Who Originally Wrote The Tortoise And The Hare Story?

Question

Not sure about the original source—some folks mention Aesop's fables, but I've also read different versions and folklore retellings. Anyone know the oldest known author?

Aginnayya Eden Lunag Ducusin · Answer

The classic fable is often attributed to Aesop, although some scholars believe that there may be oral traditions from earlier times that the story draws from. If you enjoy clever stories that subvert your expectations regarding a particular rivalry, you may enjoy ‘The King and the Golden Wolf’. A cunning and legendary monarch confronts a cunning and legendary beast in a battle of wits, where their repeated encounters reveal a deeper and more complex history between them.

Aaron · Answer

I grew up racing my little sister down the yard. No matter if I won or if I fell, my sister would always say “slow and steady wins the race.” The old story of the tortoise and the hare is a very old fable attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop. In reality, the story was a part of an oral tradition long before it was ever written down by Aesop or any of the other classical writers, such as Phaedrus or Babrius, who went on to write their own versions of the story. Many, many years later, the stories of Aesop were even translated into poetry by writers such as La Fontaine and adapted into children’s books, cartoons and even classroom lessons.

It was a collective piece of oral history. When written down by later classical writers such as Phaedrus and Babrius, the stories were often adapted into short narratives or even poetry. La Fontaine later adapted some of the fables into verse for other languages too. Aesop is just a name attached to the tales. He is the name we now associate with them but they were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down by Aesop and others. There is something quite appealing about this collective oral history. It makes the fables seem more like a shared piece of folk wisdom than the work of a single author. This is probably why children’s books, cartoons and even school lessons keep reinterpreting and reinventing them in lots of different and fun ways.

Ingrid · Answer

When I am wandering around a museum bookstore or through the classics section of a bookstore, the spine of the book will usually read "Aesop's Fables". Historically, Aesop is the conventional author of the story of the tortoise and the hare. He lived in the 6th century BCE and many of the moral stories that were attributed to him were actually anonymous.

The story appears in a variety of manuscripts of several versions, including those by the Roman writer Phaedrus who translated the fables into Latin verse in the early centuries of the Christian era. Other writers, including the Greek writer Babrius, rendered many of the same fables in verse, including some that Aesop had not written. Many others have adapted Aesop’s fables, including the French writer La Fontaine who rendered them in verse in the seventeenth century. In the 19th century the fables were even illustrated in various versions of picture books for children. Today they are still used by teachers around the world to help children learn important moral lessons. If one wants to give credit for a single origin of the story, it is commonly attributed to Aesop; but recognition should also be given to the many people who have adapted and translated his stories over the centuries.

Natalia · Answer

I still remember a battered little book on my childhood bookshelves. It was a slim volume, Aesop’s Fables, with a picture of a smiley, wise-looking tortoise on the cover. This is, of course, The Tortoise and the Hare, a ‘fable’ traditionally ascribed to Aesop, the legendary ancient Greek storyteller (c. 6th century BCE). But it’s worth noting that ‘Aesop’ is essentially a name for a collection of stories of indeterminate age that were oral tales before they were ever written down. In short, there is no single ‘author’ of The Tortoise and the Hare.

As I reflect on how this little story of a long time ago, traveled to far-off places, has been adapted and changed in all sorts of ways, I thought of the many versions of it. First of all, the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare was already versified by the Roman writer Phaedrus in Latin and by the Greek writer Babrius in Greek. Then came the big names of French literature, as for example the poet Jean de La Fontaine who adapted it to the French literature of his time with his own style and flair. And that’s not all! I have seen it illustrated in many children’s books and even produced as a short film by Disney in 1935 under the same title of The Tortoise and the Hare. I have even come across a parody of it in a cartoon.

Aesop is the name we give to history, the original story teller from Greece about 6th century BCE. The original story was no doubt older than Aesop and was passed down orally through generations. It was also no doubt completely different in some places. This is a story that has been so polished by so many hands over the centuries that it now feels to belong to everyone and to no one.

Caleb · Answer

Did the animals in the very first versions of this story always and only go for a run between two poles as a tortoise and a hare? Or where they rather: a slow creature and a fast creature? The choice of the animals in the tradition that has become dominant is so iconic that one does not even think about it any more. The hare is fast and hopping about in a nervous and restless manner. The tortoise is slow, plodding and, because of its shell, defensive. Both animals are the absolute opposite of each other. One can therefore assume that the author of the version and the tradition that stabilishes this version did not choose these two animals by chance. Rather, they are the perfect mascots for the two contrasting characters in the story. This attention to the most important detail of the narrative is what makes the story, which in itself is just a short anecdote, a timeless and valid parable. The two animals do half of the narrative work already before the actual running part of the story begins.

Odutuga Adebayo · Answer

A somewhat unexpected note: the tortoise is never commended for being clever or cleverly tricky. Instead, he wins by simply being persevering. He doesn’t outwit the hare: he simply lasts longer than he does. At a time when our culture tends to give excessive emphasis to cleverness and to attribute excessive power to gifts of intelligence, this simple, stubborn, quiet virtue is championed by the fable. In fact, the virtue that this original moralist made so much of is not very glamorous; but it is very practical, very down-to-earth. And this moral is as relevant in a heavily-agricultural and labor-intensive society as it is in our present-day culture of extreme productivity. This moral has not aged a single day.

alissa richards · Answer

I think of Aesop’s Fables as a book of stories. I have never really thought of them any other way. That so many of these stories could have been written by one man so long ago is a pretty strange thing. I think of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in much the same way – that the tales were possibly written by one genius, but also that there may have been many others who contributed to the work as it was passed down through the tradition and eventually condensed into the single work of one author. The stories of Aesop are very short and very formulaic. Most of the Fables feel to me like classic proverbs that have grown up small stories in order to convey them. The saying ‘Slow and steady wins the race’ must have existed first as a proverb, and then Aesop wrote the wonderful little animal story which so perfectly illustrated the point. So in a sense the writing of the Fable is the act of writing the little story in order to make the point of the proverb. It is not the same as someone coming up with a completely new moral tale every time – there is a quality of his work which is far more meaningful and satisfactory than that.

Raul Tiburcio Granda · Answer

I have a book of world folktales, and this is a similar story from West Africa. A chameleon and a rabbit have this race, and the rabbit mocks the chameleon’s slowness, as you would expect. But then he challenges the chameleon to a race, and during the race, he stops to tell everyone else about how far ahead he is. The chameleon, however, has his family members positioned all along the route to the finish line. So every time the rabbit looks up and sees the chameleon, there’s always another chameleon in front of him. He wins through cleverness, as opposed to brute force, in this version of the story. It’s a really interesting story, and it’s another example of the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’ archetype being a global folk motif. Aesop’s version of this is the one that’s been handed down in Europe, but the idea itself is a human universal.

Nur Hashima · Answer

It's Aesop. End of story. Why are we even discussing this? Every single website, even kids' sites and encyclopedias, say that the fable(s) were created by Aesop. Now, did he literally write down the stories? Probably not, since he was likely illiterate and the stories were passed down orally. But he's the origin of the fables, which are included in his collection. So, no, it's not some unsolved historical mystery that we're trying to unravel. It's been settled. And no, we can't deconstruct this to try to assign credit to some oral tradition. That would be to water down the simple fact of the matter: the story(s) were created by Aesop. And that's all we need to know. Sometimes the simplest attribution is correct.

Mariifer Oñate · Answer

For that matter, who cares who first told the story? It is a gift to us from past generations. We can enjoy it, we can learn from it, and then we can pass it on. Arguing about who was the first to tell the story is like arguing about who made the first joke. It’s a story that has been passed down for thousands of years, and it still works today. Its anonymity is somehow powerful because it seems to come from the collective wisdom of humanity, rather than some one person’s imagination. The story belongs to us all. In the end, maybe all the parents, teachers, and storytellers down through the centuries have been its authors.

Ben Slagle · Answer

Wait, is this a trick question? Aesop. I knew that. People know who wrote Cinderella, even though it’s a piece of folklore and there are many versions of it. The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault get most of the credit for Fairy Tales, but the stories of Aesop are fables told by animals in order to teach a moral at the end of the story. I’d have to say that The Tortoise and the Hare is probably his most famous fable. This is all pretty straightforward stuff and I’m a bit surprised that so much discussion is going on about it. Usually the simplest answer to a question is the correct one. Yes, there were probably many versions of this story before Aesop told it, but he’s the one who gets credit for it in every single collection of fables that I’ve ever read. In most references to Aesop and his fables there is little to no debate about who it was that told the stories in the first place. It’s just given.

Who Originally Wrote The Tortoise And The Hare Story?

11 Answers

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