The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs

A man and his wife owned a goose that laid a golden egg every day. Lucky as they were, they soon wanted wealth faster. They imagined the bird must be gold inside, so they killed it to take the whole store at once.

When they cut it open they found only ordinary goose flesh. They gained no sudden fortune, and they lost the daily egg forever.

About this fable

Aesop’s fables were first told in ancient Greece, and this one is not Indian. The retelling follows V. S. Vernon Jones’s translation of 1912, which closes with the moral “Much wants more and loses all.”

In Vernon Jones the goose belongs to a man and his wife who think it must be gold inside. Joseph Jacobs’s 1894 retelling has a single countryman who nearly throws the first heavy yellow egg away, thinking it is a trick, before he finds it is pure gold. His moral is “Greed oft o’er reaches itself.”

Read the original: V. S. Vernon Jones, Aesop’s Fables (Project Gutenberg #11339, The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs)

Suggested for ages 6–8 with an adult: the couple kill and cut open their goose, so readers should be comfortable discussing an animal’s death.

An imagined store and a real loss

The daily egg is something the couple have actually observed. A body full of gold is something they imagine. The story turns on their failure to distinguish these two kinds of claim before making an irreversible choice. Their loss is not caused by an unlucky day when the goose stops laying: their own action destroys the living source of the eggs.

Pause before the decision

Write two sentences for the couple: “We know…” and “We are guessing…”. Put the daily egg in one and the imagined gold inside the bird in the other. What could they do that would preserve the goose while they considered their wish for more?

Talk about it

• Why weren’t the man and his wife happy with one golden egg a day?
• What did they hope to find inside the goose, and what did they really find?
• What would you have done with a goose that laid golden eggs?

Related stories

• The Fox and the Grapes — a fox who cannot have what he wants decides he never wanted it
• The Fisherman and His Wife — a Grimm tale where a wife’s wishes grow bigger and bigger until all is lost
• The Bundle of Sticks — an old father teaches his sons a simple lesson with a bundle of sticks