The following is a specimen of Mkhitar Gosh’s fables: The owl sent matchmakers to the eagle, asking his daughter in marriage, in these terms: “You are the ruler of the day; I am the ruler of the night. It will be better for us to form an alliance by marriage.” The proposal was accepted. After the wedding, the bridegroom could not see by day and the bride could not see by night. Therefore the falcons ridiculed them, and their marriage was unhappy. This fable is meant as a warning against marriages between Christians and pagans. Many of Mkhitar Gosh’s fables are very original and have a charm of their own. Another famous fabulist was Vardan Aigektzi. His collection of fables is called The Book of the Fox. Several additions have been made to this work by later hands, so that the book has no uniformity of style and some fables in the collection are childish and trivial. This is one of the fables in this book: Mankind is like three fools. The first went to the tops of the mountains trying to catch a wind, and take it home, but though he tried a hundred years he never caught a wind that was as big as a drop of rain. The second, taking with him a number of servants and a great deal of money, sat down by the side of a river, trying to use its waters as a tablet on which to inscribe an elegy, but he could not form a word or trace a letter, though he laboured for a hundred years. The third tried to surpass the others by undertaking two enterprises at once. He had a huge bow made with arrows to match, and tried by night to shoot at the stars and other heavenly bodies and bring them home, that he alone might have light, but he could not catch a spark. Besides this, during the day he ran after his own shadow, but never caught it, though he tried for a hundred years. The moral of this fable is the futility of human life and human endeavour. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” Moses Kaghankatvatzi (seventh century) mentions in his history some interesting fables. In one of them, which arose when there was a great famine in the land, the story is put into the mouth of a personification of the grain millet, whose narrative is to this effect:— “I, Millet, was lying in an unknown place in the village of Kaku, in the province of Shakashen. All the purchasers treated me with contempt and rejected me. Then came my brother, Famine, and dominated the land. From that day I went and sat on the tables of the King and the Catholicos.” Armenian apologues and proverbial sayings are worthy of attention. Here are a few characteristic specimens; some of these are rhymed in the original, in others the contrasted words rhyme:— One fool threw a stone into a well; forty wise men were unable to get it out. He crossed the sea safely, and was drowned in a brook. They were reading the Gospel over the wolf’s head. He said: “Hurry up! The sheep will get past.”