The Eagle and the Fox

In his account, the mother fox pulls a flaming branch from an altar and threatens to burn down the tree in which the marauding eagle has nested.

[2] This was the version taken up in early English collections of Aesop's fables, including those of William Caxton,[3] Francis Barlow,[4] and Samuel Croxall.

[5] Marie de France also used this story in her 12th century Anglo-Norman account, with the additional detail that the fox had first bundled firewood around the tree.

This is brought about when the eagle seizes meat from a sacrificial altar to which a glowing charcoal is attached and sets fire to its nest.

A decade before, Roger L'Estrange had recorded the fable too and, with the fox's prayer in mind, gave it the moral, "God reserves to himself the Punishment of faithless and oppressing Governours, and the vindication of his own Worship and Altars".

In this the fox's prayer for retribution is answered when the stolen sacrificial meat proves too hot for the eaglets and they choke to death.