No Sour Grapes Here, These Can Be Yours!

Slow and steady wins the race!

We don’t think we’re going too far out on a limb when we say we’re sure you’ve heard that phrase before. In fact, there are a number of phrases and idioms that have been floating around for thousands of years that can all be traced, even if only in spirit, back to a man named Aesop. Aesop was slave and storyteller in old Greece and was said to have lived sometime between 620 and 564 BCE. He told many stories through the oral tradition, depicting animals in simple situations from which a moral meaning could be derived.

Perhaps one of the greatest peculiarities of Aesop’s life is that many of his fables were not credited to him until centuries after his death, when historians began to trace the origins of these short stories. They had originally been told to the adults of the time, were used to relay morals on political and religious levels, and it wasn’t until the Renaissance that they became popular tools for teaching lessons to children. They were recorded in manuscripts and at the advent of printing, were finally collected and pressed into volumes to be upheld and taught for further centuries to come.

A 1st century CE philosopher named Apollonius of Tyana was quoted as saying of Aesop, “like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths.” A crane unsticking a bone from a wolf’s throat might be lucky to walk away with their life for choosing to believe in the wicked, or a crow might at last quench its thirst through the cool use of wits in the face of adversity, either way these stories teach us something profound and everlasting and can be held true by folks of any age.

We’ve printed these garments with visual representations of six of our favorite stories in a beautiful Classical style, capturing scenes from The Fox and the Grapes, The Crow and the Pitcher, The Wolf and the Crane, The Lion and the Mouse, The Gnat and the Bull, and of course The Hare and the Tortoise. This print is available on all sizes of adults' twirl skirts, kids’ twirl dresses from ages 3 up to 14, and a multi-purpose shawl. Try on any of them today and we promise you’ll look absolutely marvelous! 

What are some of your favorite fables that didn’t quite make the cut? Let us know!

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