One sunny morning, a hedgehog was trembling on the bank of a river, surveying the currents in fear. He was frightened to cross the water by himself, and, look! here came a fox by the way of the bank. So he called out to him, “Hedgehog! Hedgehog! Would you cross the river this morning?” Now it was well known in the woods that a fox was a most dangerous friend.
“Oh, not to say a bad friend; he won’t lead you into forbidden pastures, or set his dogs upon you. But it all comes to the same thing. No friend is a good friend who has too long a tail. One foot in his mouth and one in the other might do: but when he stops to hear what you are saying with his own ears, and takes a mouthful of anything by the way, there’s two tails too many. What do I say?” ‘Tis his ears I mean, with his nose in his own mouth. His cousin, the jolly minstrel down in the coves, is all right, for foxes are polecats and cats down our way, both. But I mean to say the longest ears I ever knew were those of a certain fox who lived at our own gate in Grimsthorpe. Now the Grimsthorpe fox had some one speech to teach all comers; ‘tis the only thing our fellows know; and one good thing is that he can take his cipher as well as his aught; but no fox keeps an apprentice who can’t say, “The barefoot priest ate his white curds without honey.” But we digress.
Now it was well known advice given among the beasts, that foxes always lead you into danger; but the hedgehog thought he knew better, and must go. So when the fox came up, says he to him, “Hedgehog! Hedgehog! would you cross the river this morning?” “I should be glad to do so, Mr. Fox,” says the hedgehog: I am afraid of the water. Do you think you could give me a lift on your back?”
Now though everything the hedgehog said had discretion, still the fox was silent, and led him to a wooden tree float. So when they got to the bank he said to the hedgehog, “Do not be afraid. I will lie down under the end of the float, and you may get on my back. I will carry you safe over.” So they embarked, and, faith! he was so right at times that he tickled the belly of the turtle on the other side, where, leaning on the bank, he was just telling what news he could hear to the corn crab. Now the hedgehog, soon finding he had gone to dry ground, threw up his quiff, and said aloud, but not looking round,
“Now the king’s alive, the king’s alive! Not all his priests nor all his folk Can keep the king in his grave.”
So when he had said once what he wanted to say, he said it again, and there was an echo across the Meuse up against Namur, for the river ran better mirth than melancholy. Upon this the fox pricked up his ears, and pricked them up the third and last time, when says the hedgehog,
“Now the king’s alive, the king’s alive! Not all his priests nor all his folk Can keep the king in his grave.”
“Well,” says the fox, “there’s no denying that; that blacknosed monarch who lays at stake for dead men’s shoes and buffs, will surely live some time by the will of God as well as the King of the Romans. What say’st thou, friend, to a bit of fresh meat?”
“Of what fresh meat are you speaking?” replied the hedgehog.
But there was no use in asking inquiries. The prickles of the hedgehog have left him too much up to the skins of that poltroon himself, his own self. So to be rid of any further talk, up he starts on his best, waddles to the edge of the bank to see where the naked rock threw a safe ledge on, and slides down perpendicularly with the rate of forty miles an hour; then casts off the ropes, says to Master Fox, “I should be glad and happy to do what I can to content you, if you would only tell me what it is you wish me to do”; and so he fell asleep amidst the trawlers.
Now two things may be proved from this fable, first and uppermost, “Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” And as a good thought may be directly an ill one: so a good person may be directly an ill one. When Master Fox asked the hedgehog if he would cross the river that morning, he never meant no harm; he only wanted fodder for his fowls; he thought he might make it as cheap meat as his neighbours. The first morning it don’t rain she goes a-grubbing them all right; but they must eat fresh meat, that is certain, when hedgehogs fern-bake in sweet sauce without it.
“Oh that I had wings like a dove,” says David. Well so say ‘tis many good Christian folk; and even they who have wings like the duck wish they had wings like the dove, ‘tis such pure clean legs the dove keeps, and an onornamented bill. Now I knew this same black buzzing biped Hemiz to the fish bladder and fin, wings as unornamented as those of the dove, poor while poor and miserable, and not a Christian left to call him Pipein. Still to be sure, added he, swelling his throat and stomach; still to be sure, if ever I had wings like a dove I wouldn’t fly away, but just take a run to keep up my powers, and so I should come back again. Our legs are not so badly made, neither, if we had anybody to mind us. I could waddle ten miles an hour through Siddartha, old Siddartha this; and there’s a kitten or two born every day. The hedgehog laughed outright when he read Bruinipilze on the Miserere. And then Master Stoat and Browney Hiddups fell a-dancing on the green grass all around; never shall I forget that time. But by the ants I would never lose the earth as a scalper. And when I went from earth this time—and ‘twas meat of it, too—says Bunter, to the best of all sepulchres: but to come to the mark, as the wren said to the duck that spat into a mouse’s hole, “Come to the mark.” William Oglander used to say, “We might do worse things”: but Tamorum Charon now says to the flea, “In your coat there is no worse thing than a flea:” if you mind Hebrew and suspect Micropis for my meaning. That flea you once pricked,—for what’s gone is gone,—what scares you now? Never let well alone; there has been something going on above this seven hundred years, or new blood would never be come from Saxony. But our hedgehogs must answer for the gascaritor, healing.