The Book of Beasts - Chapter 1

Medieval fables by Ramon Llull, translated and adapted from the Catalan

Aug 23, 2024

Choosing a King of the Beasts

On a pleasant plain where a lovely brook flowed, all the wild animals gathered to choose for themselves a king. Most of the convention had decided to choose the Lion, but the Ox strongly opposed this.

He stood up and said:

Fellow animals, the king of the beasts should be a kind soul, should be great and humble at once, and should never commit any injury to his subjects. The Lion is not great, at least in size, and he eats us other animals. The Lion has quite a voice, and it’s true that he inspires fear in all of us when he roars. But if you’d take my advice, fellow beasts, you’ll choose the Horse as your king. For the Horse is a great animal, beautiful and humble, the Horse is swift, without vain pride, and above all he will not eat your flesh.

The Stag, the Roe Deer and the Ram approved this greatly, as did all the other herbivores present. They all voiced their support for the Ox’s words.

But Reynard the crafty Fox spoke up against it. He said:

My friends, as you know God created the word so that Man could worship him. In the same way, God intended the beasts to serve Man, and Man lives both on vegetables and on meat. For that reason, my friends, you shouldn’t follow the Ox in disparaging the Lion just for eating meat. Rather, you should follow the word of God and the sacred order that he’s imposed on all of us.

The Ox and his herbivore companions tried to argue against the words of the wily Fox. They said the Fox just wanted the Lion to be king, not for any particular nobility of the Lion himself, but so he could eat the scraps of meat that the king left after feasting.

Soon the convention was deadlocked between the plant-eaters and the meat-eaters, with no clear majority to be found. So the Bear, the Leopard and the Ocelot proposed that the process should be adjourned.

The Fox knew that each of these creatures hoped somehow to make themselves king, and for this reason were prolonging the process, so he said:

If the Lion doesn’t become our king, it’ll be because the Bear, the Leopard and the Ocelot are plotting against him. On the other hand, if the Horse becomes king, how can the Horse even make his authority felt, since the Lion is so much stronger?

When the Bear, the Leopard and the Ocelot heard all this, they were alarmed. They feared the strength of the Lion and what he might do, so they supported him as their candidate to be king. With their voice, and the pressure of all the predators intimidating the more numerous herbivores, the Lion was indeed voted in as king.

The first thing the Lion King did was to proclaim a decree allowing all meat-eaters to consume the flesh of the herbivores, which they all began to do right away.

Soon after that the Lion King and all his meat-eating barons were at court late into the night when they felt very hungry. Reynard the Fox was present and they asked him how they could find some food. The Fox said that nearby was a little spring where a calf, the child of the Ox, and a foal, the child of the Horse, were drinking. They could be quickly trapped and eaten.

So the Lion King and his crew of meat-eaters ran to that spot and they quickly killed and ate the little calf and the little foal.

When the Horse and the Ox heard about this, they were very angry, but they knew there was nothing they could do about it, since the predators were stronger and more deadly than them. So they decided to enter the service of Man, who could avenge them of their former lord. When the Man received the allegiance of these beasts, he was very glad. He saddled up the Horse to ride and harnessed the Ox to his plough.

One day the two new servants of Man ran into each other and they asked each other how things were going. The Horse said he was exhausted because he spent all day riding here and there, wherever the Man goaded him to go, and at night he was kept prisoner. He said he would maybe wish to escape from the lands of Man and return to the lands of the Lion King, but for the fact that the Lion would eat him, and as far as he knew the Man didn’t eat horsemeat.

For his part, the Ox explained that he was very tired of pulling the heavy plough through the packed soil, and carrying on his back all the wheat that his master the Man harvested. He wasn’t allowed to eat this delicious cereal, but had to scrub out in the yard for scant pasture along with the sheep and the goats. He complained loud and long, and the Horse tried to comfort him as best he could, but there was little he could say to make it better.

But then one day a butcher came to measure up the Ox for slaughter and offer the Man a price for his meat. The Ox wept bitterly to the Horse, and the Horse wept bitterly with him, at this gross ingratitude of the Man for all the service the Ox had done him, only to be eaten at the end for all his pains.

So the Horse advised his friend to escape, to return to the land of the wild beasts where the Lion King reigned. Better, he said, to face the risk of maybe being eaten, but to be consoled with the leisure of living wild among his own kind, than to face all the hard tasks of working for Man with the certainty that he would be killed and eaten at the end of his arduous labor.

So the Ox sneaked away from the field when the Man wasn’t looking and returned to the land of the wild beasts where the Lion King reigned.