The Impertinent Insect

Credited as among Aesop's Fables, and recorded in Latin by Phaedrus,[1] the fable is numbered 137 in the Perry Index.[2] There are also versions by the so-called Syntipas (47) via the Syriac, Ademar of Chabannes (60) in Mediaeval Latin, and in Medieval English by William Caxton (4.16). The story concerns a flea that travels on a camel and hops off at its journey's end, explaining that it does not wish to tire the camel any further. The camel replies that it was unaware it had a passenger. Phaedrus comments that "He who, while he is of no standing, boasts to be of a lofty one, falls under contempt when he comes to be known."

Arthur Rackham drawing for The gnat and the bull, 1912

Babrius recorded a variant story in which a gnat settles on a bull's horn but offers to fly off again if he finds it too much of a burden.[3] The bull replies that he is indifferent either way and the moral is much the same as in the contemporary Phaedrus. The fable did not become generally known in Britain until a Latin verse translation appeared in Victorian text books[4] and then versions in English fable collections.

Ademar of Chabannes, who had a history of forgery, came up with a story of his own which he passed off as ancient. This appears as fable 564 in the Perry Index.[5] There a gnat challenges a bull to a trial of strength but then claims that, by accepting, the bull has acknowledged it as his equal. Ademar's comment is that the bull "should have dismissed this opponent as beneath contempt and the impertinent creature would not have had anything to boast about."

The fable was composed in Latin by Laurentius Abstemius and appeared in his Hecatomythium (1490) under the title Musca et Quadrigae.[6] It was added to the Perry Index as Fable 724. Here a fly perches on a chariot during a race and comments on how much dust it is raising. Gabriele Faerno included it in his own Centum Fabulae (1563), giving the impression that it was of Aesopic origin, although verbally it is close to the text of Abstemius.[7]

Francis Bacon also took the fable to be Aesopic, observing that "It was prettily devised of Æsop: The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel, and said, What a dust do I raise!" at the start of his essay “On Vainglory”.[8] Eventually ‘the fly on the coach wheel’ became an English idiom with the meaning of "one who fancies himself of mighty importance but who is in reality of none at all".[9]

A woodprint of The fly and the mule from the 1464 Ulm edition of Steinhöwel's collection of Aesop's Fables

This fable has the longest history of internal change. It was recorded by Phaedrus[10] and is numbered 498 in the Perry Index.[11] There, a fly seated on the cart threatens to sting the mule if it does not pull faster. The mule replies that he only fears the driver and his whip. Empty threats from bystanders mean nothing. This too entered the European canon, first through Heinrich Steinhöwel's collection of Aesop's fables (1464) and thereafter from books derived from it, including Caxton's collection.[12] In Roger L'Estrange large collection, however, his "The Fly on the Wheel" seems to blend the two fables together: "What a Dust do I raise! says the Fly upon the Coach-Wheel? and what a rate do I drive at, says the same Fly again upon the Horse's Buttock?"[13]

La Fontaine's Fables expands the scenario with his treatment of "La coche et la mouche" (VII.9), where the emphasis shifts wholly to the insect.[14] Six horses strain to pull a stage-coach up a sandy hill and all the passengers are obliged to get out. A fly now buzzes about, urging on the horses and supervising the progress of the coach, then complains that all the work has been left to it alone. The fabulist comments,

This version of the fable has twice been set to music: as the fifth piece in Benjamin Godard's Six Fables de La Fontaine (op. 17 1872/9);[15] and as the second piece in Maurice Thiriet's Trois fables de La Fontaine (1959) for 4-part children's a cappella chorus.[16] In French the idiomatic phrase Faire (or jouer) la mouche du coche continues to be applied to self-important do-nothings.[17] Similarly, in Russian, the phrase "Мы пахали!" ("we've been plowing!") is used to mock people exaggerating their contributions, after Ivan Dmitriev's variant featuring a fly that rides on a bull's horn as it ploughs.[18][19]

Hitherto, the fables had been pithily told, but La Fontaine's leisurely and circumstantial narration over the length of 32 lines went on to infect those who followed him in other languages with similar prolixity. William Godwin adapted the gist to a short story of "The Fly in the Mail Coach" in his Fables Ancient and Modern (1805), although otherwise seeming to draw more from L'Estrange than La Fontaine.[20] The same is true of the prose version of "The Fly and the Wagon" that appeared in The Flowers of Fable (New York, 1833).[21] Claimed there to be translated from the Dutch, that too mixes Abstemius with La Fontaine and culminates in a horse killing the fly with a switch of its tail.