The Tortoise and the Hare

This article is about Aesop's fable. For other uses, see The Tortoise and the Hare (disambiguation).
"The Tortoise and the Hare", from an edition of Aesop's Fables illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1912

"The Tortoise and the Hare" is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index.[1] The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. It is itself a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery (rather than doggedness) are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.

An ambiguous story

The story concerns a Hare who ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise. Tired of the Hare's boastful behaviour, the Tortoise challenges him to a race.[2] The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him. The later version of the story in La Fontaine's Fables (VI.10), while more long-winded, differs hardly at all from Aesop's.[3]

As in several other fables by Aesop, the lesson it is teaching appears ambiguous. In Classical times it was not the Tortoise’s plucky conduct in taking on a bully that was emphasised but the Hare’s foolish over-confidence. An old Greek source comments that 'many people have good natural abilities which are ruined by idleness; on the other hand, sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence.[4] When the fable entered the European emblem tradition, the precept to ‘hasten slowly’ (festina lente) was recommended to lovers by Otto van Veen in his Emblemata Amorum (1608), using a relation of the story. There the infant figure of Eros is shown passing through a landscape and pointing to the tortoise as it overtakes the sleeping hare under the motto “perseverance winneth.”[5] Later interpreters too have asserted that the fable's moral is the proverbial 'the more haste, the worse speed' (Samuel Croxall) or have applied to it the Biblical observation that 'the race is not to the swift' (Ecclesiastes 9.11).

In the 19th century and after the fable was given satirical interpretations. In the social commentary of Charles H. Bennett's The Fables of Aesop translated into Human Nature (1857), the hare is changed to a thoughtful craftsman prostrate under the foot of a capitalist entrepreneur.[6] Lord Dunsany brings out another view in his "The True History of the Tortoise and the Hare" (1915). There the hare realises the stupidity of the challenge and refuses to proceed any further. The obstinate tortoise continues to the finishing line and is proclaimed the swiftest by his backers. But, continues Dunsany,

the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest. They sent the Tortoise.[7]

Applications

In Classical times the story was annexed to a philosophical problem by Zeno of Elea in one of many demonstrations that movement is impossible to define satisfactorily. The second of Zeno's paradoxes is that of Achilles and the Tortoise, in which the hero gives the Tortoise a head start in a race. The argument attempts to show that even though Achilles runs faster than the Tortoise, he will never catch up with her because, when Achilles reaches the point at which the Tortoise started, the Tortoise has advanced some distance beyond; when Achilles arrives at the point where the Tortoise was when Achilles arrived at the point where the Tortoise started, the Tortoise has again moved forward. Hence Achilles can never catch the Tortoise, no matter how fast he runs, since the Tortoise will always be moving ahead.[8][9]

The only satisfactory refutation has been mathematical and since then the name of the fable has been applied to the function described in Zeno's paradox. In mathematics and computer science, the tortoise and the hare algorithm is an alternative name for Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm.

Illustrations of the fable

A 19th-century illustration of La Fontaine's Fables by Jean Grandville

There is a Greek version of the fable but no early Latin version. For this reason it did not begin to appear in printed editions of Aesop's fables until the 16th century, one of the earliest being Bernard Salomon's Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien, mises en Ryme Francoise (1547).[10] Versions followed from the Netherlands (in Dutch, 1567) and Flanders (in French, 1578)[11] but none in English before Francis Barlow's edition of 1667.[12]

Among the many illustrations of the fable, that by the French caricaturist Jean Grandville is novel in portraying the tortoise as running upright. This is also how he is shown in the Walt Disney cartoon version of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (1935).[13] Another departure from the ordinary in Grandville's etching is the choice of a mole (complete with dark glasses) rather than, as usual, a fox as the judge at the finishing line. Auguste Delierre makes the judge a monkey in the 1883 edition of La Fontaine's fables that he illustrated.[14][15] La Fontaine says in his rhyme that it does not matter who the judge is; his interpreters have taken him at his word.

Outside of book production, there is an early 17th-century oil painting of the fable by the Flemish landscape artist Jan Wildens.[16] The hare enters on the left, racing over an upland road as dawn breaks; the tortoise is nowhere in sight. In the mid-19th century, the French animal painter Philibert Léon Couturier also devoted an oil painting to the fable in which, as in Grandville's illustration, the tortoise is shown racing upright.[17] In modern times there have been two pieces of popular sculpture aimed at children. Nancy Schön's was made to commemorate the centenary of the Boston Marathon in 1996 and is sited in Copley Square, the finishing line for the race.[18] The tortoise is shown determinedly stumping forward while the hare has paused to scratch behind its ear. In the following year a painted steel sculpture by Michael Browne and Stuart Smith was set up near the cross-country finish line at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.[19] The hare is mounted on the tortoise's shell and appears to be trying to leap over him.

The fable has also been illustrated on stamps from several countries. These include:

Musical versions

Many allusions to the fable in musical titles are of limited or no relevance, but two instrumental versions may be noted. The one by Yellow Jackets jazz quartet was recorded on their Politics album in 1988[30] The Anglo-Irish band Flook's title is on their Haven album (2005)

There have also been several musical settings of Aesop's fable:

Later adaptations

There have been a number of modern versions of the fable, although some have taken liberties with the original story line.

In Alexander Sumarokov's Russian version (loosely based on La Fontaine's), the tortoise and the hare race on the road from Saint Petersburg to Moscow; the hare is "three months or more" late with his departure, and upon reaching Moscow finds that the tortoise has bested him by three days.[35]

There were early animated cartoons in France (1920), and the US (1921). The fable was adapted into a Silly Symphonies cartoon titled The Tortoise and the Hare (1934/5), produced by Walt Disney Productions (in which the tortoise is named Toby), followed in 1936 by the sequel Toby Tortoise Returns. In 1941, Warner Bros. Animation Studios produced the Merrie Melodies cartoon Tortoise Beats Hare, which is based on the fable and features Bugs Bunny and Cecil Turtle, followed by two sequels of decreasingly relevant significance. Encyclopædia Britannica Films followed with a dramatized version of Aesop's fable starring live animals, including an owl, a fox, a goose, a rooster, a raccoon, and a hare.[36] This was a 1947 production in black and white with narrated voice-over.

In 1952, the model animator Ray Harryhausen began a version of the fable, before moving over to more lucrative work on monster movies. Young enthusiasts Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero later helped Harryhausen complete "The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare", having refurbished the original puppets and, under Harryhausen's guidance, completed the film in 2002.[37] A feature in this, is that the hare drops off to sleep as a result of taking a big meal near the end of the race, thus allowing the tortoise to win. The same situation had appeared in Georges de la Grandière's 1960's cartoon version of the fable, Le Lièvre et la tortue.[38]

In 1971, Filmation produced a live action/animated television special based on the fable, along with an adaptation of The Tortoise and the Birds, under the title Aesop's Fables, with Bill Cosby playing a black Aesop. Later animated versions referencing the fable on Sesame Street (1973),[39] Manga Aesop Monogotari (1983)[40] and the 2015 Mercedes Benz commercial[41] diverge considerably from the original fable.

Folk variants

The many other variants of the story in oral folk tradition appear worldwide and are classed as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 275.[42] In most of these there is a race between unequal partners but most often brain is matched against brawn and the race is won by means of trickery. Broadly this is of two types: either the slower animal jumps on the other's back or tail and hops off at the end when the creature turns round to see where his challenger has got to, or else he is deceived by lookalikes substituting themselves along the course.

Tales with a similar theme emphasizing doggedness have been recorded in Native American culture. Hummingbird and Crane agree to race from one ocean to the other. Though Hummingbird flies faster, he stops at night to sleep. Crane, however, flies overnight and is overtaken by Hummingbird later and later during the day, at length coming in first. The ultimate prize differs between versions and includes choice of habitat, the love of a girl, or the right to cut the other down to size.[43]

See also

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

References

  1. ↑ "THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE". mythfolklore.net.
  2. ↑ "Story Arts - Aesop's ABC - The Tortoise and The Hare". storyarts.org.
  3. ↑ A translation is here
  4. ↑ Aesop's Fables: a new translation by Laura Gibbs, Oxford 2002, fable 237
  5. ↑ The English emblem tradition, University of Toronto 1998, vol.IV, p.174
  6. ↑ "Lepus et Testudo". Flickr - Photo Sharing!.
  7. ↑ "Lord Dunsany, ''51 Tales'&#39". FullTextArchive.com. Retrieved 2013-12-06.
  8. ↑ "Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  9. ↑ Wilson, Catherine (2015). Leibniz's Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study. Princeton University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-4008-7957-1.
  10. ↑ "Aesop (Thomas Bewick)". Mythfolklore.net. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  11. ↑ "Aesop's Fables - Victoria and Albert Museum". Vam.ac.uk. 2012-03-18. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  12. ↑ "70. De lepore et testudine (1687), illustrated by Francis Barlow". Mythfolklore.net. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  13. ↑ "The cartoon can be viewed on YouTube". Youtube.com. 2008-06-07. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  14. ↑ The preparatory water colour is at the La Fontaine Museum
  15. ↑ http://www.cuniculture.info/Docs/Phototheque/Peinture&Decor/Peintres-D/Delierre-01.jpg
  16. ↑ http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/183278/1/The-Tortoise-And-The-Hare,-From-Aesops-Fables.jpg
  17. ↑ "Le Lièvre et la Tortue Philibert Léon Couturier Peinture Toile Huile". philibert-leon-couturier.com.
  18. ↑ "Hare and Tortoise, Boston, Mass by Nancy Schön". Schon.com. 1993-05-19. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  19. ↑ Humanities magazine for Nov/Dec 2009
  20. ↑ Cyprus postal service
  21. ↑ "Creighton University :: Aesop's Fables: Dahomey Stamps". Creighton.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  22. ↑ http://philatelia.ru/pict/cat5/stamp/12393s.jpg
  23. ↑ http://environnement.ecole.free.fr/Timbres/1978066-fable-la-fontaine.jpg
  24. ↑ "Creighton University :: Aesop's Fables: Individual Stamps". Creighton.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  25. ↑ "Creighton University :: Aesop's Fables: Greece". Creighton.edu. 1987-03-05. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  26. ↑ "Creighton University :: Aesop's Fables: Hungary". Creighton.edu. 1960-12-01. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  27. ↑ "Creighton University :: Aesop's Fables: Maldives". Creighton.edu. 1990-12-11. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  28. ↑ Scroll down to 12 April 2011 on Stampboard.com
  29. ↑ "Stamp: Hare and the tortoise at the starting line (Sri Lanka (Ceylon)) (International Children's Broadcasting Day 2007) Mi:LK 1679,WAD:LK064.07". colnect.com.
  30. ↑ "Yellow Jackets - Tortoise and the Hare (Live)". YouTube. 2006-07-27. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  31. ↑ The score is available on the Rochester University site
  32. ↑ A performance on YouTube
  33. ↑ FMHS Jaguar Chorale -- "Aesop's Fables: the Hare and the Tortoise". YouTube. 26 May 2009.
  34. ↑ Harambee - The Tortoise and The Hare (Darmon Meader) Acappella. YouTube. 1 September 2010.
  35. ↑ Item XXIV. "Заяцъ и Черепаха" (Hare and Tortoise), in ПОЛНОЕ СОБРАНІЕ ВСѢХЪ СОЧИНЕНIЙ въ СТИХАХЪ И ПРОЗѢ, ПОКОЙНАГО ... АЛЕКСАНДРА ПЕТРОВИЧА СУМАРОКОВА (Complete Works in Verse and Prose by the late... Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov), Moscow, 1787
  36. ↑ This is available on the online movie archive
  37. ↑ Screen Novelties site. The film can now be viewed on YouTube, the first part here and the second models here
  38. ↑ This is in two parts on YouTube, the first at and the second at
  39. ↑ You Tube
  40. ↑ Anime News Network
  41. ↑ Mercedes Super Bowl Fable
  42. ↑ "The Tortoise and the Hare, and Other Races between Unequal Contestants". Pitt.edu. 2011-06-05. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  43. ↑ John Reed Swanton, Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, University of Oklahoma 1929, p. 253

External links

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