The Snake, the Farmer and the Heron: A Dark African Fable

The Snake, the Farmer and the Heron is an old African folktale from the Hausa tribe, told throughout the northern regions of Nigeria and the southern areas of the Niger. It picked up even more popularity after being featured in 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a story about how water doesn’t flow uphill. That won’t make much sense yet, but I’ll explain it at the end.

It’s one of my favourite fables. I’ve retold it in my own words, sticking to the classic story beats. Then I’ll give you my own version.

I’m a real person, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. That’s the fun of fables like these. Drop a comment after reading, if you can.

The Classic Fable

A farmer was walking home after a long day of tending his fields, when he found a snake shivering on the path.

The snake asked the farmer if it could warm up inside his stomach. Just for a little while. Just long enough to get warm. The farmer thought himself a kind man, so he let the snake slide into his mouth and down into his stomach.

Once inside, the snake quickly warmed up. It was cozy inside the stomach. And so when the farmer asked the snake to leave, it refused.

The farmer thought that a long beak could pluck the snake out, so he went to see the heron. The heron fancied itself a kind creature, so it slid its long, slender beak down the farmer’s throat and pulled the snake right out, making a nice meal of it.

The farmer was grateful for the heron’s help, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Something still felt off. Perhaps the wicked snake had left venom in his stomach.

The heron knew much of poisons. It advised the farmer to consume white meat to strengthen his constitution, allowing him to fight off any foulness that yet lingered in his stomach.

The farmer noticed that the heron was made of white meat, so he grabbed it, stuffed it into his yuca sack, and started heading home again.

When the farmer arrived home, his wife asked why he was so late, and he told her what had happened. When the farmer got the part where he stuffed the heron in the back, his wife was horrified. The heron had saved him! How could he betray it? She considered herself a kind woman, so she grabbed the yuca sack to set the heron free.

But when she opened the bag, the bird was frantic, and it gouged out her eyes before flying away into the night.

The Moral & Meaning

The moral of the story is that water doesn’t flow uphill. Kindness flows onwards, perhaps helping someone else further downstream, but it rarely comes back up the river. We can give kindness, we can pay it forward, but we shouldn’t expect to be paid back.

That’s where we get this cynical saying: “Whenever you see water flowing uphill, someone is repaying a kindness.”

There’s a darker way to interpret the story. Not only is kindness not repaid, it’s also punished. The man is kind to the snake, but the snake will not leave. The heron is kind to the man, but the man traps him. The wife tries to free the frantic heron, but it hurts her.

There are obvious examples of that. Some people intentionally take advantage of kindness. Parents need to teach kids to be polite but not too polite. You wouldn’t want a kid thinking they need to politely accept candy from the man in the white-panelled van. They need to know that they’re allowed to hurt people’s feelings.

But that isn’t the lesson of this fable. It’s more about the accidental ways that kindness is abused. Perhaps you lend a friend some money, but all they do is ask for more. Perhaps you’re polite to a man in the park, but he grows bolder, and he follows you home. Perhaps you take a starving dog off the street, hoping to nurture it back to health, but a life of hardship has made it fearful, and it bites you.

Kindness does not always beget kindness.

Misinterpretations & Controversy

When I told this fable to my seven-year-old, I asked him what he thought the lesson was, and he figured the lesson must be that we shouldn’t be nice. I don’t think that’s quite right. It’s more that we shouldn’t expect kindness to be repaid, and we shouldn’t let our kindness get taken advantage of.

I saw another blog post about this fable, suggesting that it was teaching people not to help each other. His idea was that cultures with fables like these learn to fear cooperation, and so they fail. He argued that Africa has been torn apart by war because they tell fables like this one. That’s a bafflingly moronic interpretation.

There are many benefits to being kind, and it’s true that this fable doesn’t mention them, but it doesn’t need to. There are other fables for that, such as The Lion and the Mouse. We’re supposed to have a library of these stories, plucking out the right one for any given situation.

If your child is having a hard time learning to share, tell him about the mouse who helps the lion. My son is the other way. He’s got a kind heart, and he loves to share, and sometimes people take advantage of him. A couple of months ago, he used his allowance to buy his friend a treat. Now, his friend expects him to always use his allowance to buy him treats. If my son says no, his friend threatens to unfriend him.

It’s important to have stories for situations like that, too. It doesn’t discourage cooperation. It teaches us about expectations and fairness. We learn to cooperate in a way that benefits all of us.

Changing the Fable

I wonder if the fable might make more sense if we remove the part where the farmer gets worried about snake venom in his gut, with the heron then suggesting that the farmer eat white meat. That’s a strange thing for a heron to do, and it makes the heron seem somewhat sinister, giving the farmer an excuse to eat it.

I also like the idea of giving the snake a bit of extra motivation to stay in the farmer’s stomach, and perhaps that’s an opportunity to bring up the idea of hunger and dinner.

None of this lightens a story that’s supposed to be dark, nor does it change the moral of the story. I think it may even make the moral slightly stronger.

A Slightly Different Telling

A farmer was walking home after a long day of tending his fields, when he found a snake shivering on the path.

The snake asked the farmer if it could warm up inside his stomach. Just for a little while. Just long enough to get warm. The farmer thought himself a kind man, so he let the snake slide into his mouth and down into his stomach.

Once inside, the snake quickly warmed up. It was cozy inside the stomach. And the snake figured that the farmer must be on his way home for dinner, so the stomach would soon be full of lots of food to eat.

When the farmer asked the snake to leave, it refused.

The farmer thought that a long beak could pluck the snake out, so he went to see the heron. The heron fancied itself a kind creature, so it slid its long, slender beak down the farmer’s throat and pulled the snake right out, making a nice meal of it.

The farmer was grateful for the heron’s help, but his stomach now felt so empty, and the heron started to look quite appetizing. He grabbed the heron, stuffed it into his yuca sack, and started heading home again.

When the farmer arrived home, his wife asked why he was so late, and he told her what had happened. When the farmer got the part where he stuffed the heron in the back, his wife was horrified. The heron had saved him! How could he betray it? She considered herself a kind woman, so she grabbed the yuca sack to set the heron free.

When she opened the bag, the bird was frantic, and it gouged out her eyes before flying away into the night.

I want to illustrate some of my favourite fables myself, by hand. In the meantime, I’ll use some of my favourite human art. This piece was painted by Maria Sibylla Merian, painted in 1700. I don’t think it has anything to do with the fable, but it does have a heron and a snake in it, so it will do.

Similar Fables & Folktales

If you want more dark fables with harsh moral lessons, here are some of my favourites:

• The Tale of the Midnight Goat Thief is another dark African folktale with a grim moral.
• The Mongoose and the Farmer’s Wife is an old Indian fable with a harsh conclusion.
• The Lion-Makers is a prescient fable about losing control over one’s creations.
• The Crane and the Crab is another old tale about deceit and trickery.

Or you can browse the entire collection of fables, folktales, myths, and legends.

Attribution note: If you reference one of my interpretations, please credit Juan Artola Miranda. However, the fable itself belongs to all of humanity, and it’s supposed to be retold! Don’t copy it word for word, of course, but there’s a long tradition of retelling fables, changing them slightly, and seeing which versions resonate. They’re the oldest form of memes.

I’d also love to hear what you think in the comments.