The Farmer and the Viper

"The Farmer and the Viper" is a fable attributed to Aesop. The story concerns a farmer who finds a viper freezing in the snow. He takes pity on it and picks it up and places it within his coat. The viper, revived by the warmth, bites the farmer. The farmer cries out that he should have seen it coming.

In some versions, the farmer brings the viper home and his children go to pet it. The viper gets ready to bite the children when the farmer cuts off the viper's head.

The moral is that kindness is wasted on evil. The story is thus analogous to the Bible parable about "casting pearls before swine".

Another version says that the viper is magic, and repays the farmer with a sack of Oboluses each morning. The farmer's son tries to cut the snake open to get all the coins, but the snake kills him. The farmer mourns over his son, and the snake mutters to him the moral before vanishing forever:"Why do you mourn over loss of that which gave none, yet tried to destroy that which gave all."

In popular music, the song "The Snake" by Al Wilson tells of a woman who finds a dying, half-frozen snake on the side of the road. Taking the snake home, she revives it and hugs it. The snake then bites her, then says to her as she lays dying in disbelief, "Silly woman, you knew I was a snake when you brought me home!"

In the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, a Native American man tells the story (with a woman rescuing the snake) to fugitive killers Mickey and Mallory Knox; later, in the grip of a fevered nightmare caused by a snakebite, Mickey shoots and kills the old man, proving the story's moral.

In Toni Morrison's book "Song of Solomon," Macon Dead, Sr., tells a version of the story to his son as a warning about Macon's sister, Pilate.

ee also

*Aesop's Fables
*The Scorpion and the Frog