page_title: The Gourd and the Palm-tree
section_title: The fable and its history
hierarchical_section_title: The Gourd and the Palm-tree / The fable and its history
caption_attribution_description: English: The fable of "The Gourd and the Palm" from Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (Lyon 1550) illustrating the brief duration of good fortune
context_page_description: The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance a variant appeared in which a pine took the palm-tree's place and the story was occasionally counted as one of Aesop's Fables..
context_section_description: The fable first appeared in the west in the Latin prose work Speculum Sapientiae (Mirror of wisdom), which groups its accounts into four themed sections. At one time attributed to the 4th century Cyril of Jerusalem, the work is now thought to be by the 13th century Boniohannes de Messana.
  The story is told of a gourd that roots itself next to a palm tree and quickly equals her in height. The gourd then asks its sister her age and on learning that she is a hundred years old thinks itself better because of its rapid rise. Then the palm explains that slow and mature growth will endure while swift advancement is followed by as swift a decay. At the time it first appeared in Europe, the account was directed against the new rich in a feudal society which had yet to find a place for them.
  The Speculum Sapientiae was eventually translated into German under the title Das buch der Natürlichen weißheit by Ulrich von Pottenstein (c.1360-1417) and first printed in 1490. In 1564 a poetic version of the fable was included under its Latin title of Cucurbita et Palma in Hieronymus Osius' Fabulae Aesopi carmine elegiaco redditae and so entered the Aesopic tradition. In the 18th century it was adapted by August Gottlieb Meissner (1753-1807) and published with the work of other German fabulists in 1783. An anonymous translation later appeared in the New York Mirror in 1833 and a poetic version by Mrs Elizabeth Jessup Eames in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1841.
  This new version of the fable ran as follows in its American prose translation:
  A gourd wrapped itself round a lofty palm and in a few weeks climbed to its very top.
  ‘And how old mayest thou be?’ asked the newcomer; ‘About a hundred years,’ was the answer.
  ‘A hundred years and no taller? Only look, I have grown as tall as you in fewer days than you can count years.’
  ‘I know that well,’ replied the palm; 'every summer of my life a gourd has climbed up round me, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou wilt be.’
caption: The emblem of the gourd in the Lyon edition of Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (1550)
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