Fame is built up mainly of legend; in the animal world, as in the world of men, the story takes precedence of history. Insects in particular, whether they attract our attention in this way or in that, have their fair share in a folk-lore which pays but little regard to truth.
For instance, who does not know the Cicada, at least by name? Where, in the entomological world, can we find a renown that equals hers? Her reputation as an inveterate singer, who takes no thought for the future, has formed a subject for our earliest exercises in repetition. In verses that are very easily learnt, she is shown to us, when the bitter winds begin to blow, quite destitute and hurrying to her neighbour, the Ant, to announce her hunger. The would-be borrower meets with a poor welcome and with a reply which has remained proverbial and is the chief cause of the little creature’s fame. Those two short lines,
Vous chantiez! J’en suis bien en aise.
Eh bien, dansez maintenant,
with their petty malice, have done more for the Cicada’s celebrity than all her talent as a musician. They enter the child’s mind like a wedge and never leave it.
To most of us, the Cicada’s song is unknown, for she dwells in the land of the olive-trees; but we all, big and little, have heard of the snub which she received from the Ant. See how reputations are made! A story of very doubtful value, offending as much against morality as against natural history; a nursery-tale whose only merit lies in its brevity: there we have the origin of a renown which will tower over the ruins of the centuries like Hop-o’-my-Thumb’s boots and Little Red-Riding-Hood’s basket.
The child is essentially conservative. Custom and traditions become indestructible once they are confided to the archives of his memory. We owe to him the celebrity of the Cicada, whose woes he stammered in his first attempts at recitation. He preserves for us the glaring absurdities that are part and parcel of the fable: the Cicada will always be hungry when the cold comes, though there are no Cicadæ left in the winter; she will always beg for the alms of a few grains of wheat, a food quite out of keeping with her delicate sucker; the supplicant is supposed to hunt for Flies and grubs, she who never eats!
Whom are we to hold responsible for these curious blunders? La Fontaine, who charms us in most of his fables with his exquisite delicacy of observation, is very ill-inspired in this case. He knows thoroughly his common subjects, the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Goat, the Crow, the Rat, the Weasel and many others, whose sayings and doings he describes to us with delightful precision of detail. They are local characters, neighbours, housemates of his. Their public and private life is spent under his eyes; but, where Jack Rabbit gambols, the Cicada is an entire stranger: La Fontaine never heard of her, never saw her. To him the famous singer is undoubtedly a Grasshopper.
