The Sick Kite

The Sick Kite is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 324 in the Perry Index.

[1] Greek versions of this fable are told of the raven (κοραξ) while it is called a kite (milvus) in Mediaeval Latin sources.

The bird is ill and asks its grieving mother to pray in the temples on its behalf.

The fable appears in the collection of William Caxton and in many others, generally with a reflection on the uselessness of death-bed repentance.

A sceptical variation on the theme directed against religious observance later appeared in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's collection of prose fables (1759).