The Young Widow

But when she saw that her husband was deceased, amidst the tears and grieving, she asked her father whether that young man was there, whom he had said he wanted her to marry.

[1]Soon afterwards a close translation appeared in the English jest book Merry Tales and Quick Answers (c.1530),[2] but in general the trend among later fabulists has been to embroider upon the rather threadbare narration of Abstemius.

But Ambrose Bierce brings a blacker humour to his Fantastic Fables, where the story is subverted under the title "The Inconsolable Widow".

This tells of a passer-by attempting to comfort a woman weeping beside a grave with the assurance that 'there is another man somewhere, besides your husband, with whom you can still be happy'.

[5] Marc Chagall included an etching of the grieving widow among the set of illustrated fables he published in 1952.