123:(1558). There the fable is made an example of the practice of alchemists, who are like 'a good woman that was carrying a pot of milk to market and reckoning up her account as follows: she would sell it for half a sou and with that would buy a dozen eggs which she would set to hatch and have from them a dozen chicks; when they were grown she would have them castrated and then they would fetch five sous each, so that'd be at least a crown with which she would buy two piglets, a male and a female, and farrow a dozen more from them once they were grown, and they'd sell for twenty sous a piece after raising, making twelve francs with which she'd buy a mare that would have a fine foal. It would be really nice as it grew up, prancing about and neighing. And so happy was the good woman imagining this that she began to frisk in imitation of her foal, and that made the pot fall and all the milk spill. And down tumbled with it her eggs, her chickens, her capons, her mare and foal, the whole lot.' This has led to the
168:(1761). Titled there "The country maid and her milk pail", it is prefaced with the sentiment that 'when men suffer their imagination to amuse them with the prospect of distant and uncertain improvements of their condition, they frequently sustain real losses by their inattention to those affairs in which they are immediately concerned'. The story is briefly told and ends with the pail being dislodged when the girl scornfully tosses her head in rejection of all the young men at the dance she was to attend, wearing a new dress to be bought with the proceeds of her commercial activities.
179:(1820). As in Bonaventure des PĂ©riers' telling, the bulk of the poem is given over to the long reckoning of prices. It ends with the maid toppling her pail by superciliously tossing her head in rejection of her former humble circumstances. The moral on which Taylor ends his poem is 'Reckon not your chickens before they are hatched', where a later collection has 'Count not...' The proverb fits the story and its lesson so well that one is tempted to speculate that it developed out of some earlier oral version of the fable, but the earliest recorded instance of it is in
268:. It shows the seated milkmaid weeping over her broken pot, which has been converted into a water feature by a channeled feed from a nearby spring. Originally it was called "Girl with a pitcher", but it became so celebrated that it is now better known as "The Milkmaid of Tsarskoye Selo". There is only a copy there today in what has become a public park, while the original is preserved in a St Petersburg museum. In fact several other copies have been made over the years. One was given by the wife of Nicholas I, the princess
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187:(1570). The idiom used by La Fontaine in the course of his long conclusion is 'to build castles in Spain', of which he gives a few examples that make it clear that the meaning he intends is 'to dream of the impossible'. Avoiding that may well be what Bonaventure des PĂ©riers intended in telling his story too, but in the English versions the moral to be drawn is that to bring a plan to completion more than dreaming is required.
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in the 18th century. It differs little from other retellings, apart from its conclusion. The woman confesses what has happened to her husband, who advises her to live in the here and now and be content with what she has rather than 'building castles in air'. Here he uses the German equivalent of La
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as "The brahman who built air-castles". There a man speculates about the wealth that will flow from selling a pot of grain that he has been given, progressing through a series of sales of animals until he has enough to support a wife and family. The child misbehaves, his wife takes no heed, so he
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There is a theme common to the many different stories of this type that involves poor persons daydreaming of future wealth arising from a temporary possession. When they get carried away by their fantasy and start acting it out, they break the container on which their dream is founded and find
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also depicts a fall in his picture of the fable (1770), although in this case the girl has tumbled forward and the smoke of her dreams spills from the pitcher at the same time as the milk. Other paintings that allude to the fable at the time include
245:, painted his "Perrette" some time before 1890, taking its title from the name that La Fontaine gave his milkmaid. She walks abstractedly through a visionary landscape with the bucket balanced on her head. The Spanish
98:, the story was told as a cautionary fable of a milkmaid who engages in detailed financial calculations of her profits. In a Castilian form it is told under the title "Of what happened to a woman called Truhana" in
108:(1335), illustrating the lesson that you should 'Confine your thoughts to what is real'. In this case it is the jar of honey from which she hopes to enrich herself that Truhana unbalances from her head.
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Illustrations of La
Fontaine's fables in books, limited as they are to the dismayed milkmaid looking down at her broken crock, are almost uniformly monotonous. An early exception is
257:. In the following century, the fable is featured on one of Jean Vernon's (1897–1975) medals from the 1930s, where Perrette stands with a frieze of her lost beasts behind her.
213:'s print in which the girl has fallen on her back (1755), an episode unsanctioned by the text. The explanation for the inelegant posture seems to be that the idiom
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The most celebrated statue of this subject is the bronze figure that the
Russian artist Pavel Sokolov (1765–1831) made for the pleasure grounds planned by Tsar
38:-Uther type 1430 about interrupted daydreams of wealth and fame. Ancient tales of this type exist in the East but Western variants are not found before the
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y
Bastida painted his "The Milkmaid" in 1890 and portrays a pensive girl seated on a flowering bank with her bucket overturned beside her. In
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217:(the broken pitcher) then meant the loss of virginity and so suggests a less innocent explanation of how the milk came to be spilt.
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kicks her and in doing so upsets the pot that was to make his fortune. Other variants include
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The Book of the
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160:(1704). The false connection with Aesop was continued by the story's reappearance in
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The complete fables of Jean de La
Fontaine By Jean de La Fontaine, Norman R. Shapiro
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In the 19th century the story was taken up elsewhere. The
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themselves worse off. One of the earliest is included in the Indian
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La
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tapestry based on this was later to be presented to the king.
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The story gained lasting popularity after it was included in
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Aesop's Fables: A New
Revised Version From Original Sources
42:. It was only in the 18th century that the story about the
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The Smith
College Museum of Art catalogue, New York 2000,
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and the Jewish story of "The Dervish and the Honey Jar".
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in 1998, and still another at Soukhanovo, near Moscow.
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In Britain the earliest appearance of the fable was in
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The lyric was set for piano and alto voice in 1899 by
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A version of the fable was written by the German poet
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127:"Don't count your chick(en)s until they hatch."
642:"Counte not thy Chickens which vnhatched be",
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593:The Augustan Society reprint is available on
23:'The fable of the girl and her milk pail' by
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632:Fable 30, "The milkmaid and her pot of milk"
92:At its first appearance in the 14th century
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644:The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
166:Select fables of Esop and other fabulists
352:For the water pours yet from her vessel.
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322:Let it drop on the boulder beneath her.
435:"Air Castles: Folktales of Type 1430"
171:A different version was versified by
121:Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis
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810:"Fountain Milkmaid of Tsarskoe Selo"
404:for piano and voice (Op. 73.3, 1875)
295:A copy of Pavel Sokolov's statue of
234:'s "The little milkmaid" (1760). A
14:
913:Fables de la Fontaine en chansons
358:Her gaze on this endless spring.
185:New Sonnets and Pretty Pamphlets
1172:The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma
938:17th–18th century illustrations
769:Kristina Huneault's article in
374:and is still performed today.
1:
898:Fables de Jean de la Fontaine
349:But see! What marvel is this?
328:Uselessly holding the pieces.
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1074:The Brahmin and the Mongoose
1059:The Mouse Turned into a Maid
1015:The Moral Philosophy of Doni
1149:One Thousand and One Nights
1011:The Fables of Bidpai/Pilpay
902:International Music Library
875:International Music Library
771:Dictionary of Women Artists
413:in the children's operetta
299:in the park of Britz Castle
192:Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
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1069:The Ass in the Lion's Skin
1044:The Tortoise and the Birds
943:Two prints by Gustave Doré
798:A website is devoted to it
723:See the sale notes on the
656:Fabel IV.1 "Die Milchfrau"
550:Fontaine, Jean La (2010).
522:On the migration of fables
456:Panchatantra Reconstructed
355:There she continues today,
319:One day a girl with an urn
205:Artistic uses of the fable
49:began to be attributed to
1304:Edward Backhouse Eastwick
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1049:The Bear and the Gardener
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415:La Fontaine et le Corbeau
396:Six Fables de La Fontaine
325:Sadly she sits and alone,
297:The girl with the pitcher
175:as "The Milkmaid" in his
32:The Milkmaid and Her Pail
1064:The Deer without a Heart
924:A performance on YouTube
702:Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris
691:Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris
117:Bonaventure des PĂ©riers
1258:Abu'l-Ma'ali Nasrallah
1213:Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak
1117:Hikayat Panca Tanderan
1054:The Lion and the Mouse
852:Performance on YouTube
785:Illustrated online at
504:. Pitt.edu. 2009-07-06
437:. Pitt.edu. 2013-03-19
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105:Tales of Count Lucanor
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748:World Classic Gallery
606:Fable XIII, pp. 80–81
384:as the fourth of his
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219:Jean-Honoré Fragonard
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1420:La Fontaine's Fables
1112:La Fontaine's Fables
787:Creighton University
677:See the analysis of
270:Charlotte of Prussia
262:Nicholas I of Russia
243:Albert Pinkham Ryder
198:Milchmädchenrechnung
113:La Fontaine's Fables
95:Dialogus creaturarum
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1079:The Fox and the Cat
454:Franklin Edgerton,
394:, the first of his
226:'s "The milkmaid" (
211:Jean-Baptiste Oudry
1435:Indian fairy tales
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34:is a folktale of
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1339:N. M. Penzer
1263:Thomas North
1191:translators,
1179:Jungle Tales
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1389:Frame story
1384:Beast fable
1364:Ramsay Wood
1273:Simeon Seth
1164:Other media
1155:Ĺšukasaptati
1123:Hitopadesha
667:View online
228:La Laitière
146: 1688
66:In the East
61:The stories
55:Perry Index
44:daydreaming
40:Middle Ages
1409:Categories
1243:Kshemendra
1223:Durgasimha
816:2010-09-08
569:2010-09-08
538:Chapter 28
526:Max MĂĽller
508:2010-09-08
475:2010-09-08
441:2013-11-03
422:References
617:pp. 55–56
595:Gutenberg
372:Cesar Cui
16:Folk tale
1253:Narayana
1193:adapters
1189:Editors,
887:You Tube
841:Op 57.17
812:. Nlr.ru
737:pp.214-5
386:6 Fables
236:Gobelins
137:, after
47:milkmaid
1218:Borzuya
1031:Stories
864:YouTube
646:(p. 65)
125:proverb
1415:Fables
1377:Topics
1282:Modern
1268:Rudaki
775:p. 611
560:
528:, 1881
417:(1999)
388:(1842)
78:Bidpai
27:, 1893
1394:Katha
1200:Early
989:aka:
51:Aesop
558:ISBN
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