Babbitt - The Penny-Wise Monkey - Keeping the Public in Public Domaihn

Like many with a bit of change in my pocket, I've been thinking about the coming demise of the penny. Then I found this 

 

To give credit to the artist I tried to find a bit more about The Unknown Punster. It looks as if he (Ken R 2155) hangs out on Pinterest. 

I sometimes change the common saying that puns are the lowest form of humor. Puns are the LoiS form of humor!

Possibly I should join The Unknown Punster's 1,500 followers.  

So many sayings about pennies have been part of our culture. Looking through folk literature I found a very appropriate (and timely!) story that fits the "penny wise/pound foolish" idea. Will future translations from the Sanskrit need to change the title?

THE PENNY-WISE MONKEY

Once upon a time the king of a large and rich country gathered together his army to take a faraway little country. The king and his soldiers marched all morning long and then went into camp in the forest.

When they fed the horses they gave them some peas to eat. One of the Monkeys living in the forest saw the peas and jumped down to get some of them. He filled his mouth and hands with them, and up into the tree he went again, and sat down to eat the peas.

As he sat there eating the peas, one pea fell from his hand to the ground. At once the greedy Monkey dropped all the peas he had in his hands, and ran down to hunt for the lost pea. But he could not find that one pea. He climbed up into his tree again, and sat still looking very glum. "To get more, I threw away what I had," he said to himself.

The king had watched the Monkey, and he said to himself: "I will not be like this foolish Monkey, who lost much to gain a little. I will go back to my own country and enjoy what I now have."

So he and his men marched back home. 

***

Ellen C. Babbitt's More Jataka Tales was the source of that and her first book of Jataka Tales with her translation from the Sanskrit of early Buddhist fables is equally good. 

Her Foreword to the second book gives even more background: The Jataka tales, regarded as historic in the Third Century B. C., are the oldest collection of folk-lore extant. They come down to us from that dim far-off time when our forebears told tales around the same hearth fire on the roof of the world. Professor Rhys Davids speaks of them as "a priceless record of the childhood of our race. The same stories are found in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and in most European languages. The Greek versions of the Jataka tales were adapted and ascribed to the famous storyteller, Aesop, and under his name handed down as a continual feast for the children in the West,--tales first invented to please and instruct our far-off cousins in the East." Here East, though East, meets West!  

Whether it's a penny or inflated to a nickel for your thoughts, it's a story with wisdom worth sharing. 

******************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, “Keeping the Public in Public Domain.” The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20^th century. My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy discovering them.

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

See the sidebar for other Public Domain story resources I recommend on the page “Public Domain Story Resources."

 

Babbitt - The Elephant and the Dog - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 Back on June 6 of 2015 I first posted about Ellen C. Babbitt and her Jataka Tales and the sequel, More Jataka Tales.  This makes the fifth story from those collections which are always enjoyable.  At the end of that first time I mentioned several other stories I particularly love and this was the last one listed.  In looking for stories of friendship, this one must  be given.  Last week I mentioned next summer many libraries will be thinking of Kindness, Friendship and Unity because of the Collaborative Summer Reading theme called "All Together Now."  Beyond that I will be on the road on my usual time to post.  August 12 is World Elephant Day so I wanted to both give this lovely story and then get into a bit of Elephant facts including re-posting something from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

(Rather than strain my elderly copy of More Jataka Tales I copied an online edition of it from The Baldwin Project.  The illustrations by Ellsworth Young will appear, but the copying process sometimes seems to delay them a bit.)

THE ELEPHANT AND THE DOG

O

 

NCE upon a time a Dog used to go into the stable where the king's Elephant lived. At first the Dog went there to get the food that was left after the Elephant had finished eating.

Day after day the Dog went to the stable, waiting around for bits to eat. But by and by the Elephant and the Dog came to be great friends. Then the Elephant began to share his food with the Dog, and they ate together. When the Elephant slept, his friend the Dog slept beside him. When the Elephant felt like playing, he would catch the Dog in his trunk and swing him to and fro. Neither the Dog nor the Elephant was quite happy unless the other was near-by.

One day a farmer saw the Dog and said to the Elephant-keeper: "I will buy that Dog. He looks good-tempered, and I see that he is smart. How much do you want for the Dog?"

The Elephant-keeper did not care for the Dog, and he did want some money just then. So he asked a fair price, and the farmer paid it and took the Dog away to the country.

The king's Elephant missed the Dog and did not care to eat when his friend was not there to share the food. When the time came for the Elephant to bathe, he would not bathe. The next day again the Elephant would not eat, and he would not bathe. The third day, when the Elephant would neither eat nor bathe, the king was told about it.

The king sent for his chief servant, saying, "Go to the stable and find out why the Elephant is acting in this way."

The chief servant went to the stable and looked the Elephant all over. Then he said to the Elephant-keeper: "There seems to be nothing the matter with this Elephant's body, but why does he look so sad? Has he lost a play-mate?"

"Yes," said the keeper, "there was a Dog who ate and slept and played with the Elephant. The Dog went away three days ago."

"Do you know where the Dog is now?" asked the chief servant.

"No, I do not," said the keeper.

Then the chief servant went back to the king and said. "The Elephant is not sick, but he is lonely without his friend, the Dog."

"Where is the Dog?" asked the king.

"A farmer took him away, so the Elephant-keeper says," said the chief servant. "No one knows where the farmer lives."

"Very well," said the king. "I will send word all over the country, asking the man who bought this Dog to turn him loose. I will give him back as much as he paid for the Dog."

When the farmer who had bought the Dog heard this, he turned him loose. The Dog ran back as fast as ever he could go to the Elephant's stable. The Elephant was so glad to see the Dog that he picked him up with his trunk and put him on his head. Then he put him down again.

When the Elephant-keeper brought food, the Elephant watched the Dog as he ate, and then took his own food.

All the rest of their lives the Elephant and the Dog lived together.

World Elephant Day 2022 will be taking place on August 12th. Co-founded in 2012 by Canadian Patricia Sims and the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation in Thailand, each year on this date, World Elephant Day aims to raise global awareness of the need to protect Asian and African elephants from the threats they face. 

Related to those efforts I received and want to share this email I received from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

 Just when you thought elephants couldn’t be any more extraordinary

Imagine being able to detect a rainstorm over 100 kilometers away—with your feet! While it might sound like some kind of superpower, it’s actually one of the elephants’ innate abilities. (Wow!) Unique qualities like these are just one more reason why they’re so amazing!

ELEPHANTS

2X MATCH for elephants to celebrate upcoming World Elephant Day Show elephants you care with a matched gift

DONATE

Because the gentle giants communicate with infrasound—sound below the range of human hearing—they can also pick up the extremely subtle rumbles of distant rainstorms. This gives the thirsty pachyderms a chance to change course and start moving toward much-needed water sources as they become available.

While we don’t share the elephants’ incredible ability of deciphering distant sounds with our feet, we are taking their lead by putting sound to work as a way to help protect them.

WCS has been collaborating with Elephant Listening Project researchers, using remote recording units to capture the awe-inspiring soundscapes of the Congolese rainforest—including the low rumbles of elephants. By painstakingly monitoring these recordings, we can better understand how elephants fare before, during, and after intrusive operations such as logging, for example.

We’re consistently using new and unique strategies like these to safeguard the elephants we all love. Won’t you join us in our efforts? Your gift to elephants will be put to work right away to protect elephants in 21 countries across Africa and Asia.

******************** 

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:        

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

 
           - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for finding new books and stories to love and tell.

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. 

Have fun discovering even more stories

Babbitt - The Pennywise Monkey - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Monkeying around implies doing dumb things.

 We all do dumb things from time to time, sometimes even in clusters.  My husband refers to expensive ones as paying "Stupidity Tax."  Yep, been there. . . recently.  Rather than sit and bemoan dumb things done, it pays to look at whatever positives you can find.  There may not be many.  In my case I now have a newer version of Android on a newer tablet.  As for the other things that went wrong. . . 'nuff said.

Sometimes it also helps to read or watch a story about something even worse.  First I would like you to make a return visit to a very short story from Ellen C. Babbitt called "The Stupid Monkeys" and it's in her second book of Indian stories called More Jataka Tales.

If you clicked on that story you found a discussion about how proverbs make a great starting point for writing a story, especially a fable with animals.  Then the question was whether or not to tell the moral (the proverb or lesson) of the story or let the reader or audience draw its own conclusion.  Babbitt never tells, but lets you draw your own conclusions.  If indeed you read the story I posted back in 2015 (my this has been a long time!), I don't comment on how it wasn't half as stupid for the monkeys as it was for that human gardener and I doubt he kept his job.

Monkeys are numerous in India and so they are also numerous in the Jataka Tales.  That 2015 article also told about the origin of the Jataka Tales.  Babbitt did a very tellable slender pair of books for her version.  Buddhist literature has them for their earliest literature and Aesop Fables and also the Hindu Panchatantra share some of the same stories.  This isn't one of them, but maybe it should be.

Hmmmmm.

That almost sounds like it should go to the heads of our world governments.

Guess it's time for me to quit monkeying around.

(But I like to include the following "fine print" about ways to find more stories.)
**************************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Babbitt - 2 Turtle tales (Keeping the Public in Public Domain) & More

Why did the turtle cross the road?

I know that sounds like the start of an old joke, but it's not.  Spring has awakened turtles and they are slowly on the move.  They were made to be fairly unbreakable, but there are limits and that includes being unable to handle a car running them over.  If you see one on the road, please slow down, putting on your emergency flashers and pull over to the side where you can help.  They're fairly determined, so this may help you.

(Nadilyn Beato is an artist at http://reptilearts.com and, while that is copyrighted, it's her public service announcement -- I found it on Facebook.  She has an Etsy store selling her art and is based in New York.)

Please note that those determined turtles are best moved to the other side of the road where they were headed.  Also they aren't going to believe you are helping them, so do it carefully.  Snapping Turtles are particularly difficult and are fast enough with their mouths, so try to approach from the back.

Here in Oakland County, Michigan I often say we should be called Lakeland County as there are lakes, ponds, and wetlands everywhere!  This means rural and suburban roads often have traveling turtles we should protect.  Turtles date back hundreds of millions of years, older even than crocodiles or snakes, so we need to do what we can to keep them safe from our vehicles.

Of course I want to share a pair of brief turtle stories.  The Jatakas; Tales of India as retold by Ellen C. Babbitt keep some of our oldest stories in a short easily enjoyed form.  Both these stories may be familiar in other cultures.  The first will sound rather like Br'er Rabbit and I'm not saying the story traveled from India, but it's probably just human "reverse psychology."  The other first came to my attention in 1968 when Janina Domanska published a Polish version called Look, There Is a Turtle Flying.  I do believe that came from those old Indian tales moving out into other lands.  Either way here they are for us to enjoy.

"Please don't throw me in the briar patch!"  Br'er Rabbit's version is better known, but maybe Turtles did it first.

The next story is so appropriate for me...and maybe you, too.

I confess I sometimes think I was destined to be a storyteller since I got in trouble for talking from my earliest days, especially in school.  Fortunately it never was as catastrophic as it was for poor Turtle.  I often say "I tell for fun and profit", so keep me and the world of storytelling in mind when you look for a program.
*******************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ .  It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016  and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

     
You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  Possibly searches maintained it.  Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine.  It took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally in December of 2006 it appears!

Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

Babbitt - Prince Wicked and the Grateful Animals - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Last week I began looking at whether you should end a story with a moral.  I strongly recommend a look at that article for a variety of reasons.  There were three stories I already liked best in Ellen C. Babbitt's More Jataka Tales.

One of them, today's "Prince Wicked and the Animals", drew this comment from me: (reading it again, I really must post it in this election season even though it's the longest Jataka in the book!)

Don't worry, it's not political, but that's the application or moral that popped into my head at the time.  Your own  moral may be very different, but I hope you, too, enjoy the story.

There are many ways this story could be used.  Whether you feel the need for a Moral to end the story is up to you, but I hope you Keep the Public in Public Domain by keeping this and other Jataka Tales alive.  (Personally I love the re-tellings by Babbitt as they are simple and very tellable, but, as mentioned last week, if you prefer something more academic or true to its Buddhist origins, be sure to look at last week's inclusion of the original sources she used.)
*************************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  


At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    

There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Babbitt - The Stupid Monkeys - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Just fell in love once again with Ellen C. Babbitt's two Jataka Tales books.  This came after my telling Indian folklore to open a play I was in and also after an interesting discussion about telling or not telling the moral of story.  I'll say more after this very brief example.

I intentionally left the book edge showing in this final page as it shows my "sticky note" in the front of the book.  More on that after returning to the comments made at the start of today's article.

Look at this story.  Would it gain or lose by stating a moral?  What moral would you give it?

That decision of a moral is at the heart of "to give a moral or not."  If you leave it unstated, two, no, possibly three things may happen:

1. Various morals are free to develop based on the individual
2. It doesn't seem as didactic 
3. The point isn't necessarily the one the teller had in mind.

I intentionally chose a story where the story's "message" may not be the same for everyone. (It also happens to be the time of year when people may need to find caretakers for gardens, pets, whatever, while they are away.)

Proverbs are a great story starter and many books of fables do give us the intended moral for stories.  At a recent storytelling meeting the story of getting an animal to dig until they have dug a pit too deep to escape was told.  In this case the digger was a tricky fox -- always a creature good to represent creativity and sly intelligence.  The story ended with the fox stuck in the pit and the moral was stated that "There's always someone smarter."  That's a good lesson.  It brought the story to a close with a snap!  Sometimes that's what is wanted because a fable, by its nature, is a teaching story.  The drawbacks are the three possibilities named earlier, although the third option tends to be the same as the first.  The possible benefits are that your audience will know what you wanted them to remember and it also is a bit more memorable.  The fellow storyteller who used it on his digging fox version caught me so off guard that it took me several days to remember the story itself instead of just his stated moral.

In the recent show, one of the tales I told, "The Pigeon and His Turtle Dove Wife", was from another ancient Indian collection of teaching tales, the Panchatantra.  The setting for the show was to be at a wedding reception.  Essentially the story, like the familiar "City Mouse, Country Mouse" has a pigeon leave his home-loving wife for a series of adventures that all leave him eager to return home.  I chose to end with "East, west, home is best."  Didactic?  Yes, a bit, but it gave that snap of conclusion and showed how it fit the setting, letting me go on to another more modern example from Indian culture.

The two books, Jataka Tales and More Jataka Tales, are easily found online and I've given hotlinks, but Ms. Babbit made it clear in both books she was retelling the work of other translators, the Cambridge scholars of the Sanskrit "Guild of Jataka Translators" directed by Professor E.B. Cowell.  If you go to that work you get the subtitle: Stories of the Buddha's Former Births.  She omits that aspect in her retellings.  If you want it, then a more academic translation, like Cowell's, is wanted.  Personally I love the way her tales return to teaching (and in an entertaining way) everyone without limitation for age or religious outlook.  There's a reason the Jatakas have been among the earliest literature and have spread so widely throughout international folklore (Aesop, Boccacio, Chaucer, et al).  Both the Jatakas and the Panchatantra are animal fables illustrating the wise conduct of life.

Oh, and about that "sticky note", I listed these stories: - "The Girl Monkey and the Pearls" which Anne Rockwell delightfully turned into The Stolen Necklace;

- the Golden Goose (no, not the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs -- this one deals with the gift of golden feathers and how the gift was abused);

- the Stolen Plow (I know this as a Fox tale, but both versions deal with tricksters in a similar way);

- Prince Wicked and the Animals (reading it again, I really must post it in this election season even though it's the longest Jataka in the book!)

- the Elephant and the Dog (just a lovely little story of animal friendship).

Those were the stories I might only have continued re-reading, but as I said at the start: Just fell in love once again with Natalie Babbitt's two Jataka Tales books.  The More Jataka Tales book is slender enough and the tales are brief enough that I once again went through the book and was so glad I did. (The original Jataka Tales is just as accessible.)

With or without a stated moral, don't let that stop you from enjoying them!
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  


At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    

There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!