Belling the Cat

Summary

Medieval fable attributed to Aesop Gustave Doré's illustration of La Fontaine's fable, c. 1868 Belling the Cat is a fable also known under the titles The Bell and the Cat and The Mice in Council. In the story, a group of mice agree to attach a bell to a cat's neck to warn of its approach in the future, but they fail to find a volunteer to perform the job. The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.[1] Although often attributed to Aesop, it was not recorded before the Middle Ages and has been confused with the quite different fable of Classical origin titled The Cat and the Mice. In the classificatory system established for the fables by Ben Edwin Perry, it is numbered 613, which is reserved for Mediaeval attributions outside the Aesopic canon.[2] Synopsis and idiomatic use[edit] The fable concerns a group of mice who debate plans to nullify the threat of a marauding cat. One of them proposes placing a bell around its neck, so that they are warned of its approach. The plan is applauded by the others, until one mouse asks who will volunteer to place the bell on the cat. All of them make excuses. The story is used to teach the wisdom of evaluating a plan on not only how desirable the outcome would be but also how it can be executed. It provides a moral lesson about the fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility, and how this affects the value of a given plan.[3] The fable gives rise to the idiom to bell the cat, which means to attempt, or agree to perform, an impossibly difficult task.[4] Historically 'Bell the Cat' is frequently claimed to have been a nickname given to fifteenth-century Scottish nobleman Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus in recognition of his part in the arrest and execution of James III's alleged favourite, Thomas (often misnamed as Robert...