The Wolf and the Crane

On testing his gratitude later, the woodpecker is given the same answer as the wolf's and reflects on the wisdom of avoiding future harm through association with the violent: A Jewish Midrash version, dating from the 1st century CE, tells how an Egyptian partridge extracts a thorn from the tongue of a lion.

Another of this fable's earliest applications was at the beginning of the Roman emperor Hadrian's reign (117–138 CE), when Joshua ben Hananiah skilfully made use of the Babrius variant involving a wolf and a heron in order to dissuade the Jewish people from rebelling against Rome and once more putting their heads into the lion's jaws.

In Le loup et la cigogne (Fables III.9) he also describes the crane's action as a surgical service; but when it asks for the salary promised, it is scolded for ingratitude by the wolf.

[6] A political lesson can also be drawn from some mediaeval sculptures of the fable, most notably on the Great Fountain in Perugia executed in 1278 by Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni.

Commenting on its appearance above a capital of the west door of Autun Cathedral, one scholar points out that what is in this instance a fox typifies the devil, and the crane is an emblem of Christian care and vigilance, ever active in saving souls from the jaws of hell.

[9] This religious meaning made the subject, according to the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, one of the commonest sculpted on buildings from the 12th to the 13th century,[10] not simply in France, but elsewhere in Europe.