The Trees and the Bramble is a composite title which covers a number of fables of similar tendency, ultimately deriving from a Western Asian literary tradition of debate poems between two contenders. Other related plant fables include

The Oak and the Reed The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow. The story and its va ...

and

The Fir and the Bramble The Fir and the Bramble is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 304 in the Perry Index. It is one of a group in which trees and plants debate together, which also includes The Trees and the Bramble and The Oak and the Reed. The contenders in thi ...

The fables

One of Aesop's Fables, numbered 213 in the Perry Index, concerns a pomegranate and an apple tree debating which is the most beautiful. In the midst of it, a bramble bush in a nearby hedge appeals to them, 'Dear friends, let us put a stop to our quarrel.' The account is brief and leads to the humorous moral that 'when there is a dispute among sophisticated people, then riff-raff also try to act important'. The story was for a long time limited to Greek sources and, though versions of a similar debate between other trees gained some currency in the 16th and 17th centuries, it soon fell out of favour again. In 1564 the

Neo-Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

poet

Hieronymus Osius Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his master's d ...

versified the story under the title "The Apple and the Pear", with the moral that the humble become overweening when the great fall out. Charles Hoole's influential ''Aesop's fables English and Latin'' (1657) included it under the title "Of the Peach-tree and the Apple-tree" with the moral that "meaner men do oftentimes settle the controversies of their betters", and is followed more or less by Roger L'Estrange, who concludes that "Every thing would be thought greater in the World than it is". An idea of what such a debate would have been like is gained from a related poem of 116 lines by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (Iamb 4), which is given the separate number of 439 in the Perry Index. There a laurel and an olive tree are in dispute concerning their relative importance and when a bramble attempts to bring peace it is rebuked by the furious laurel. It has been observed that the poem is in the tradition of poetical disputes of

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...

ian origin that spread throughout the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

. In the oldest form of these, the two in debate call for a judgment on which is superior from a presiding god. An echo of that tradition, in which the trees instance their chief useful characteristics, is found in the earliest evidence of a fable among Jews occurring in the Hebrew Bible. The story is told to illustrate the folly of electing a ruler rather than relying on non-hereditary '

judges A judge is an official who presides over a court. Judge or Judges may also refer to: Roles *Judge, an alternative name for an adjudicator in a competition in theatre, music, sport, etc. *Judge, an alternative name/aviator call sign for a membe ...

'. When the trees decide to seek a king, they offer the throne to the olive, the fig and the vine; each in turn refuses, preferring to keep to their own fruitful role. Only the bramble accepts, and makes threats of what will happen to those that do not accept him (

Judges A judge is an official who presides over a court. Judge or Judges may also refer to: Roles *Judge, an alternative name for an adjudicator in a competition in theatre, music, sport, etc. *Judge, an alternative name/aviator call sign for a membe ...

9.8-15). The story began to be included in European fable collections in the Middle Ages. It also appears among

Giovanni Maria Verdizotti Giovanni Maria Verdizotti was a well-connected writer and artist who was born in Venice in 1525 and died there in 1600. Life and work As an artist, Verdizotti is mainly remembered for his friendship with Titian, whose pupil he was, and later his ...

's ''Cento favole morali'' (1570) and Robert Dodsley placed it at the start of his ''Select fables of Esop and other fabulists'' (1764) with the comment at the end that ‘the most worthless persons are generally the most presumptuous’. Dating from the time of Aesop in about 500 BCE, what appears to be an excerpt of an actual West Asian literary debate between a bramble and a pomegranate is inserted in the Aramaic story of

Ahiqar The ''Story of Aḥiqar'', also known as the ''Words of Aḥiqar'', is a story first attested in Imperial Aramaic from the 5th century BCE on papyri from Elephantine, Egypt, that circulated widely in the Middle and the Near East.Christa Mül ...

that was only discovered at the start of the last century. There the bramble reproaches the pomegranate for the thorns that hinder people reaching its fruit in a display of

pot calling the kettle black "The pot calling the kettle black" is a proverbial idiom that may be of Spanish origin, of which English versions began to appear in the first half of the 17th century. It means a situation in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which ...

. But a commentator on the text remarks that its context in the midst of a discussion of the distinction between the bad and the just man gives it a new meaning. The pomegranate, bearing the fruits of righteousness, arms itself against those who would misuse them, for 'a man knows not what is in his fellow's heart. So when a good man sees a wicked man, let him not join with him on a journey or be a neighbour to him - a good man with a bad man. The bramble sent to the pomegranate tree saying, “What good is the multitude of thy thorns to him that toucheth thy fruit?" The pomegranate tree answered and said to the bramble, "Thou art all thorns to him that toucheth thee." All perish that assault the righteous man.'P. M. Michèle Daviau, ''The world of the Aramaeans'', Sheffield Academic Press UK 2001
pp.65-9
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References

External links

Illustrations from books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trees and the Bramble, The Aesop's Fables Fables Fictional trees Fictional plants