The North Wind and the Sun

This is one of the simplest and most quietly profound of all the fables in the Aesopic corpus, and one of the very few that has been used by serious linguists in the modern era as the standard reading-text for testing the phonetics of every language on Earth — the International Phonetic Association adopted “The North Wind and the Sun” in 1949 as its official illustration of the IPA, and it has been translated and recorded in over a hundred and fifty languages since. The fable belongs to Aesop, the Greek storyteller of the sixth century BCE, in whose corpus it is catalogued as Perry 46 under the Greek title Boreas kai Helios — “Boreas and Helios” — using the proper names of the Greek gods of the north wind and the sun.

The principal Greek source-form survives in the Augustana recension of the prose Aesopica (1st-2nd c. CE). It was retold in Greek choliambic verse by Babrius as Fable 18, and entered Latin through Avianus (Fable 4) and the medieval Romulus collections. It came into modern English through William Caxton’s first printed Aesop in 1484, then Roger L’Estrange (1692), Samuel Croxall (1722), Thomas Bewick (1818), and Joseph Jacobs (1894). Jean de La Fontaine retold it as Book VI Fable 3 of his celebrated French Fables (1668) — Phébus et Borée. ATU 298 — Contest of Sun and Wind.

This is the story.

The Argument

It happened, the old tellers said, on a bright autumn morning high above the green plains of central Greece, in the cold blue empire of the sky, where the great gods of the weather kept their thrones among the white clouds. Boreas, the lord of the north wind — wild and grey-bearded and fierce, with a great cloak of storm-cloud and a voice like a winter gale — was arguing, in his slow heavy way, with Helios, the lord of the sun — golden-haired and serene, with a wide face that shone like polished bronze and a calm warm voice like a summer afternoon.

The argument, as so many great arguments are, was about which of the two of them was the stronger.

Boreas said: “I am stronger. When I blow, ships are wrecked. When I roar, trees are uprooted. Mountains have feared me for ten thousand years.”

Helios said, very mildly: “Strength is not the same thing as force, dear cousin. Let us settle the matter with a small simple test.”

Boreas said, growling: “Name it.”

And Helios, looking down across the bright autumn plains of Greece, pointed to a single small figure walking along a dusty road in the bright morning — a tall lean traveller in a long heavy brown wool cloak, on his way from one village to the next, with a leather walking-staff in his hand and a small bag over his shoulder.

“Whichever of us,” Helios said calmly, “can make that traveller take off his cloak — that one shall be acknowledged by all the gods to be the stronger of the two of us. You may try first, dear cousin.”

Boreas, smiling a great cold storm-smile, said: “It will take me a single minute.”

The North Wind’s Blast

And Boreas drew in a great breath that drained the air from a quarter of the sky, and he leaned forward over the bright autumn plain, and he blew.

The wind that came out of his great grey lungs was the wind that had wrecked the ships of the Greek fleet at the battle of Salamis. It was the wind that had torn the masts off the merchant ships of Phoenicia. It was the wind that had blown down the cedars of Mount Lebanon. It was the wind, in other words, of a real and serious force.

It struck the traveller on the dusty road as a great roaring grey wall. The traveller’s brown wool cloak, which had been hanging easily from his shoulders, was now whipped back and forth around his body. The dust on the road rose in great choking clouds. Small stones rolled along the verge. The traveller’s hat, which had been on his head, was tumbled away into the dry grass and lost forever.

But the traveller did not, the old tellers said, take off his cloak.

The traveller did, instead, the precise opposite of what Boreas had expected. He clutched the cloak more tightly around his shoulders. He pulled the heavy brown wool collar up over his neck. He bent his head forward against the wind. He drew the cloak — with both hands, with all the strength of his cold-stiffened arms — closer and tighter around his body, until the heavy folds of brown wool were wrapped around him like a second skin.

Boreas blew harder. The traveller wrapped the cloak harder. Boreas blew with the great wild force of every winter storm he had ever produced in ten thousand years. The traveller bent further into the wind, gripped the cloak with frozen hands, and leaned against a stone wall by the side of the road for shelter.

After a long minute Boreas, panting, gave up.

The Sun’s Warmth

“Your turn, cousin,” Boreas said, sulking, withdrawing his great grey breath into the cold blue empire of the north sky.

And Helios, who had been watching the whole performance with the slow patient golden smile of a god who has seen this small lesson taught a great many times before, lifted his bright golden face above the white autumn clouds, and he simply began — without effort, without storm, without any kind of show — to shine.

He shone as he had always shone. He shone with the warm patient light of every late autumn morning that had ever been. He shone on the dusty road. He shone on the brown wool cloak. He shone on the cold-stiffened shoulders of the traveller leaning against the stone wall.

The traveller felt the cold leaving his face. He felt the cold leaving his hands. He felt the warmth spreading slowly down through his cold-stiffened body, through the heavy folds of his brown wool cloak, into the small tired places at the bottom of his chest.

He stood up from the wall. He took a step forward. He took another. The warmth grew. The autumn morning, which a moment before had been a battlefield, was now — slowly and quietly — a simple pleasant late-autumn day with a kind sun in the sky and a long dusty road ahead.

The traveller walked. The sun shone warmer. The traveller, after perhaps another five minutes of walking under the slow patient warmth of the bright golden face above him, found himself — without any kind of struggle, without any kind of resistance — beginning to feel, in his heavy brown wool cloak, slightly too warm.

The Cloak Comes Off

He paused on the road. He shrugged his shoulders. He undid the leather clasp at his throat. And he pulled off the heavy brown wool cloak with a small quiet motion of relief, folded it neatly under his arm, and continued walking — bareheaded and warm and at ease — down the bright dusty autumn road toward the next village.

The cloak was off. The contest was over.

And Boreas, looking down from his cold blue empire in the north sky, watched the small bareheaded figure walking with the folded cloak under his arm, and he understood — slowly and not entirely happily — that he had been beaten by something he had never quite understood was a stronger force than wind.

Helios, golden-faced and serene, smiled the same warm calm smile he had always smiled, and said nothing at all. There was, in any case, nothing to say. The cloak was off.

The Moral

The Greek prose Aesopica preserves the moral in this form:

“Ho mythos deloi hoti pollakis to peithein tou biazesthai energesteron.”
“The fable shows that often persuasion is more effective than force.”

The pithy modern English form, descending through Croxall and Jacobs:

“Persuasion is better than force.” Or: “The sun’s gentle warmth wins where the wind’s wild rage cannot.”

Sanskrit parallel: shanti-pradhanam balam — “the strength that is rooted in calmness.” And the Tamil Tirukkural: gentleness conquers what violence cannot.

Why This Story Has Lasted

It has lasted for two and a half thousand years because every adult who has ever, in his life, tried to change another creature — a child, a partner, a colleague, an opponent — by the wind-force of pressure and shouting and threat, and watched the other creature only wrap his cloak tighter, already knows the small clear lesson the traveller on the dusty road learned that bright autumn morning. Force makes creatures defensive. Warmth opens them.

The fable is also the official IPA reading-text in over 150 languages. Look it up: “The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger…” Every linguist who has ever cataloged a tongue has probably typed those words. The fable, in other words, is now also the most translated short paragraph in the entire history of the spoken word.

Two and a half thousand years after Aesop, the small clear voice of Helios in the autumn sky is still telling us the same thing. Shine. Wait. The cloak comes off when the wearer chooses to take it off — and not before, and never under threat.