The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168380 Message #4068244
Posted By: Howard Kaplan
13-Aug-20 - 01:11 PM
Thread Name: Songs about wills
Subject: RE: Songs about wills
In an unusual sense of the term "Aesop fable", one concerns a will. The fable is not attributed to Aesop, but he appears in it as a character. It is found in book IV of Phaedrus, who translated Aesop into Latin verse in the first century CE. I found it under the title “The Riddle of a Will” in the 1964 Penguin edition of Fables of Aesop, translated by S. A. Handford.
I adapted the story as a song called "Weaver of Wool". The riddle concerns the following bequest:
What kind of lawyer would draft such a will?
Father was not himself; father was ill.
"Give to each child however well blessed
One equal share that cannot be possessed."
You can find links to the music and lyrics here.