The Sky Is Falling (fable)

"The Sky Is Falling", better known as "Chicken Licken", "Henny Penny" or "Chicken Little" is an old fable about a chicken (or a hare in early versions) who believes the sky is falling. The phrase, "The sky is falling," has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.

Origin

Although sometimes mistakenly listed as one of Aesop's Fables, the story actually originates from the "Jataka Tales" of Buddhist Indian folklore. [Jan Thornhill (2002). "A Jataka Tale from India". Maple Tree Press, Toronto.] The basic motif and many of the elements of the tale can be found in the "Daddabha Jataka" (J 322). The "Jatakas" comprise a large body of folklore dating from around Gautama Buddha's time (6th century BCE) to the third century CE. However, this ancient version features a hare as the central character rather than a chicken, and the wise protagonist is a lion (the Bodhisattva or future Buddha).

Basic plot

There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken eats lunch one day, and believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King, and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. In most retellings, the animals all have rhyming names such as Henny Penny, Cocky Lockey and Goosey Loosey. Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy, a fox who offers the chicken and her friends his help.

After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy eats the chicken's friends, but the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chicken and she escapes. Other endings include Foxy eating them all; the characters being saved by a squirrel or an owl and getting to speak to the King; the characters being saved by the King's hunting dogs; even one version in which the sky actually falls and kills Foxy Loxy.

Depending on the version, the moral changes. In the "happy ending" version, the moral is not to be a "Chicken", but to have courage. In other versions the moral is usually interpreted to mean "do not believe everything you are told". In the latter case, it could well be a cautionary political tale: The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit, some times as supper.

Characters

As it is common in fables, all the characters in this tale are animals. They mostly have rhyming names.
*"Chicken Little or Chicken Licken"
*"Henny Penny"
*"Drakey Lakey"
*"Cocky Locky"
*"Ducky Lucky"
*"Goosey Loosey" or "Gander Pander"
*"Turkey Lurkey"
*"Foxy Loxy"

Adaptations

Books

*"The Sky is Falling" has been made into countless children's books, having both Chicken Licken and Henny Penny as main characters.
*"The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" includes a long parody of the story.
*"Henny Penny" (2000) is a picture book by Jane Wattenberg and a parody of the story.
*"Donald's Big News", an installment of the "Mickey's Young Readers Library" series, was a modernized version in which Donald Duck mistakenly thinks that Grandma Duck is going to lose her farm and recruits everybody in Duckburg to raise money through a yard sale.

Movies

*Walt Disney Studios has made two animated versions of the story:
**A first adaptation was an animated short released during World War II. It tells a variant of the parable in which all the animals are eaten by a "Mein Kampf"-quoting Foxy Loxy, and uses this as an allegory for the idea that wartime fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives.
**The second Disney adaptation is a feature-length computer-animated film which was inspired by the original fable being more of a follow up.

Television

*The animated series "Garfield and Friends" adapted the story for the "U.S. Acres" segment "Badtime Story". Throughout the story, the characters (played by regulars on the series) blame the sky's falling on "all this tampering with the ozone layer". At one point, Wade Duck parodies the story's use of rhyming character names by going over a long list of Chicken Licken's followers, among them Catty Fatty (played by Garfield) and Beaver Cleaver (a reference to "Leave It to Beaver").
*"", did a version of the story.
*A "Rugrats" episode is named "The Sky is Falling".
*In an episode of "Ed, Edd, n' Eddy", Sarah tricked Ed into thinking that the sky was falling and Ed believed it.
*In the sixth season "The Golden Girls" episode titled "Henny Penny — Straight, No Chaser", in an effort to encourage children to read over the summer break, "the girls" perform a play version of the story after the children who were originally going to star in the play succumb to illness.

Music

*American composer Vincent Persichetti used the fable as the plot of his only opera "The Sibyl: A Parable of Chicken Little" (Parable XX), op. 135 (1976), which premiered in 1985 in a production by the Philadelphia Opera Theater.

Modern popular culture

The fable is referred to in many modern shows, songs and movies.

*In "Asterix" the only thing the tribe's Chief Vitalstatistix fears is the falling sky.
*"The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" episode "Hotel Hangout", on which Carey Martin says to Marion Moseby, "Mr. Moseby, every little problem with you is like, 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!'" Then a satellite dish falls from the roof and Moseby replies, "Sometimes Chicken Little knows what he's talking about!"
* The Season Five "American Idol" contestant Kevin Covais has been nicknamed Chicken Little shortly before his elimination. The nickname derives from the belief by another "Idol" contestant (as well as agreement by much of the television viewing audience) that Mr. Covais bears a resemblance to the character of Chicken Little in the 2005 Disney animated feature film.
* An episode of the sitcom "The Golden Girls" featured the girls performing a brief musicalization of "Henny Penny" at an elementary school, decked out in feathery costumes.
* Season Three of the television thriller "24" involved a situation during which President David Palmer was required to use the phrase during a press conference, as ordered by terrorist Stephen Saunders.
*In the Aerosmith song "Living On the Edge" they use the phrase "if Chicken Little tells you that the sky is fallin', even if it wasn't would you still come crawling back again?"
* British band Radiohead use the line "Go and tell the King that the sky is falling in" from the fable in their song "2+2=5" taken from the album "Hail to the Thief".
* "Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky, Chicken Little, it seems they are all on the move when the sun is falling in" is a line from the song "Moving in with" by British band Happy Mondays
* "Sky is Falling" is a song by British indie rock band James.
* "The Sky Is Falling" is a song by Owsley, from the 1999 debut album "Owsley" and includes the line "Chicken Little had a big day today..."
* "The Sky Is Falling" is a 1977 album by Christian rock singer Randy Stonehill.
* "The Sky Is Fallin'" is a song by Queens of the Stone Age.
* "The Sky is Falling and I Want My Mommy" is a 1991 album by Jello Biafra and the band NoMeansNo. The title track has the subtitle "Falling Space Junk".
* "Chicken Little" is a song from the 1997 album "Fancy", by the California avantrock band Idiot Flesh.
*A favorite phrase of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used during press conferences when posed questions about possible doomsday or other scenarios. [ [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16204687/ Rumsfeld career ending in ignominy in Iraq] , Msnbc.com, 2006-12-14]
* In "King's Quest 7", Chicken Little is running around the village of Falderal screaming "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
*In Toni Morrison's novel "Sula", there is a character named Chicken Little, who Sula accidentally kills while playing.
* In their science fiction novella "The Space Merchants" (1952), Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth named a genetically engineered life form, which was grown in vats, Chicken Little.
* In the 1942 film "My Favorite Blonde", Bob Hope's character says: "The sky is falling, says Ducky Lucky, for a piece of it just hit me on the head!"

References

External links

* [http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs/english/hennypenny.html SurLaLune Fairy Tale Site, "Henny-Penny"] as collected by Joseph Jacobs
* [http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/cockhendovrefell.html "The Cock and Hen That Went to the Dovrefell"] a Norwegian variant
* [http://www.edsanders.com/chickenlittle/ Happy Ending Version]
* [http://www.surfcitydelux.com/readerstheater/ChickenLittle.html Chicken saves himself Version]
* [http://www.authorama.com/english-fairy-tales-23.html Henny Penny saves herself Version]
* [http://www.rickwalton.com/funstuff/skyfall.htm The Sky Falls Down Version]