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Information about The Boy Who Cried Wolf

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology


''For other uses, see Cry Wolf (disambiguation).


The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry's numbering system).[1] The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by calling out "wolf". Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they'd wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and his flock perished. In some versions when the villagers ignore him the wolf either kills him, and in other versions the wolf simply mocks the boy saying now no one will help him and that it serves him right for playing tricks. The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:

"Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth."


In reference to this tale, the phrase to "cry wolf" has long been a common idiom in English, described in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [2], and modern English dictionaries [3][4].

In the American intelligence community, "crying wolf syndrome" is labeled as a condition where threat analysts are reluctant to report on an immiment threat, such as a terrorist attack, due to the fact that if the threat is unfounded or greatly inflated, future threats will not be believed.

A Different Moral

In the TV show , the Cardassian Garak asserts the story should have a different moral: "Do not tell the same lie twice."

See also

References

1. ^ Ben Edwin Perry (1965). Babrius and Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 462, no. 210. ISBN 0-674-99480-9. 
2. ^ E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898 - Wolf at bartleby.com, accessed 19 September, 2007
3. ^ Compact Oxford English Dictionary - wolf, at askoxford.com. OUP, June, 2005, accessed 19 September, 2007
4. ^ Merriam Webster Online dictionary - Definition of cry from the Merriam-Webster website, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, July, 2003, accessed 19 September, 2007

External links

Cry_Wolf is a murder mystery film.

Cry Wolf may also refer to:
  • "Cry Wolf" (a-ha), a song by a-ha
  • "Cry Wolf" (Branigan), a song by Laura Branigan
  • "Cry Wolf" (Germano), a song by Lisa Germano
  • "Cry Wolf" (Nicks), a song by Stevie Nicks

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fable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy
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Aesop (also spelled Æsop, from the Greek Αἴσωπος—Aisōpos), known only for the genre of fables ascribed to him, was by tradition a slave (
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''For the 2007 documentary film, see Protagonist (film)
A protagonist is a term used to refer to a figure or figures in literature whose intentions are the primary focus of a story.
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shepherd is one who takes care of sheep, usually in flocks in the fields.

History

Shepherding is one of the oldest professions, beginning some 6,000 years ago in Asia Minor. Sheep were kept for their milk, meat, and especially their wool.
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C. lupus

Binomial name
Canis lupus
Linnaeus, 1758

Range map. Green, present; red, former.

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moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim.
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Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable — sometimes referred to simply as Brewer's — is a reference work containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical.
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United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of sixteen separate United States government agencies and organizations that work together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the
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This article has been tagged since October 2007.

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This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article.
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Aesop's Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop (620–560 BC), a slave and story-teller who lived in Ancient Greece. Aesop's Fables have become a blanket term for collections of brief fables, usually involving personified animals.
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In Greek mythology, Cassandra(Greek: Κασσάνδρα "she who entangles men") (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy (or,
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Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices.
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For a more generic meaning, see False positive.


A false alarm, also called a nuisance alarm, is the phony report of an emergency, causing unnecessary panic and/or bringing resources (such as fire engines) to a place where they are not needed.
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The Girl Who Cried Monster!

Author R. L. Stine
Country United States
Language English
Series Goosebumps
Genre(s) Horror fiction, Children's literature
Publisher Scholastic
Publication date May 1993
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King Yu of Zhou (reigned 781 BC - 771 BC) (ch. 周幽王 zhōu yōu wáng) was the twelfth sovereign of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty and the last of Western Zhou Dynasty.

In 780 BC, an earthquake hit Guanzhong.
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"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a misquote that refers to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States
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Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by the Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or
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Merriam-Webster, originally known as the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is a United States company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language
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