A Fisherman skilled in music took his flute and his nets to the seashore. Standing on a projecting rock, he played several tunes in the hope that the fish, attracted by his melody, would of their own accord dance into his net, which he had placed below. At last, having long waited in vain, he laid aside his flute, and casting his net into the sea, made an excellent haul of fish. When he saw them leaping about in the net upon the rock, he said: “O you most perverse creatures, you would not dance when I piped, but you do so merrily now that I have ceased.”

From Aesop’s Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, Collins Classics, London: Harper Press, 2011, p. 11.