Belling the Cat

In the story, a group of mice agree to attach a bell to a cat's neck to warn of its approach in the future, but they fail to find a volunteer to perform the job.

The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.

[4] Historically 'Bell the Cat' is frequently claimed to have been a nickname given to fifteenth-century Scottish nobleman Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus in recognition of his part in the arrest and execution of James III's alleged favourite, Thomas (often misnamed as Robert) Cochrane.

[7] The first English collection to attribute the fable to Aesop was John Ogilby's of 1687; in this there is a woodcut (by Francis Barlow), followed by a 10-line verse synopsis by Aphra Behn with the punning conclusion: Good Councell's easily given, but the effect Oft renders it uneasy to transact.

The author concludes with the scornful comment that laws are of no effect without the means of adequately enforcing them and that such parliamentary assemblies as he describes are like the proverbial mountain in labour that gives birth to a mouse.

[15] The refrain of Deschamps' ballade, Qui pendra la sonnette au chat (who will bell the cat) was to become proverbial in France if, indeed, it does not record one already existing.

In the following century, the Italian author Laurentius Abstemius made of the fable a Latin cautionary tale titled De muribus tintinnabulum feli appendere volentibus (The mice who wanted to bell the cat)[16] in 1499.

A more popular version in Latin verse was written by Gabriele Faerno and printed posthumously in his Fabulae centum ex antiquis auctoribus delectae (100 delightful fables from ancient authors, Rome 1564), a work that was to be many times reprinted and translated up to start of the 19th century.

[18] In mediaeval times the fable was applied to political situations and British commentaries on it were sharply critical of the limited democratic processes of the day and their ability to resolve social conflict when class interests were at stake.

While none of the authors who used the fable actually incited revolution, the 1376 Parliament that Langland satirised was followed by Wat Tyler's revolt five years later, while Archibald Douglas went on to lead a rebellion against King James.

The illustrator Grandville,[25] along with the contemporaries Philibert Léon Couturier [fr] (1823–1901)[26] and Auguste Delierre (1829–1890),[27] caricature the backward practice and pomposity of provincial legislatures, making much the same point as did the Mediaeval authors who first recorded the tale.

[33] But while La Fontaine's humorously named cat Rodilardus, and antiquated words like discomfiture (déconfiture), may fit an art song, there have also been faithful interpretations in the field of light music.