On Aug 18, 2006, at 5:08, Maxine Diffey wrote:
So Aussie has those problems too.. I thought it was only New Zealand that was as politically correct as that!! I loved it. Thanks for the giggle.
On Aug 18, 2006, at 5:17, Jean Nathan wrote:
Seems it's not just the Australian version, but applies to a whole lot of different countries including the UK.
Um... I knew this one too, from Poland, via Aesop (as old as it gets, regarding fables with "morals" <g>). But, in the version I knew it was an *ANT*, not a squirrel, who denied succor to the feckless grasshopper. I do know that one of our writers tried to revise it to fit in better into the communist paradigm and replaced the ant with a bee (a bee, unlike an ant, being "socially useful", in addition to being industrious), though that version never got much traction in the Polish children's lit.
I have never heard of the ant being replaced with a *squirrel*, however; somehow, in Polish "folk wisdom", a squirrel never became an icon for industry and conservative behaviour -- it's far too playful (we have the red squirrels, not the grey ones, and they're half-tame and and very friendly, esp in the city parks)
Personally, I never liked the ant (or the bee, in that same context) very much, even though I was supposed to, when I was 5 or 6. Pompous, sanctimonious, sour-faced, stinging and stingy little *bug* :) Not a single, tunefully-wasted, moment to its life (I liked to sing and read; I didn't like to sing and clean my room). Nor any grace to its movement (especially if we're talking about the original ant). Just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, and never share... She didn't even try to warn the grasshopper of the consequences of his behaviour, the smug b....; what if he was too stupid to think of them himself, why didn't she try to teach him better ways? Nah; not my favourite at all... then or now :)
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
