The lion did as he said, and taking the wolf in his fore-paws he lifted him up. But whilst doing so he pressed the wolf so hard that he nearly lost his breath, and his eyes began starting out of his head. When the lion saw it, he said, “You cur, you talk bravely and laugh at me who have been close to that terrible beast, and you, who are so far away and scarcely able to get a glimpse of it, you are already losing your breath, and your eyes are starting out of your head.”
With these words he threw the wolf down, and away he ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
This story reminds us of the framework of the famous Indian Panchatantra, which had so successful a run through the literature of East and West, becoming one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages, better known as the story of Kalila and Dimna, or even falsely, Syntipas.
In Krauss (No. 2) the animal which frightens the lion, or rather imposes on his credulity, is an ass. The ass makes the lion believe that he, the ass, was the real king of beasts. The wolf, to whom the lion says that he was not the real king but that another animal claimed the right to rule, listens incredulously. The lion ties their two tails together and takes the wolf to the summit of a hill, from which they can see the ass. The lion, misunderstanding the exclamation of the wolf and thinking that he said “there are six,” runs away as fast as he can, dragging the wolf behind him and killing him in his mad flight. It is obviously the same tale but slightly varied in the details. In the Rumanian the lion never gets so near the other animal as to be undeceived by his own sight. He merely sees from a distance an animal the like of which he had never seen before, and he works himself up into a great fright. This seems to be the more primitive form. In the South Slavonic, the lion is simply deceived by an animal with which he ought to be familiar enough.
A curious and corrupted version is found in Grimm (No. 132), where only the tying of the tails has been retained. In this version the horse is tied to the lion, and he drags the lion to his master’s house.
Similar is the story of the dib-dib (the name used by the woman for the dropping rain), whom the leopard, who listens at the door, takes to be a great monster. A man jumps on the back of the frightened leopard, thinking it was an ass. The leopard carries him to the dib-dib, and he runs away. He meets a fox, who laughs at his fear, and they tie their tails together. The man, who had sought safety in the branches of the trees, says that the fox had brought the leopard to be killed. The leopard, who had distrusted the fox, runs away with him, and as their tails are knotted together, both get killed. (Hanauer, p. 278.) (Cf. also Afanasief, No. 19.)