Aesop's Fables

Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st-century CE philosopher, is recorded as having said about Aesop:

like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.[1]

Earlier still, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned in passing that "Aesop the fable writer" was a slave who lived in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE.[2] Among references in other writers, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Wasps, represented the protagonist Philocleon as having learnt the "absurdities" of Aesop from conversation at banquets; Plato wrote in Phaedo that Socrates whiled away his time in prison turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verses. Nonetheless, for two main reasons – because numerous morals within Aesop's attributed fables contradict each other, and because ancient accounts of Aesop's life contradict each other – the modern view is that Aesop was not the originator of all those fables attributed to him.[3] Instead, any fable tended to be ascribed to the name of Aesop if there was no known alternative literary source.[4]

In Classical times there were various theorists who tried to differentiate these fables from other kinds of narration. They had to be short and unaffected;[5] in addition, they are fictitious, useful to life and true to nature.[6] In them could be found talking animals and plants, although humans interacting only with humans figure in a few. Typically they might begin with a contextual introduction, followed by the story, often with the moral underlined at the end. Setting the context was often necessary as a guide to the story's interpretation, as in the case of the political meaning of The Frogs Who Desired a King and The Frogs and the Sun.

Sometimes the titles given later to the fables have become proverbial, as in the case of killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs or the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. In fact some fables, such as The Young Man and the Swallow, appear to have been invented as illustrations of already existing proverbs. One theorist, indeed, went so far as to define fables as extended proverbs.[7] In this they have an aetiological function, the explaining of origins such as, in another context, why the ant is a mean, thieving creature or how the tortoise got its shell. Other fables, also verging on this function, are outright jokes, as in the case of The Old Woman and the Doctor, aimed at greedy practitioners of medicine.

The contradictions between fables already mentioned and alternative versions of much the same fable – as in the case of The Woodcutter and the Trees, are best explained by the ascription to Aesop of all examples of the genre. Some are demonstrably of West Asian origin, others have analogues further to the East. Modern scholarship reveals fables and proverbs of Aesopic form existing in both ancient Sumer and Akkad, as early as the third millennium BCE.[8] Aesop's fables and the Indian tradition, as represented by the Buddhist Jataka tales and the Hindu Panchatantra, share about a dozen tales in common, although often widely differing in detail. There is some debate over whether the Greeks learned these fables from Indian storytellers or the other way, or if the influences were mutual.

Loeb editor Ben E. Perry took the extreme position in his book Babrius and Phaedrus (1965) that

in the entire Greek tradition there is not, so far as I can see, a single fable that can be said to come either directly or indirectly from an Indian source; but many fables or fable-motifs that first appear in Greek or Near Eastern literature are found later in the Panchatantra and other Indian story-books, including the Buddhist Jatakas.[9]

Although Aesop and the Buddha were near contemporaries, the stories of neither were recorded in writing until some centuries after their death. Few disinterested scholars would now be prepared to make so absolute a stand as Perry about their origin in view of the conflicting and still emerging evidence.[10][11]

A Greek manuscript of the fables of Babrius

When and how the fables arrived in and travelled from ancient Greece remains uncertain. Some cannot be dated any earlier than Babrius and Phaedrus, several centuries after Aesop, and yet others even later. The earliest mentioned collection was by Demetrius of Phalerum, an Athenian orator and statesman of the 4th century BCE, who compiled the fables into a set of ten books for the use of orators. A follower of Aristotle, he simply catalogued all the fables that earlier Greek writers had used in isolation as exempla, putting them into prose. At least it was evidence of what was attributed to Aesop by others; but this may have included any ascription to him from the oral tradition in the way of animal fables, fictitious anecdotes, etiological or satirical myths, possibly even any proverb or joke, that these writers transmitted. It is more a proof of the power of Aesop's name to attract such stories to it than evidence of his actual authorship. In any case, although the work of Demetrius was mentioned frequently for the next twelve centuries, and was considered the official Aesop, no copy now survives. Present day collections evolved from the later Greek version of Babrius, of which there now exists an incomplete manuscript of some 160 fables in choliambic verse. Current opinion is that he lived in the 1st century CE. The version of 55 fables in choliambic tetrameters by the 9th century Ignatius the Deacon is also worth mentioning for its early inclusion of tales from Oriental sources.[12]

Further light is thrown on the entry of Oriental stories into the Aesopic canon by their appearance in Jewish sources such as the Talmud and in Midrashic literature. There is a comparative list of these on the Jewish Encyclopedia website[13] of which twelve resemble those that are common to both Greek and Indian sources, six are parallel to those only in Indian sources, and six others in Greek only. Where similar fables exist in Greece, India, and in the Talmud, the Talmudic form approaches more nearly the Indian. Thus, the fable "The Wolf and the Crane" is told in India of a lion and another bird. When Joshua ben Hananiah told that fable to the Jews, to prevent their rebelling against Rome and once more putting their heads into the lion's jaws (Gen. R. lxiv.), he shows familiarity with some form derived from India.

12th-century pillar, cloister of the Collegiate church of Saint Ursus, Aosta: the Fox and the Stork

The first extensive translation of Aesop into Latin iambic trimeters was performed by Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus in the 1st century CE, although at least one fable had already been translated by the poet Ennius two centuries before, and others are referred to in the work of Horace. The rhetorician Aphthonius of Antioch wrote a technical treatise on, and converted into Latin prose, some forty of these fables in 315. It is notable as illustrating contemporary and later usage of fables in rhetorical practice. Teachers of philosophy and rhetoric often set the fables of Aesop as an exercise for their scholars, inviting them not only to discuss the moral of the tale, but also to practise style and the rules of grammar by making new versions of their own. A little later the poet Ausonius handed down some of these fables in verse, which the writer Julianus Titianus translated into prose, and in the early 5th century Avianus put 42 of these fables into Latin elegiacs.[14]

The largest, oldest known and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus bears the name of an otherwise unknown fabulist named Romulus. It contains 83 fables, dates from the 10th century and seems to have been based on an earlier prose version which, under the name of "Aesop" and addressed to one Rufus, may have been written in the Carolingian period or even earlier. The collection became the source from which, during the second half of the Middle Ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn. A version of the first three books of Romulus in elegiac verse, possibly made around the 12th century, was one of the most highly influential texts in medieval Europe. Referred to variously (among other titles) as the verse Romulus or elegiac Romulus, and ascribed to Gualterus Anglicus, it was a common Latin teaching text and was popular well into the Renaissance. Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157.[15]

Interpretive "translations" of the elegiac Romulus were very common in Europe in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest was one in the 11th century by Ademar of Chabannes, which includes some new material. This was followed by a prose collection of parables by the Cistercian preacher Odo of Cheriton around 1200 where the fables (many of which are not Aesopic) are given a strong medieval and clerical tinge. This interpretive tendency, and the inclusion of yet more non-Aesopic material, was to grow as versions in the various European vernaculars began to appear in the following centuries.

Aesopus constructus etc., 1495 edition with metrical version of Fabulae Lib. I–IV by Anonymus Neveleti

With the revival of literary Latin during the Renaissance, authors began compiling collections of fables in which those traditionally by Aesop and those from other sources appeared side by side. One of the earliest was by Lorenzo Bevilaqua, also known as Laurentius Abstemius, who wrote 197 fables,[16] the first hundred of which were published as Hecatomythium in 1495. Little by Aesop was included. At the most, some traditional fables are adapted and reinterpreted: The Lion and the Mouse is continued and given a new ending (fable 52); The Oak and the Reed becomes "The Elm and the Willow" (53); The Ant and the Grasshopper is adapted as "The Gnat and the Bee" (94) with the difference that the gnat offers to teach music to the bee's children. There are also Mediaeval tales such as The Mice in Council (195) and stories created to support popular proverbs such as 'Still Waters Run Deep' (5) and 'A woman, an ass and a walnut tree' (65), where the latter refers back to Aesop's fable of The Walnut Tree. Most of the fables in Hecatomythium were later translated in the second half of Roger L'Estrange's Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists (1692);[17] some also appeared among the 102 in H. Clarke's Latin reader, Select fables of Aesop: with an English translation (1787), of which there were both English and American editions.[18]

There were later three notable collections of fables in verse, among which the most influential was Gabriele Faerno's Centum Fabulae (1564). The majority of the hundred fables there are Aesop's but there are also humorous tales such as The drowned woman and her husband (41) and The miller, his son and the donkey (100). In the same year that Faerno was published in Italy, Hieronymus Osius brought out a collection of 294 fables titled Fabulae Aesopi carmine elegiaco redditae in Germany.[19] This too contained some from elsewhere, such as The Dog in the Manger (67). Then in 1604 the Austrian Pantaleon Weiss, known as Pantaleon Candidus, published Centum et Quinquaginta Fabulae.[20] The 152 poems there were grouped by subject, with sometimes more than one devoted to the same fable, although presenting alternative versions of it, as in the case of The Hawk and the Nightingale (133–5). It also includes the earliest instance of The Lion, the Bear and the Fox (60) in a language other than Greek.

Another voluminous collection of fables in Latin verse was Anthony Alsop's Fabularum Aesopicarum Delectus (Oxford 1698).[21] The bulk of the 237 fables there are prefaced by the text in Greek, while there are also a handful in Hebrew and in Arabic; the final fables, only attested from Latin sources, are without other versions. For the most part the poems are confined to a lean telling of the fable without drawing a moral.

For many centuries the main transmission of Aesop's fables across Europe remained in Latin or else orally in various vernaculars, where they mixed with folk tales derived from other sources. This mixing is often apparent in early vernacular collections of fables in mediaeval times.

• Ysopet, an adaptation of some of the fables into Old French octosyllabic couplets, was written by Marie de France in the 12th century.[22] The morals with which she closes each fable reflect the feudal situation of her time.
• In the 13th century the Jewish author Berechiah ha-Nakdan wrote Mishlei Shualim, a collection of 103 'Fox Fables' in Hebrew rhymed prose. This included many animal tales passing under the name of Aesop, as well as several more derived from Marie de France and others. Berechiah's work adds a layer of Biblical quotations and allusions to the tales, adapting them as a way to teach Jewish ethics. The first printed edition appeared in Mantua in 1557.[23]
• Äsop, an adaptation into Middle Low German verse of 125 Romulus fables, was written by Gerhard von Minden around 1370.[24]
• Chwedlau Odo ("Odo's Tales") is a 14th-century Welsh version of the animal fables in Odo of Cheriton's Parabolae, not all of which are of Aesopic origin. Many show sympathy for the poor and oppressed, with often sharp criticisms of high-ranking church officials.[25]
• Eustache Deschamps included several of Aesop's fables among his moral ballades, written in Mediaeval French towards the end of the 14th century,[26] in one of which there is mention of what 'Aesop tells in his book' (Ysoppe dit en son livre et raconte). In most, the telling of the fable precedes the drawing of a moral in terms of contemporary behaviour, but two comment on this with only contextual reference to fables not recounted in the text.
• Isopes Fabules was written in Middle English rhyme royal stanzas by the monk John Lydgate towards the start of the 15th century.[27] Seven tales are included and heavy emphasis is laid on the moral lessons to be learned from them.
• The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian was written in Middle Scots iambic pentameters by Robert Henryson about 1480.[28] In the accepted text it consists of thirteen versions of fables, seven modelled on stories from "Aesop" expanded from the Latin Romulus manuscripts.

The fable of the farmer and his sons from Caxton's edition, 1484

The main impetus behind the translation of large collections of fables attributed to Aesop and translated into European languages came from an early printed publication in Germany. There had been many small selections in various languages during the Middle Ages but the first attempt at an exhaustive edition was made by Heinrich Steinhőwel in his Esopus, published c. 1476. This contained both Latin versions and German translations and also included a translation of Rinuccio da Castiglione (or d'Arezzo)'s version from the Greek of a life of Aesop (1448).[29] Some 156 fables appear, collected from Romulus, Avianus and other sources, accompanied by a commentarial preface and moralising conclusion, and 205 woodcuts.[30] Translations or versions based on Steinhöwel's book followed shortly in Italian (1479), French (1480), Czech (1480) and English (the Caxton edition of 1484) and were many times reprinted before the start of the 16th century. The Spanish version of 1489, La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas hystoriadas was equally successful and often reprinted in both the Old and New World through three centuries.[31]

Some fables were later treated creatively in collections of their own by authors in such a way that they became associated with their names rather than Aesop's. The most celebrated were La Fontaine's Fables, published in French during the later 17th century. Inspired by the brevity and simplicity of Aesop's,[32] those in the first six books were heavily dependent on traditional Aesopic material; fables in the next six were more diffuse and diverse in origin.[33] At the start of the 19th century, some of the fables were adapted into Russian, and often reinterpreted, by the fabulist Ivan Krylov.[34] In most cases, but not all, these were dependent on La Fontaine's versions.

Translations into Asian languages at a very early date derive originally from Greek sources. These include the so-called Fables of Syntipas, a compilation of Aesopic fables in Syriac, dating from the 9/11th centuries. Included there were several other tales of possibly West Asian origin.[35] In Central Asia there was a 10th-century collection of the fables in Uighur.[36]

After the Middle Ages, fables largely deriving from Latin sources were passed on by Europeans as part of their colonial or missionary enterprises. 47 fables were translated into the Nahuatl language in the late 16th century under the title In zazanilli in Esopo. The work of a native translator, it adapted the stories to fit the Mexican environment, incorporating Aztec concepts and rituals and making them rhetorically more subtle than their Latin source.[37]

Portuguese missionaries arriving in Japan at the end of the 16th century introduced Japan to the fables when a Latin edition was translated into romanized Japanese. The title was Esopo no Fabulas and dates to 1593. It was soon followed by a fuller translation into a three-volume kanazōshi entitled Isopo Monogatari (伊曾保 物語).[38] This was the sole Western work to survive in later publication after the expulsion of Westerners from Japan, since by that time the figure of Aesop had been acculturated and presented as if he were Japanese.[39] Coloured woodblock editions of individual fables were made by Kawanabe Kyosai in the 19th century.[40]

The first translations of Aesop's Fables into the Chinese languages were made at the start of the 17th century, the first substantial collection being of 38 conveyed orally by a Jesuit missionary named Nicolas Trigault and written down by a Chinese academic named Zhang Geng (Chinese: 張賡; pinyin: Zhāng Gēng) in 1625. This was followed two centuries later by Yishi Yuyan 《意拾喻言》 (Esop's Fables: written in Chinese by the Learned Mun Mooy Seen-Shang, and compiled in their present form with a free and a literal translation) in 1840 by Robert Thom[41] and apparently based on the version by Roger L'Estrange.[42] This work was initially very popular until someone realised the fables were anti-authoritarian and the book was banned for a while.[43] A little later, however, in the foreign concession in Shanghai, A.B. Cabaniss brought out a transliterated translation in Shanghai dialect, Yisuopu yu yan (伊娑菩喻言, 1856). There have also been 20th century translations by Zhou Zuoren and others.[44]

The Nepalese Iisapan Daekaatagu Bakhan

Translations into the languages of South Asia began at the very start of the 19th century. The Oriental Fabulist (1803) contained roman script versions in Bengali, Hindi and Urdu. Adaptations followed in Marathi (1806) and Bengali (1816), and then complete collections in Hindi (1837), Kannada (1840), Urdu (1850), Tamil (1853) and Sindhi (1854).[45]

In Burma, which had its own ethical folk tradition based on the Buddhist Jataka Tales, the joint Pali and Burmese language translation of Aesop's fables was published in 1880 from Rangoon by the American Missionary Press.[46] Outside the British Raj, Jagat Sundar Malla's translation into the Newar language of Nepal was published in 1915. Further to the west, the Afghani academic Hafiz Sahar's translation of some 250 of Aesop's Fables into Persian was first published in 1972 under the name Luqman Hakim.[47]

The 18th to 19th centuries saw a vast quantity of fables in verse being written in all European languages. Regional languages and dialects in the Romance area made use of versions adapted particularly from La Fontaine's recreations of ancient material. One of the earliest publications in France was the anonymous Fables Causides en Bers Gascouns (Selected fables in Gascon verse, Bayonne, 1776), which contained 106.[48] Also in the vanguard was Jean-Baptiste Foucaud's Quelques fables choisies de La Fontaine en patois limousin (109) in the Occitan Limousin dialect, originally with 39 fables,[49] and Fables et contes en vers patois by August Tandon, also published in the first decade of the 19th century in the neighbouring dialect of Montpellier.[50] The last of these were very free recreations, with the occasional appeal directly to the original Maistre Ézôpa. A later commentator noted that while the author could sometimes embroider his theme, at others he concentrated the sense to an Aesopean brevity.[51]

Many translations were made into languages contiguous to or within the French borders. Ipui onak (1805) was the first translation of 50 fables of Aesop by the writer Bizenta Mogel Elgezabal into the Basque language spoken on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. It was followed in mid-century by two translations on the French side: 50 fables in J-B. Archu's Choix de Fables de La Fontaine, traduites en vers basques (1848) and 150 in Fableac edo aleguiac Lafontenetaric berechiz hartuac (Bayonne, 1852) by Abbé Martin Goyhetche (1791–1859).[52] Versions in Breton were written by Pierre Désiré de Goësbriand (1784–1853) in 1836 and Yves Louis Marie Combeau (1799–1870) between 1836 and 1838. The turn of Provençal came in 1859 with Li Boutoun de guèto, poésies patoises by Antoine Bigot (1825–1897), followed by several other collections of fables in the Nîmes dialect between 1881 and 1891. Alsatian dialect versions of La Fontaine appeared in 1879 after the region was ceded away following the Franco-Prussian War. At the end of the following century, Brother Denis-Joseph Sibler (1920–2002) published a collection of adaptations (first recorded in 1983) that has gone through several impressions since 1995.[53] The use of Corsican came later. Natale Rochicchioli (1911-2002) was particularly well known for his very free adaptations of La Fontaine, of which he made recordings[54] as well as publishing his Favule di Natale in the 1970s.[55]

During the 19th century renaissance of Belgian dialect literature in Walloon, several authors adapted versions of the fables to the racy speech (and subject matter) of Liège.[56] They included Charles Duvivier (in 1842); Joseph Lamaye (1845); and the team of Jean-Joseph Dehin and François Bailleux, who between them covered all of La Fontaine’s books I-VI, (Fåves da Lafontaine mettowes è ligeois, 1850–56). Adaptations into other regional dialects were made by Charles Letellier (Mons, 1842) and Charles Wérotte (Namur, 1844); much later, Léon Bernus published some hundred imitations of La Fontaine in the dialect of Charleroi (1872);[57] he was followed during the 1880s by Joseph Dufrane, writing in the Borinage dialect under the pen-name Bosquètia. In the 20th century there has been a selection of fifty fables in the Condroz dialect by Joseph Houziaux (1946),[58] to mention only the most prolific in an ongoing surge of adaptation.

The motive behind the later activity across these areas was to assert regional specificity against a growing centralism and the encroachment of the language of the capital on what had until then been predominantly monoglot areas. Surveying its literary manifestations, commentators have noted that the point of departure of the individual tales is not as important as what they become in the process. Even in the hands of less skilled dialect adaptations, La Fontaine's polished versions of the fables are returned to the folkloristic roots by which they often came to him in the first places. But many of the gifted regional authors were well aware of what they were doing in their work. In fitting the narration of the story to their local idiom, in appealing to the folk proverbs derived from such tales, and in adapting the story to local conditions and circumstances, the fables were so transposed as to go beyond bare equivalence, becoming independent works in their own right. Thus Emile Ruben claimed of the linguistic transmutations in Jean Foucaud's collection of fables that, "not content with translating, he has created a new work".[59] In a similar way, the critic Maurice Piron described the Walloon versions of François Bailleux as "masterpieces of original imitation",[60] and this is echoed in the claim that in Natale Rocchiccioli’s free Corsican versions too there is "more creation than adaptation".[61]

In the 20th century there were also translations into regional dialects of English. These include the few examples in Addison Hibbard's Aesop in Negro Dialect (American Speech, 1926)[62] and the 26 in Robert Stephen's Fables of Aesop in Scots Verse (Peterhead, Scotland, 1987), translated into the Aberdeenshire dialect.[63] Glasgow University has also been responsible for R.W. Smith's modernised dialect translation of Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian (1999, see above).[64] The University of Illinois likewise included dialect translations by Norman Shapiro in its Creole echoes: the francophone poetry of nineteenth-century Louisiana (2004, see below).

Cover of the 1885 French edition of Les Bambous

Such adaptations to Caribbean French-based creole languages from the middle of the 19th century onward – initially as part of the colonialist project but later as an assertion of love for and pride in the dialect. A version of La Fontaine's fables in the dialect of Martinique was made by François-Achille Marbot (1817–1866) in Les Bambous, Fables de la Fontaine travesties en patois (Port Royal, 1846)[65] which had lasting success. As well as two later editions in Martinique, there were two more published in France in 1870 and 1885 and others in the 20th century.[66] Later dialect fables by Paul Baudot (1801–1870) from neighbouring Guadeloupe owed nothing to La Fontaine, but in 1869 some translated examples did appear in a grammar of Trinidadian French creole written by John Jacob Thomas. Then the start of the new century saw the publication of Georges Sylvain's Cric? Crac! Fables de la Fontaine racontées par un montagnard haïtien et transcrites en vers créoles (La Fontaine's fables told by a Haiti highlander and written in creole verse, 1901).[67]

On the South American mainland, Alfred de Saint-Quentin published a selection of fables freely adapted from La Fontaine into Guyanese creole in 1872. This was among a collection of poems and stories (with facing translations) in a book that also included a short history of the territory and an essay on creole grammar.[68] On the other side of the Caribbean, Jules Choppin (1830–1914) was adapting La Fontaine to the Louisiana slave creole at the end of the 19th century in versions that are still appreciated.[69] The New Orleans author Edgar Grima (1847–1939) also adapted La Fontaine into both standard French and into dialect.[70]

Versions in the French creole of the islands in the Indian Ocean began somewhat earlier than in the Caribbean. Louis Héry (1801–1856) emigrated from Brittany to Réunion in 1820. Having become a schoolmaster, he adapted some of La Fontaine's fables into the local dialect in Fables créoles dédiées aux dames de l'île Bourbon (Creole fables for island women). This was published in 1829 and went through three editions.[71] In addition 49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the Seychelles dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983.[72] Jean-Louis Robert's recent translation of Babrius into Réunion creole (2007)[73] adds a further motive for such adaptation. Fables began as an expression of the slave culture and their background is in the simplicity of agrarian life. Creole transmits this experience with greater purity than the urbane language of the slave-owner.

Fables belong essentially to the oral tradition; they survive by being remembered and then retold in one's own words. When they are written down, particularly in the dominant language of instruction, they lose something of their essence. A strategy for reclaiming them is therefore to exploit the gap between the written and the spoken language. One of those who did this in English was Sir Roger L'Estrange, who translated the fables into the racy urban slang of his day and further underlined their purpose by including in his collection many of the subversive Latin fables of Laurentius Abstemius.[74] In France the fable tradition had already been renewed in the 17th century by La Fontaine's influential reinterpretations of Aesop and others. In the centuries that followed there were further reinterpretations through the medium of regional languages, which to those at the centre were regarded as little better than slang. Eventually, however, the demotic tongue of the cities themselves began to be appreciated as a literary medium.

One of the earliest examples of these urban slang translations was the series of individual fables contained in a single folded sheet, appearing under the title of Les Fables de Gibbs in 1929. Others written during the period were eventually anthologised as Fables de La Fontaine en argot (Étoile sur Rhône 1989). This followed the genre's growth in popularity after World War II. Two short selections of fables by Bernard Gelval about 1945 were succeeded by two selections of 15 fables each by 'Marcus' (Paris 1947, reprinted in 1958 and 2006), Api Condret's Recueil des fables en argot (Paris, 1951) and Géo Sandry (1897–1975) and Jean Kolb's Fables en argot (Paris 1950/60). The majority of such printings were privately produced leaflets and pamphlets, often sold by entertainers at their performances, and are difficult to date.[75] Some of these poems then entered the repertoire of noted performers such as Boby Forest and Yves Deniaud, of which recordings were made.[76] In the south of France, Georges Goudon published numerous folded sheets of fables in the post-war period. Described as monologues, they use Lyon slang and the Mediterranean Lingua Franca known as Sabir.[77] Slang versions by others continue to be produced in various parts of France, both in printed and recorded form.