The Cock and the Jewel
"Prefer not a barlie corne before a pretious jewel", a character in Robert Greene's Euphues His Censure (1587) warns; and Francis Quarles laments that "We catch at barley-grains, while pearls stand by despised" in his Divine Emblems (1635).
[3] Yet another character, in Henry Fielding's The Temple Beau (1729), points out that "virtue loses not its worth by being slighted by the world, more than the pearl when the foolish cock preferred a barleycorn".
He begins the Prologue to his Isopes Fabules with the statement that "Wisdom is more in price than gold in coffers" but turns that to mean that beneath the "boysterous and rurall" fable hide valuable lessons for life, so anticipating the Cock's eventual find.
[8] Some three centuries later, the periodical writer John Hawkesworth adapted the story to a similar moral in an extended poem, "The Fop, Cock, and Diamond", in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1741.
[9] There the diamond's journey is traced from the ring of a man-about-town to its discovery by the cock, whose noble conduct is contrasted with the vain behaviour of its previous owner, leading to the advice that one should keep one's wants to simple necessities.
[11] The lesson there of maintaining the balance of social relations is emphasised further by Wenceslaus Hollar's accompanying print in which the cock astride its dunghill is wittily contrasted with the Germanic castle on the neighbouring hilltop.
The other literary expansion to survive from the 15th century is Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, written c.1480, with which this fable, under the title of The Taill of the Cok and the Jasp, begins.
[12] His own moral conclusion follows the standard verse Romulus closure, making the rejected jasp an unambiguous figure for wisdom and condemning the consequent materialism of the cockerel.
The cock, he says, represents "the fool whiche careth not for sapyence ne for wysedome", but then draws the sting from his criticism in continuing "and by the stone is to vnderstond this fayre and playsaunt book".
After a very brief telling of the cock's rejection of the pearl as being inedible, La Fontaine describes a parallel situation in which a man inherits a valuable manuscript but prefers to have cash in hand for it.
[22] In Germany, it was Martin Luther's translation (Fabel vom Hahn under der Perle) that was set by Hans Poser as the first of six in Die Fabeln des Äsop for accompanied men's choir (0p.
