The Boy Who Cried Wolf

This happens in Fables for Five Years Old (1830) by John Hookham Frere,[4] in William Ellery Leonard's Aesop & Hyssop (1912),[5] and in Louis Untermeyer's 1965 poem.

It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, in which the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed".

[7] William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".

[8] The story dates from Classical times, but, since it was recorded only in Greek and not translated into Latin until the 15th century, it only began to gain currency after it appeared in Heinrich Steinhöwel's collection of the fables and so spread through the rest of Europe.

It was under the final title that Edward Hughes set it as the first of ten Songs from Aesop's Fables for children's voices and piano, in a poetic version by Peter Westmore (1965).