Commonscatinline}}
* Laura Gibbs' gallery of 15th–20th century [https://www.flickr.com/search/?w=38299630%40N05&q=puer+mendax&m=text book illustrations of the fable]
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{{The Boy Who Cried Wolf}}
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[[Category:Aesop's Fables]]
[[Category:English-language idioms]]
[[Category:Fictional shepherds]]
[[Category:Fictional wolves]]
[[Category:Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology]]
[[Category:Big Bad Wolf]]
[[Category:Metaphors referring to wolves]]
[[Category:ATU 1200-1349]]