There exists a family of stories, in
comparative mythology in diverse countries that concern a
simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon and mistakes it for a round cheese:
The Wolf and the Fox story type This
folkloric motif is first recorded in literature during the
High Middle Ages by the French rabbi
Rashi with a
Rabbinic parable in his commentary weaving together three Biblical quotations given in the main text (including one on "
sour grapes") into a reconstruction of some of the Talmudic
Rabbi Meir's supposed three hundred
fox fables in the tractate
Sanhedrin: Rashi as the first literary reference may reflect the well-known
beast fable tradition of
French folklore, or a more obscure such tradition in
Jewish folklore as it appears in ''
Mishlè Shu'alim''. The near-contemporary Iraqi rabbi
Hai Gaon also reconstructed this Rabbi Meir tale, sharing some elements of Rashi's story, but with a lion caught in a
trapping pit rather than a wolf in a well. However, Rashi may have actively "adapted contemporary [French] folklore to the [T]almudic passage", as was
homiletically practiced in different Jewish communities. Though the tale itself is probably of non-Jewish European origin, Rashi's form and elements are likely closer to the original in oral folklore than the somewhat later variation recorded featuring
Reynard. Rashi's version already includes the fox, the wolf, the
well and the Moon that are seen in later versions.
Petrus Alphonsi, a Spanish Jewish convert to Christianity, popularized this tale in Europe in his collection
Disciplina Clericalis. The variation featuring
Reynard the Fox appeared soon after Petrus Alphonsi in the French classic
Le Roman de Renart (as "Renart et Ysengrin dans le puits" in Branch IV); the Moon/cheese element is absent (it is replaced by a promise of Paradise at the bottom of the well), but such a version is alluded to in another part of the collection. This was the first Reynard tale to be adapted into English (as the Middle English "þe Vox and þe Wolf"), preceding Chaucer's "
The Nun's Priest's Tale" and the much later work of
William Caxton. Later still, the Middle Scots
The Fox, the Wolf and the Husbandman does include the Moon/cheese element. La Fontaine includes the story in the French classic compilation
Fables ("Le Loup et le Renard" in Book XI). The German tale of
The Wolf and the Fox in Grimm replaces the well with a well-stocked cellar, where a newly satiated wolf is trapped and subject to the farmer's revenge, being now too overstuffed to escape through the exit. One of the facets of this morphology is grouped as "The Wolf Dives into the Water for Reflected Cheese" (Type 34) of the
Aarne–Thompson classification of folktales, where the Moon's reflection is mistaken for cheese, in the section devoted to tales of
The Clever Fox. It can also be grouped as "The Moon in the Well" (Type 1335A), in the section devoted to
Stories about a Fool, referring to stories where the simpleton believes the Moon itself is a tangible object in the water. ==Proverb==