The Bird-catcher or Fowler and the Blackbird was one of ''Aesop's Fables'', numbered 193 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the U ...

. In Greek sources, it featured a

lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...

, but French and English versions have always named the blackbird as the bird involved. Modern European retellings of the fable include

Giovanni Maria Verdizotti Giovanni Maria Verdizotti was a well-connected writer and artist who was born in Venice in about 1525 and died there in 1600. Life and work As an artist, Verdizotti is mainly remembered for his friendship with Titian, whose pupil he was, and lat ...

's 1570 version, which has a lark as the bird. The nearly contemporary French edition of 1582 however features a blackbird, and this is followed in

Roger L'Estrange Sir Roger L'Estrange (17 December 1616 – 11 December 1704) was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier and press censor. Throughout his life L'Estrange was frequently mired in controversy and acted as a staunch ideological defender of King ...

's 1692 collection. An alternative tradition dating back to the ''

Greek Anthology The ''Greek Anthology'' () is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical Greece, Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Palatine ...

'' maintains that the blackbird is under the special protection of the gods, and cannot be trapped in nets.

European versions

The account in

's collection of the fables (1692) follows the original closely except for the substitution of the bird's name. "As a Fowler was bending his net, a Black-Bird call'd to him at a distance, and ask'd him what he was doing. Why, says he, I am laying the Foundations of a City; and so the Bird-Man drew out of Sight. The Black-Bird mistrusting nothing, flew presently to the Bait in the Net, and was taken; and as the Man came running to lay hold of her; Friend, says the poor Black-Bird, if this be your way of Building, you'll have but few Inhabitants." Though the story is applicable to human credulousness in general, it has been given a political interpretation since earliest times that continued through most later commentaries. Although this version of the story only existed in Greek sources, one very like it occurs in the

Syriac Syriac may refer to: * Suret, a Neo-Aramaic language * Syriac alphabet, a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Syriac Christianity, a branch of Eastern Christianity * Syriac la ...

version of the story of

Ahiqar The ''Story of Aḥiqar'', also known as the ''Words of Aḥiqar'', is a story first attested to in Imperial Aramaic from the fifth century BCE on papyri from Elephantine, Egypt, that circulated widely in the Middle and the Near East.Christa M ...

, which goes back to the time of Aesop. Ahiqar has been betrayed by his adoptive son Nadan and among the reproaches for his conduct appears this reference: "A snare was set upon a dunghill and there came a sparrow and looked at it and said, 'What doest thou here?' And the snare said, 'I am praying to God.' The sparrow said, 'And what is that in thy mouth?' The snare said, 'Bread for guests.' Then the sparrow drew near and took it, and the snare caught him by the neck. And the sparrow said, as he was being shaken, 'If this is thy bread for guests, may the god to whom thou prayest never listen to thy voice. A much later Arabic recension begins with the inquisitive sparrow but then makes a lark the victim. This, however, may be evidence of contamination from a Greek source. One of the earliest tellings of the Greek story in another European language was as Fable 31 in

's "100 Moral Fables" (''Cento favole morali'', 1570). There the story is told of a lark (''lodola''), while a blackbird (''merle'') is the bird named in the nearly contemporary 1582 French edition of Aesop's fables, remaining so through the following centuries. In English tellings also it is always a blackbird that is named. There is also a traditional tune in the

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

that is called "The Fowler and the Blackbird" (''Yn Eeanleyder as y Lhondoo''), to which is sung the mysterious ballad "O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken", sometimes ascribed to Charles Dalmon. In 2010 the Greek text of the fable was set for octet and voice by Lefteris Kordis as part of his ''Songs for Aesop's Fables''.

An alternative tradition

In his ''

History of British Birds History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

'',

Thomas Bewick Thomas Bewick (c. 11 August 1753 – 8 November 1828) was an English wood engraving, wood-engraver and natural history author. Early in his career he took on all kinds of work such as engraving cutlery, making the wood blocks for advertisements, ...

says that blackbirds "readily suffer themselves to be caught with bird-lime, nooses and all sorts of snares". In general it was trapped for caging as a songbird rather than for food, but there existed an ancient Greek tradition that the songster was under the special protection of the gods and that nets could not hold it. No less than three poems in the ''

'' preserve this belief. The earliest is by Archias of Antioch and concerns fieldfares that are trapped while the blackbird is left free since "the race of singers is holy".

Antipater of Sidon Antipater of Sidon (Greek: Ἀντίπατρος ὁ Σιδώνιος, ''Antipatros ho Sidonios'') was an ancient Greek poet of the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Cicero mentions him living in Rome during the time of Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and cal ...

tells of a blackbird and a thrush caught in separate snares, from which the blackbird escapes since "even deaf bird-snares feel compassion for singers". Finally, in the poem by Paulus Silentiarus, where a fieldfare and a blackbird are netted, it is

Artemis In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Artemis (; ) is the goddess of the hunting, hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, Kourotrophos, care of children, and chastity. In later tim ...

herself, the goddess of hunting, who frees the songbird.p. 220
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bird-catcher and the Blackbird Aesop's Fables Greek Anthology Hunting literature Fictional hunters Fictional birds Anthropomorphic birds Animal tales Short stories about talking animals