The Fir and the Bramble

The Fir and the Bramble is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 304 in the Perry Index.

The contenders in this fable first appear in a Sumerian debate poem of some 250 lines dating from about 2100 BCE,[2] in a genre that was ultimately to spread through the Near East.

William Caxton (1484) was the first to provide an English version, taking the story from Avianus and giving it the title The busshe and the aubyer tree.

[4] In John Ogilby's verse edition (1668) the fable is titled The Cedar and the Shrub[5] but most later collections give it as The Fir and the Bramble.

In Victorian times the fable's moral was updated to "Better poverty without care, than riches with.