What Did the Lion Say?

Aesop's fables are two and a half thousand years old and still work at a table: a couple of sentences, and one line at the end that the whole story was told for. Here are fifteen of them, for the tamada.

The fables are Aesop's. They are retold here in our own words — short, the way they are told at a table.

1. 🦁

   1. The Lion and the Dog

   A dog challenged a lion to a fight; the lion did not even turn his head. Stung, the dog threatened to tell the whole neighbourhood that the lion had not dared face him. The lion answered calmly that he would sooner be laughed at by dogs than blamed by lions for fighting one.

   And so: If the fight is beneath you, so is the mockery that follows it.

2. 🐴

   2. The Donkey in the Well

   A farmer's donkey fell into a deep well and brayed and brayed. The farmer could not get him out and decided to fill the well in with earth instead. Every shovelful landed on the donkey's back — and every time he shook it off and stepped up onto it. Before long he stood high enough to climb out on his own.

   And so: Whatever is thrown onto your back, put under your feet — and the trouble becomes a stair.

The rest is in the Tamada app.

The toasts live in the app

Every toast, for all five occasions, with your family's names and the poems — in the Tamada app.

Here on the site you can still build a friends' or a family supra.