A Cock and Horses
When some people talk about compromise, what they mean is that everyone else should compromise for their benefit.
1669
When some people talk about compromise, what they mean is that everyone else should compromise for their benefit.
1669
The following Aesop-like fable comes from the trend-setting collection by Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704), who told it with such bracing energy it seems only right to let him tell it again. A cockerel calls for compromise, but it’s all on one side.
A COCK was got into a Stable, and there was he Nestling in the Straw among the Horses; and still as the Fit took ’em they’d be Stamping and Flinging, and laying about ’em with their Heels. So the Cock very gravely Admonish’d them; Pray, my Good Friends, let us have a Care, says he, that we don’t Tread upon One Another.*
For Sir Roger’s own lengthy Moral and Reflection, see ‘Fables, of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflections’ (3rd edn, 1669), Fable CCCCXXXIX (439), p. 412.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What was the Cockerel afraid of?
That the horses might accidentally crush him.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
A cockerel got into a stable. He decided to make it his home.