The Boy Who Cried Wolf

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology
For other uses, see Cry Wolf (disambiguation).

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry's numbering system), and written in 1673.[1] The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by calling out "wolf". Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they'd wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock. In some fairy-tale versions, when the villagers ignore him the wolf eats him, and in other versions he simply mocks the boy, saying now no one will help him, and that it serves him right for playing tricks. The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.

In reference to this tale, the phrase to "cry wolf" has long been a common idiom in English, described in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [2], and modern English dictionaries [3][4]. The phrase "Boy Who Cried Wolf" has also become somewhat of a figure of speech, meaning that one is calling for help when he or she does not really need it. Also in common English there goes the saying: "Never cry Wolf" to say that you never should lie, as is the above phrases.

In the American intelligence community, "crying wolf syndrome" is labeled as a condition where threat analysts are reluctant to report on an imminent threat, such as a terrorist attack, due to the fact that if the threat is unfounded or greatly inflated, future threats will not be believed.

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[edit] Adaptations

  • The last names of the two main characters in Big Fat Liar, Jason Shepherd and Marty Wolf, are allusions to the two main characters of the fable. Jason Shepherd, a persistent liar, was not believed when he said that Marty Wolf stole his English paper, the same way the shepherd boy was not believed when the wolf really did show up to eat his entire flock.
  • Sesame Street had a version of the fable called "The Boy Who Cried Monster", narrated by Sonia Manzano (Maria), in which a little village, fed up with being terrorized by a thieving monster (Cookie Monster) who steals the villagers' cookies, decides to implement a new system whereby if anyone sees the monster anywhere in the village, they will shout "MONSTER," and the rest of the villagers will come running to confront the monster. Unfortunately, a mischievous boy with a bag of cookies abuses this system twice; he shouts "MONSTER! HELP!!" and the villagers come running, expecting to confront the monster but finding only the little boy enjoying himself at their expense...and no monster. Then Cookie Monster shows up and confronts the boy. At first the boy is fearless because he remembers the new system and uses it once again, shouting "MONSTER! HELP!!" But, just like in the original fable, the villagers in this version also think the boy is only trying to fool them again, so they won't come running to him this time, and the boy is completely at Cookie Monster's mercy. Cookie Monster then snatches the boy's bag and devours his cookies while the boy regrets tricking the whole village as he did.
  • The fable is briefly referenced in The Simpsons episode "Marge Gets A Job" when Bart Simpson's habitual lying about his illnesses prompts Mrs. Krabappel to say "Bart, have you ever read The Boy Who Cried Wolf?". After Bart lies about another illness, Grandpa Simpson asks him the same question. When an actual wolf attacks Bart, Mrs. Krabappel doesn't believe him as she thinks he is trying to lie his way out of not taking the test (at least until he faints in front of her from his injuries).
  • "Improbable Cause", a third-season episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, references the story. After Julian Bashir explains to Garak what the fable is about ("if you lie all the time, nobody's going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth"), Garak replies that in his opinion the point is "that you should never tell the same lie twice".
  • In the Fables comic series--centered around a community of fairy tale characters living in modern-day New York City, Jack of Fables, a well known liar and con artist, appears at the office of Fabletown Deputy Mayor Snow White and Sheriff Bigby Wolf to report that he was attacked by three wooden soldiers. Bigby and Snow, knowing his penchant for lies, refuse to believe him (even though he is telling the truth). When asked by Snow if he knows the story of the boy who cried wolf, Jack replies, "Yeah, he lives up on the seventh floor. So what?"
  • A Mighty Mouse cartoon entitled, "Wolf! Wolf!" uses this fable as its primary basis; however, it is a mischievous little lamb who shouts "WOLF!" fooling the rest of the flock and the sheepdog and having fun about it...until a wolf actually does abduct the little lamb. This version has a happy ending, however.
  • In 1986, the norwegian band A-HA released a single entitled "Cry Wolf", and this song is based on the fable from 1673.

[edit] See also

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Look up cry wolf in
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[edit] References

  1. ^ Ben Edwin Perry (1965). Babrius and Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 462, no. 210. ISBN 0-674-99480-9. 
  2. ^ E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898 - Wolf at bartleby.com, accessed 19 September, 2007
  3. ^ Compact Oxford English Dictionary - wolf, at askoxford.com. OUP, June, 2005, accessed 19 September, 2007
  4. ^ Merriam Webster Online dictionary - Definition of cry from the Merriam-Webster website, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, July, 2003, accessed 19 September, 2007

[edit] External links