Stone soup fable

[skyhook]

I hope it isn't a strange topic. You know that european story of stone soup, a beggar took a stone and tricked an old lady into cooking up a pot of delicious soup with cabbage, carrots and stuff. Another version of the story, the beggar is replaced with three soldiers who return from war, who took a huge pot, cooked stone and water and tricked the villagers into adding ingredients.

now, its is just a story, but the Moral of the story is odd to me. btw, I'm chinese, so there could be a slight difference in personal views.

I feel the moral of the story is don't be gullible. but the moral of these story mentioned by some authors seem to praise the action of the trickers instead, by saying they helped the villagers.

so any views on this ?

 

sorry about that... link added

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html

 

http://www.stonesoupsociety.com/Stone-Soup-Fable.htm

Edited March 11, 2010 by skyhook
add link

[Zolar V]

is there the whole story i could read?

you cant quite discern exactly what is meant by it with the above information.

it seems to me just by using this information that it could go either way.

[Mr Skeptic]

The thing is that in the story, the one with the villagers, the villagers didn't really have much food and they weren't sharing it with each other, or something. Essentially he got them all to put in an ingredient that they had, and everyone got some good soup. Not really a very realistic scenario, but there you go. I haven't heard of the one with the grandmother though.

[Phi for All]

The villagers feared strangers. They were probably a bit selfish among themselves as well. The soldiers taught them to share, so that instead of just eating the individual items they had (some villagers had carrots, some had milk, some had meat, some had bread, some had potatoes), everyone ate a delicious soup made from all the ingredients. The soldiers started out saying that stone soup was fit for a rich man's table, so the soldiers taught the villagers how to eat like kings whenever they wanted.

 

Edit: Got to be quicker to beat Mr Skeptic to a good explanation.

[Zolar V]

"The soldiers started out saying that stone soup was fit for a rich man's table, so the soldiers taught the villagers how to eat like kings whenever they wanted."

.

 

look, socialism being taught in medeival times!

[Mr Skeptic]

Edit: Got to be quicker to beat Mr Skeptic to a good explanation.

 

Ah, well you explained it better.

 

sorry about that... link added

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html

 

http://www.stonesoupsociety.com/Stone-Soup-Fable.htm

 

Ah, well there's all sorts of different stories, mostly dealing in some way with stinginess. In one of those, the tramp actually makes use of the woman's stinginess, in that she greedily wants to know how to make nail soup so she can save money on food. Instead of course she ends up cooking up a nice soup for the tramp. In another, the villagers offer ingredients in exchange for some of the soup (ingredients that they have hidden from each other, being a time of famine and all).

 

This is actually similar to the modern scam, the Nigerian scam, where someone tricks their victim by offering to give them tons of money for their "assistance" for the simple task of transferring money. Instead, they have them make a bank account for this transfer and then drain the account and vanish.