Sunday, January 06, 2013

it's an old story





Mitt Romney didn’t really want to win the election and be preznit says his son Tagg, who claims his dad wanted it “less than anyone I’ve met,” and that he would have gladly stepped aside “if he could have found someone else" to replace him.

There's something about young Taggbert's story that doesn't hold up. Romney may have felt hesitant sometimes, but it seems like whenever I saw him he acted like he really really wanted it.

I think what we got here is a fox and a bunch of grapes as per Aesop's fable of the same name.

Except in William Caxton the printer's 1484 translation, supplied here by my friend Find1 the grapes are raisins. OK, they're actually raysyns, but in any case I hope the reader is as well instructed as he or she is entertained by this early translation of the beautiful old fable.

He is not wyse / that desyreth to haue a thynge whiche he may not haue / As reciteth this fable Of a foxe / whiche loked and beheld the raysyns that grewe vpon an hyghe vyne / the whiche raysyns he moche desyred for to ete them / And whanne he sawe that none he myght gete / he torned his sorowe in to Ioye / and sayd these raysyns ben sowre / and yf I had some I wold not ete them /

And therfore this fable sheweth that he is wyse / whiche fayneth not to desyre that thynge the whiche he may not haue /

I think it was his wyfe who really wanted the raysyns,

1 comment:

Joe said...

It was fun.