THE FABLE OF THE CICADA AND THE ANT

The Life of the Grasshopper by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE FABLE OF THE CICADA AND THE ANT

CHAPTER I. THE FABLE OF THE CICADA AND THE ANT

Fame is built up mainly of legend; in the animal world, as in the world of men, the story takes precedence of history. Insects in particular, whether they attract our attention in this way or in that, have their fair share in a folk-lore which pays but little regard to truth.

For instance, who does not know the Cicada, at least by name? Where, in the entomological world, can we find a renown that equals hers? Her reputation as an inveterate singer, who takes no thought for the future, has formed a subject for our earliest exercises in repetition. In verses that are very easily learnt, she is shown to us, when the bitter winds begin to blow, quite destitute and hurrying to her neighbour, the Ant, to announce her hunger. The would-be borrower meets with a poor welcome and with a reply which has remained proverbial and is the chief cause of the little creature’s fame. Those two short lines,

Vous chantiez! J’en suis bien en aise.

Eh bien, dansez maintenant,

with their petty malice, have done more for the Cicada’s celebrity than all her talent as a musician. They enter the child’s mind like a wedge and never leave it.

To most of us, the Cicada’s song is unknown, for she dwells in the land of the olive-trees; but we all, big and little, have heard of the snub which she received from the Ant. See how reputations are made! A story of very doubtful value, offending as much against morality as against natural history; a nursery-tale whose only merit lies in its brevity: there we have the origin of a renown which will tower over the ruins of the centuries like Hop-o’-my-Thumb’s boots and Little Red-Riding-Hood’s basket.

The child is essentially conservative. Custom and traditions become indestructible once they are confided to the archives of his memory. We owe to him the celebrity of the Cicada, whose woes he stammered in his first attempts at recitation. He preserves for us the glaring absurdities that are part and parcel of the fable: the Cicada will always be hungry when the cold comes, though there are no Cicadæ left in the winter; she will always beg for the alms of a few grains of wheat, a food quite out of keeping with her delicate sucker; the supplicant is supposed to hunt for Flies and grubs, she who never eats!

Whom are we to hold responsible for these curious blunders? La Fontaine,2 who charms us in most of his fables with his exquisite delicacy of observation, is very ill-inspired in this case. He knows thoroughly his common subjects, the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Goat, the Crow, the Rat, the Weasel and many others, whose sayings and doings he describes to us with delightful precision of detail. They are local characters, neighbours, housemates of his. Their public and private life is spent under his eyes; but, where Jack Rabbit gambols, the Cicada is an entire stranger: La Fontaine never heard of her, never saw her. To him the famous singer is undoubtedly a Grasshopper.

Grandville,3 whose drawings have the same delicious spice of malice as the text itself, falls into the same error. In his illustration, we see the Ant arrayed like an industrious housewife. Standing on her threshold, beside great sacks of wheat, she turns a contemptuous back on the borrower, who is holding out her foot, I beg pardon, her hand. The second figure wears a great cartwheel hat, with a guitar under her arm and her skirt plastered to her legs by the wind, and is the perfect picture of a Grasshopper. Grandville no more than La Fontaine suspected the real appearance of the Cicada; he reproduced magnificently the general mistake.

For the rest, La Fontaine, in his poor little story, only echoes another fabulist. The legend of the Cicada’s sorry welcome by the Ant is as old as selfishness, that is to say, as old as the world. The children of Athens, going to school with their esparto-grass baskets crammed with figs and olives, were already mumbling it as a piece for recitation:

“In winter,” said they, “the Ants dry their wet provisions in the sun. Up comes a hungry Cicada begging. She asks for a few grains. The greedy hoarders reply, ‘You used to sing in summer; now dance in winter.’ ”

This, although a little more baldly put, is precisely La Fontaine’s theme and is contrary to all sound knowledge.

Nevertheless the fable comes to us from Greece, which is preeminently the land of olive-trees and Cicadæ. Was Æsop really the author, as tradition pretends? It is doubtful. Nor does it matter, after all: the narrator is a Greek and a fellow-countryman of the Cicada, whom he must know well enough. My village does not contain a peasant so ignorant as to be unaware of the absolute lack of Cicadæ in winter; every tiller of the soil is familiar with the insect’s primary state, the larva, which he turns over with his spade as often as he has occasion to bank up the olive-trees at the approach of the cold weather; he knows, from seeing it a thousand times along the paths, how this grub leaves the ground through a round pit of its own making, how it fastens on to some twig, splits its back, divests itself of its skin, now drier than shrivelled parchment, and turns into the Cicada, pale grass-green at first, soon to be succeeded by brown.

The Attic peasant was no fool either: he had remarked that which cannot escape the least observant eye; he also knew what my rustic neighbours know so well. The poet, whoever he may have been, who invented the fable was writing under the best conditions for knowing all about these things. Then whence did the blunders in his story arise?

The Greek fabulist had less excuse than La Fontaine for portraying the Cicada of the books instead of going to the actual Cicada, whose cymbals were echoing at his side; heedless of the real, he followed tradition. He himself was but echoing a more ancient scribe; he was repeating some legend handed down from India, the venerable mother of civilizations. Without knowing exactly the story which the Hindu’s reed had put in writing to show the danger of a life led without foresight, we are entitled to believe that the little dialogue set down was nearer to the truth than the conversation between the Cicada and the Ant. India, the great lover of animals, was incapable of committing such a mistake. Everything seems to tell us that the leading figure in the original fable was not our Cicada but rather some other creature, an insect if you will, whose habits corresponded fittingly with the text adopted.

Imported into Greece, after serving for centuries to make the wise reflect and to amuse the children on the banks of the Indus, the ancient story, perhaps as old as the first piece of economical advice vouchsafed by Paterfamilias and handed down more or less faithfully from memory to memory, must have undergone an alteration in its details, as do all legends which the course of the ages adapts to circumstances of time and place.

The Greek, not possessing in his fields the insect of which the Hindu spoke, dragged in, as the nearest thing to it, the Cicada, even as in Paris, the modern Athens, the Cicada is replaced by the Grasshopper. The mischief was done. Henceforth ineradicable, since it has been confided to the memory of childhood, the mistake will prevail against an obvious truth.

Let us try to rehabilitate the singer slandered by the fable. He is, I hasten to admit, an importunate neighbour. Every summer he comes and settles in his hundreds outside my door, attracted by the greenery of two tall plane-trees; and here, from sunrise to sunset, the rasping of his harsh symphony goes through my head. Amid this deafening concert, thought is impossible; one’s ideas reel and whirl, are incapable of concentrating. When I have not profited by the early hours of the morning, my day is lost.

Oh, little demon, plague of my dwelling which I should like to have so peaceful, they say that the Athenians used to rear you in a cage to enjoy your singing at their ease! One we could do with, perhaps, during the drowsy hour of digestion; but hundreds at a time, all rattling and drumming in our ears when we are trying to collect our thoughts, that is sheer torture! You say that you were here first, do you? Before I came, you were in undisputed possession of the two plane-trees; and it is I who am the intruder there. I agree. Nevertheless, muffle your drums, moderate your arpeggios, for the sake of your biographer!

Truth will have none of the absurd rigmarole which we find in the fable. That there are sometimes relations between the Cicada and the Ant is most certain; only, these relations are the converse of what we are told. They are not made on the initiative of the Cicada, who is never dependent on the aid of others for his living; they come from the Ant, a greedy spoiler, who monopolizes every edible thing for her granaries. At no time does the Cicada go crying famine at the doors of the Ant-hills, promising honestly to repay principal and interest; on the contrary, it is the Ant who, driven by hunger, begs and entreats the singer. Entreats, do I say? Borrowing and repaying form no part of the pillager’s habits. She despoils the Cicada, brazenly robs him of his possessions. Let us describe this theft, a curious point in natural history and, as yet, unknown.

In July, during the stifling heat of the afternoon, when the insect populace, parched with thirst, vainly wanders around the limp and withered flowers in search of refreshment, the Cicada laughs at the general need. With that delicate gimlet, his rostrum, he broaches a cask in his inexhaustible cellar. Sitting, always singing, on the branch of a shrub, he bores through the firm, smooth bark swollen with sap ripened by the sun. Driving his sucker through the bung-hole, he drinks luxuriously, motionless and rapt in contemplation, absorbed in the charms of syrup and song.

Watch him for a little while. We shall perhaps witness unexpected tribulation. There are many thirsty ones prowling around, in fact; they discover the well betrayed by the sap that oozes from the margin. They hasten up, at first with some discretion, confining themselves to licking the fluid as it exudes. I see gathering around the mellifluous puncture Wasps, Flies, Earwigs, Sphex-wasps,5 Pompili,6 Rose-chafers and, above all, Ants.

The smallest, in order to reach the well, slip under the abdomen of the Cicada, who good-naturedly raises himself on his legs and leaves a free passage for the intruders; the larger ones, unable to stand still for impatience, quickly snatch a sip, retreat, take a walk on the neighbouring branches and then return and show greater enterprise. The coveting becomes more eager; the discreet ones of a moment ago develop into turbulent aggressors, ready to chase away from the spring the well-sinker who caused it to gush forth.

In this brigandage, the worst offenders are the Ants. I have seen them nibbling at the ends of the Cicada’s legs; I have caught them tugging at the tips of his wings, climbing on his back, tickling his antennæ. One, greatly daring, went to the length, before my eyes, of catching hold of his sucker and trying to pull it out.

Thus worried by these pigmies and losing all patience, the giant ends by abandoning the well. He flees, spraying the robbers with his urine as he goes. What cares the Ant for this expression of supreme contempt! Her object is attained. She is now the mistress of the spring, which dries up only too soon when the pump that made it flow ceases to work. There is little of it, but that little is exquisite. It is so much to the good, enabling her to wait for another draught, acquired in the same fashion, as soon as the occasion presents itself.

You see, the actual facts entirely reverse the parts assigned in the fable. The hardened beggar, who does not shrink from theft, is the Ant; the industrious artisan, gladly sharing his possessions with the sufferer, is the Cicada. I will mention one more detail; and the reversal of characters will stand out even more clearly. After five or six weeks of wassail, which is a long space of time, the singer, exhausted by the strain of life, drops from the tree. The sun dries up the body; the feet of the passers-by crush it. The Ant, always a highway-robber in search of spoil, comes upon it. She cuts up the rich dish, dissects it, carves it and reduces it to morsels which go to swell her hoard of provisions. It is not unusual to see a dying Cicada, with his wing still quivering in the dust, drawn and quartered by a gang of knackers. He is quite black with them. After this cannibalistic proceeding, there is no question as to the true relations between the two insects.

The ancients held the Cicada in high favour. Anacreon, the Greek Béranger,8 devoted an ode to singing his praises in curiously exaggerated language:

“Thou art almost like unto the gods,” says he.

The reasons which he gives for this apotheosis are none of the best. They consist of these three privileges: γηγενής, απαθής, ὰναιμόσαρκε; earthborn, insensible to pain, bloodless. Let us not start reproaching the poet for these blunders, which were generally believed at the time and perpetuated for very long after, until the observer’s searching eyes were opened. Besides, it does not do to look so closely at verses whose chief merit lies in harmony and rhythm.

Even in our own days, the Provençal poets, who are at least as familiar with the Cicada as Anacreon was, are not so very careful of the truth in celebrating the insect which they take as an emblem. One of my friends, a fervent observer and a scrupulous realist, escapes this reproach. He has authorized me to take from his unpublished verse the following Provençal ballad, which depicts the relations between the Cicada and the Ant with strictly scientific accuracy. I leave to him the responsibility for his poetic images and his moral views, delicate flowers outside my province as a naturalist; but I can vouch for the truth of his story, which tallies with what I see every summer on the lilac-trees in my garden.

La Cigalo e la Fournigo

I

Jour de Dièu, queto caud! Bèu tèms pèr la cigalo
Que, trefoulido, se regalo
D’uno raisso de fiò; bèu tèms pèr la meissoun.
Dins lis erso d’or, lou segaire,
Ren plega, pitre au vent, rustico e canto gaire:
Dins soun gousiè, la set estranglo la cansoun.

Tèms benesi pèr tu. Dounc, ardit! cigaleto,
Fai-lei brusi, ti chimbaleto,
E brandusso lou ventre à creba ti mirau.
L’Ome enterin mando la daio,
Que vai balin-balan de longo e que dardaio
L’uiau de soun acié sus li rous espigau.

Plèn d’aigo pèr la péiro e tampouna d’erbiho
Lou coufié sus l’anco pendiho.
Se la péiro es au frès dins soun estui de bos
E se de longo es abèurado,
L’Ome barbelo au fiò d’aqueli souleiado
Que fan bouli de fes la mesoulo dis os.

Tu, Cigalo, as un biais pèr la set: dins la rusco
Tendro e jutouso d’uno busco,
L’aguio de toun bè cabusso e cavo un pous.
Lou sirò monto pèr la draio.
T’amourres à la fon melicouso que raio,
E dòu sourgènt sucra bèves lou teta-dous.

Mai pas toujour en pas, oh! que nàni: de laire,
Vesin, vesino o barrulaire,
T’an vist cava lou pous. An set; vènon, doulènt,
Te prène un degout pèr si tasso.
Mesfiso-te, ma bello: aqueli curo-biasso,
Umble d’abord, soun lèu de gusas insoulènt.

Quiston un chicouloun de rèn; pièi de ti resto
Soun plus countènt, ausson la testo
E volon tout. L’auran. Sis arpioun en rastèu
Te gatihoun lou bout de l’alo.
Sus ta larjo esquinasso es un mounto-davalo;
T’aganton pèr lou bè, li bano, lis artèu;

Tiron d’eici, d’eilà. L’impaciènci te gagno.
Pst! pst! d’un giscle de pissagno
Aspèrges l’assemblado e quites lou ramèu.
T’en vas bèn liuen de la racaio,
Que t’a rauba lou pous, e ris, e se gougaio,
E se lipo li brego enviscado de mèu.

Or d’aqueli boumian abèura sens fatigo,
Lou mai tihous es la fournigo.
Mousco, cabrian, guespo e tavan embana,
Espeloufi de touto meno,
Costo-en-long qu’à toun pous lou souleias ameno,
N’an pas soun testardige à te faire enana.

Pèr t’esquicha l’artèu, te coutiga lou mourre,
Te pessuga lou nas, pèr courre
A l’oumbro de toun ventre, osco! degun la vau.
Lou marrit-péu prend pèr escalo
Uno patto e te monto, ardido, sus lis alo,
E s’espasso, insoulènto, e vai d’amont, d’avau.

II

Aro veici qu’es pas de crèire.
Ancian tèms, nous dison li rèire,
Un jour d’ivèr, la fam te prenguè. Lou front bas
E d’escoundoun anères vèire,
Dins si grand magasin, la fournigo, eilàbas.

L’endrudido au soulèu secavo,
Avans de lis escoundre en cavo,
Si blad qu’aviè mousi l’eigagno de la niue.
Quand èron lest lis ensacavo.
Tu survènes alor, emè de plour is iue.

Ié disés: “Fai bèn fre; l’aurasso
D’un caire à l’autre me tirasso
Avanido de fam. A toun riche mouloun
Leisso-me prène pèr ma biasso.
Te lou rendrai segur au bèu tèms di meloun.

“Presto-me un pau de gran.” Mai, bouto,
Se cresès que l’autro, t’escouto,
T’enganes. Di gros sa, rèn de rèn sara tièu.
“Vai-t’en plus liuen rascia de bouto;
Crebo de fam l’iver, tu que cantes l’estièu”

Ansin charro la fablo antico
Pèr nous counséia la pratico
Di sarro-piastro, urous de nousa li courdoun
De si bourso.—Que la coulico
Rousiguè la tripaio en aqueli coudoun!

Me fai susa, lou fabulisto,
Quand dis que l’ivèr vas en quisto
De mousco, verme, gran, tu que manges jamai.
De blad! Que n’en fariès, ma fisto!
As ta fon melicouso e demandes rèn mai.

Que t’enchau l’ivèr! Ta famiho
A la sousto en terro soumiho,
E tu dormes la som que n’a ges de revèi;
Toun cadabre toumbo en douliho.
Un jour, en tafurant, la fournigo lou vèi.

De ta magro péu dessecado
La marriasso fai becado;
Te curo lou perus, te chapouto à moucèu,
T’encafourno pèr car-salado,
Requisto prouvisioun, l’ivèr, en tèms de nèu.

III

Vaqui l’istori veritablo
Bèn liuen dòu conte de la fablo.
Que n’en pensas, canèu de sort!
—O ramaissaire de dardeno,
Det croucu, boumbudo bedeno
Que gouvernas lou mounde emé lou coffre-fort,

Fasès courre lou bru, canaio
Que l’artisto jamai travaio
E dèu pati, lou bedigas.
Teisas-vous dounc: quand di lambrusco
La Cigalo a cava la rusco,
Raubas soun bèure, e pièi, morto, la rousigas.

Thus speaks my friend, in his expressive Provençal tongue, rehabilitating the Cicada, who has been so grossly libelled by the fabulist.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

I am indebted for the following translation to the felicitous pen of my friend Mr. Osman Edwards:

THE CICADA AND THE ANTI

Ye gods, what heat! Cicada thrills
With mad delight when fairy rills
Submerge the corn in waves of gold,
When, with bowed back and toil untold,
His blade the songless reaper plies,
For in dry throats song gasps and dies.

This hour is thine: then, loud and clear.
Thy cymbals clash, Cicada dear,
Let mirrors crack, let belly writhe!
Behold! The man yet darts his scythe,
Whose glitter lifts and drops again
A lightning-flash on ruddy grain.

With grass and water well supplied,
His whetstone dangles at his side;
The whetstone in its case of wood
Has moisture for each thirsty mood;
But he, poor fellow, pants and moans,
The marrow boiling in his bones.

Dost thirst, Cicada? Never mind!
Deep in a young bough’s tender rind
Thy sharp proboscis bores a well,
Whence, narrowly, sweet juices swell.
Ah, soon what honied joys are thine
To quaff a vintage so divine!

In peace? Not always.… There’s a band
Of roving thieves (or close at hand)
Who watched thee draw the nectar up
And beg one drop with doleful cup.
Beware, my love! They humbly crave;
Soon each will prove a saucy knave.

The merest sip?—’Tis set aside.
What’s left?—They are not satisfied.
All must be theirs, who rudely fling
A rakish claw athwart thy wing;
Next on thy back swarm up and down,
From tip to toe, from tail to crown.

On every side they fuss and fret,
Provoking an impatient jet;
Thou leavest soon the sprinkled rind,
Its robber-rascals, far behind;
Thy well purloined, each grins and skips
And licks the honey from her lips.

No tireless, quenchless mendicant
Is so persistent as the Ant;
Wasps, Beetles, Hornets, Drones and Flies,
Sharpers of every sort and size,
Loafers, intent on ousting thee,
All are less obstinate than she.

To pinch thy toe, thy nose to tweak,
To tickle face and loins, to sneak
Beneath thy belly, who so bold?
Give her the tiniest foothold,
The slut will march from side to side
Across thy wings in shameless pride.

II

Now here’s a story that is told,
Incredible, by men of old:
Once starving on a winter’s day
By secret, miserable way
Thou soughtest out the Ant and found
Her spacious warehouse underground.

That rich possessor in the sun
Was busy drying, one by one,
Her treasures, moist with the night’s dew,
Before she buried them from view
In corn-sacks of sufficient size;
Then didst thou sue with tearful eyes,

Saying, “Alas! This deadly breeze
Pursues me everywhere; I freeze
With hunger; let me fill (no more!)
My wallet from that copious store;
Next year, when melons are full-blown,
Be sure I shall repay the loan!

“Lend me a little corn!”—Absurd!
Of course she will not hear a word;
Thou wilt not win, for all thy pain,
From bulging sacks a single grain.
“Be off and scrape the binns!” she cries:
“Who sang in June, in winter dies.”

Thus doth the ancient tail impart
Fit moral for a miser’s heart;
Bids him all charity forget
And draw his purse-strings tighter yet.
May colic chase such scurvy knaves
With pangs internal to their graves!

A sorry fabulist, indeed,
Who fancied that the winter’s need
Would drive thee to subsist, forlorn,
On Flies, on grubs, on grains of corn;
No need was ever thine of those,
For whom the honied fountain flows.

What matters winter? All thy kin
Beneath the earth are gathered in;
Thou sleepest with unwaking heart,
While the frail body falls apart
In rags that unregarded lie,
Save by the Ant’s rapacious eye.

She, groping greedily, one day
Makes of thy shrivelled corpse her prey;
Dissects the trunk, gnaws limb from limb,
Concocts, according to her whim,
A salad such grim housewives know,
A tit-bit saved for hours of snow.

III

That, gentlemen, is truly told,
Unlike the fairy-tale of old;
But finds it favour in his sight,
Who grabs at farthings, day and night?
Pot-bellied, crooked-fingered, he
Would rule the world with L.S.D.

Such riff-raff spread the vulgar view
That “artists are a lazy crew,”
That “fools must suffer.” Silent be!
When the Cicada taps the tree,
You steal his drink; when life has fled,
You basely batten on the dead.

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