Aesop's Fables

#135 The Goatherd and the Wild Goats

A Goatherd, driving his flock from their pasture at eventide, found some Wild Goats mingled among his flock and shut them up together with his own for the night. The next day it snowed very hard, so that he could not take the herd to their usual feeding places, but was obliged to keep them in the fold.

He gave his own goats just sufficient food to keep them alive, but fed the strangers more abundantly in the hope of enticing them to stay with him, and of making them his own.

When the thaw set in, he led them all out to feed, and the Wild Goats scampered away as fast as they could to the mountains.

The Goatherd scolded them for their ingratitude in leaving him when, during the storm, he had taken more care of them than of his own herd.

One of them, turning about, said to him, "That is the very reason why we are so cautious; for if you treated us better than your own, it is plain that if others come after us, you would in the same manner prefer them to ourselves."

Old friends cannot with impunity be sacrificed for new ones.