The Frogs Who Desired a King is one of Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...

 and numbered 44 in the Perry Index

Perry Index

The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...

. Throughout its history, the story has been given a political application.

The Fable and its political applications

According to Phaedrus, the earliest source, the story concerns a group of frogs who called on the great god Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

 to send them a king. He threw down a log, which fell in their pond with a loud splash and terrified them. Eventually one of the frogs peeped above the water and, seeing that it was no longer moving, soon all hopped upon it and made fun of their king. Then the frogs made a second request for a real king and were sent a water snake that started eating them. Once more the frogs appealed to Zeus, but this time he replied that they must face the consequences of their request.

The original context of the story, as related by Phaedrus, makes it clear that people feel the need of laws but are impatient of personal restraint. His closing advice is to be content for fear of worse. By the time of William Caxton

William Caxton

William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...

, who published the first version in English, the lesson drawn is that 'he that hath liberty ought to kepe it wel, for nothyng is better than liberty'. In his version, too, it is a heron rather than a snake that is sent as king. A later commentator, the Royalist Roger L'Estrange

Roger L'Estrange

Sir Roger L'Estrange was an English pamphleteer and author, and staunch defender of royalist claims. L'Estrange was involved in political controversy throughout his life...

, sums up the situation thus: 'The mob are uneasy without a ruler. They are as restless with one; and oftner they shift, the worse they are: so that Government or no Government, a King of God’s making or of the Peoples, or none at all, the Multitude are never to be satisfied.'

Yet another view was expressed by German theologian Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

 in his "On Governmental Authority" (1523). There he speaks of the fewness of good rulers, taking this lack as a punishment for human wickedness. He then alludes to this fable to illustrate how humanity deserves the rulers it gets: 'frogs must have their storks.'

The story was one of the thirty eight Aesop's fables chosen by Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

 for the labyrinth of Versailles

The labyrinth of Versailles

The labyrinth of Versailles was a maze in the Gardens of Versailles with groups of fountains and sculptures depicting Aesop's fables. André Le Nôtre initially planned a maze of unadorned paths in 1665, but in 1669, Charles Perrault, advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains each...

, a hedge maze

Hedge Maze

A hedge maze is an outdoor garden maze or labyrinth in which the "walls" or dividers between passages are made of vertical hedges.-History:...

 of hydraulic statues created for him in 1669 in the Gardens of Versailles

Gardens of Versailles

The Gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French Garden style perfected here by...

, at the suggestion of Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...

. It is likely he was aware of its interpretation in favour of contentment with the status quo. Jean de la Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...

's fable of Les grenouilles qui desirent un roi (III.4) follows the Phaedrus version fairly closely and repeats the conclusion there. In setting the scene, however, he pictures the frogs as 'tiring of their democractic state', taking in 1668 much the same sardonic stance as Roger L'Estrange would do in 1692. La Fontaine was writing shortly after the restoration of the monarchy in England following a period of republican government; L'Estrange made his comment three years after a revolution had overthrown the restored regime there and installed another.

Once the French had their own experience of regime-change, illustrators began to express their feelings through this fable particularly. The caricaturist Grandville

Grandville

Grandville may refer to:* The pseudonym of Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard , French caricaturist* Grandville, Aube, a commune in France* Grandville, Michigan, a city in the United States...

 turned to book illustration after a censorship law made life difficult for him. In his 1838 edition of La Fontaine's fables, it is a recognisably imperial stork who struts through the water wearing a laurel crown, cheered on one side by sycophantic supporters and causing havoc on the other. Ernest Griset (1844-1907) was the son of political refugees from yet another change of regime. His horrific picture of a skeletal stork seated on a bank and swallowing his prey appeared in an edition of Aesop's fables from the 1870s. It is his comment on the second Napoleonic regime that had driven his parents into exile.

The gloom of 19th century illustrators was mitigated by a more light-hearted touch in the following century. In the 1912 edition of Aesop's Fables, Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham was an English book illustrator.-Biography:Rackham was born in London as one of 12 children. At the age of 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art.In 1892 he left his job and started working for The...

 choses to picture the carefree frogs at play on their King Log, a much rarer subject among illustrators. But the popular artist Benjamin Rabbier, having already illustrated a collection of La Fontaine's fables, subverted the whole subject in a later picture titled "Le Toboggan" (The sleigh-run, 1925). In this the stork too has become a willing plaything of the frogs as they gleefully hop onto his back and use his bill as a water-slide.

Literary Allusions

The majority of allusions to Aesop's fable contrast the quietism of King Log with the energetic policy of King Stork. Thus American author Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...

 mentions in his novel The House of the Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables

The House of the Seven Gables is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. The house is now a non-profit museum, with an admission fee charged for tours, as well as an active settlement house with programs for children...

(1851) that 'We have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy'. In more modern times, Science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

, who often interested himself in examining political situations, referred to the differing styles of rule several times in his work: for example, in Glory Road

Glory Road

Glory Road is a fantasy novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published in hardcover later the same year...

(1963) ; The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, about a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth....

(1965); and The Number of the Beast

The Number of the Beast (novel)

The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...

(1980).

The fable is pressed into the service of political commentary in the title "King Stork and King Log: at the dawn of a new reign", a study of Russia written in 1895 by the political assassin Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, using the pen-name S. Stepniak. The book contrasts the policy of the reactionary Tsar Alexander III

Alexander III of Russia

Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...

 with the likely policy under Nicholas II

Nicholas II of Russia

Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...

, who had only just succeeded to the throne.

There is a glancing reference to the fable in the title of Alyse Gregory

Alyse Gregory

Alyse Gregory was an American suffragist and writer.Her father was a doctor in Nowalk. She showed musical talent at an early age, was sent to Paris, France, to receive a musical education when she was fifteen years old, and continued her study of music on her return to the United States...

's feminist novel King Log and Lady Lea (1929). On the other hand, one of Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

's four short fictions in a 2005 issue of the magazine Daedalus (Vol. 134, No. 2, Pages 119-123) engages with it directly. Titled "King Log in Exile", it features the deposed king musing on his ineffective reign, from which it gradually emerges that his inertia hid not harmlessness but a corrupt selfishness.

Two modern poetical references are dismissive. Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...

 alludes to the fable in the opening stanzas of his poem "The Court Revolt". The situation described is a conspiracy in which many courtiers connive out of sheer boredom: 'King stork was welcome to replace a log'. New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 poet James K. Baxter

James K. Baxter

James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.-Biography:Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious...

, on the other hand, expresses a preference in his epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 Election 1960:

A democratic people have elected

King Log, King Stork, King Log, King Stork again.

Because I like a wide and silent pond

I voted Log. That party was defeated.

W.H.Auden recreated the fable at some length in verse as part of the three "Moralities" he wrote for the German composer Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

 to set for orchestra and children's chorus in 1967. The theme of all three is the wrong choices made by people who do not sufficiently appreciate their good fortune when they have it. The first poem of the set follows the creatures' fall, from a state of innocence when In the first age the frogs dwelt at peace, into dissatisfaction, foolishness and disaster. Two centuries earlier, the German poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...

 had given the theme an even darker reinterpretation in his "The Water Snake" (Die Wasserschlange). Taking its beginning from the Phaedrus version, the poem relates how a frog asks the snake why it is devouring his kind. 'Because you have invited me to,' is the reply; but when the frog denies this, the snake declares that it will therefore eat the frog because he hasn't. Part of a set of variations on Aesopic themes, this appears as the last in Gary Bachlund's recent setting of five fables by Lessing (Fünf Fabelen, 2008).

Earlier settings have included one by Louis-Nicolas Clerambault

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault was a French musician, best known as an organist and composer. He was born and died in Paris.-Biography:...

 of words based on La Fontaine's fable (1730s) and Louis Lacombe

Louis Lacombe

Louis Lacombe [Trouillon-Lacombe] Louis Lacombe [Trouillon-Lacombe] Louis Lacombe [Trouillon-Lacombe] (November 26, 1818, Bourges (Cher)– September 30, 1884, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, (Marne) was a French pianist and composer.-Biography:...

's setting of La Fontaine's own words (Op.72) for four men's voices as part of his 15 fables de La Fontaine

Films

In 1922, Russian-born animator Ladislas Starevich

Ladislas Starevich

Vladislav Starevich , born Władysław Starewicz , was a Russian and French stop-motion animator who used insects and other animals as his protagonists...

 produced a stop-motion animated film based on the tale in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 entitled Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi (aka Frogland).

The final episode of the BBC series I, Claudius

I, Claudius (TV series)

I, Claudius is a 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Written by Jack Pulman, it proved one of the corporation's most successful drama serials of all time...

(1976) was titled "Old King Log". In it the aging emperor refers to himself as such, to the confusion of his advisors.

External links

• 15th-20th century illustrations from books