Character Index | Proverb Index
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| Character Index | Proverb Index |
Townsend version
A king, whose only son was fond of martial exercises, had a dream in which he was warned that his son would be killed by a lion. Afraid the dream should prove true, he built for his son a pleasant palace and adorned its walls for his amusement with all kinds of life-sized animals, among which was the picture of a lion. When the young Prince saw this, his grief at being thus confined burst out afresh, and, standing near the lion, he said: "O you most detestable of animals! through a lying dream of my father's, which he saw in his sleep, I am shut up on your account in this palace as if I had been a girl: what shall I now do to you?' With these words he stretched out his hands toward a thorn-tree, meaning to cut a stick from its branches so that he might beat the lion. But one of the tree's prickles pierced his finger and caused great pain and inflammation, so that the young Prince fell down in a fainting fit. A violent fever suddenly set in, from which he died not many days later.
Moral
We had better bear our troubles bravely than try to escape them.
L'Estrange version (An Old Man and A Lyon)
A person of quaiity dream't one night that he saw a lyon kill his only son: who was, it seems, a generous cavalier, and a great lover of the chase. This phansy ran in the father's head, to that degree, that he built his son a house of pleasure, on purpose to keep him out of harms way; and spar'd neither art nor cost to make it a delicious retreate. This house, in short, was to be the young man's prison, and the father made himself his keeper. There were a world of paintings every where up and down, and among the rest, there was the picture of a lyon; which stirred the bloud of the young man, for the dreame sake, and to think that he should now be a slave for the phansy of such a beast. In this indignation he made a blow at the picture; but striking his fist upon the point of a nayle in the wall, his hand cancerated; he fell into a fever, and soon after dy'd on't: so that all the father's precaution could not secure the son from the fatality of dying by a lyon.
Moral
A body may as well lay too little as too much stress upon a dreame; for some dreames are monitory, as others are only complexional: but upon the main, the less we heed them the better; for when that freake has once taken possession of a fantastical head, the distemper is incurable.
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Tom Simondi, All Rights Reserved