The Gardener and his Lord by Jean de La Fontaine

A gardener who is both townsman and rustic owns a fine garden and enclosed field, where flowers and herbs are growing for Miss Peggy’s wedding bouquet. A hare repeatedly enters to feed, defeating the gardener’s traps, stones, and clubs. Believing the creature almost supernatural, the gardener appeals to the lord of the town, who eagerly promises to clear it away with his hounds. At dawn the lord arrives with a large hunting party. Before the hunt, he imposes on the gardener’s household: he demands breakfast, questions the daughter about marriage and money, behaves familiarly toward her, and takes the hams prepared for him. The daughter modestly rejects his liberties, while the lord feeds his companions, dogs, and horses at the gardener’s expense and drinks his wine. The hunt then fills the garden with noise and confusion. Hunters, horses, and hounds ruin its arbours, borders, vegetables, and kitchen herbs. The hare is found beneath a cabbage, shot at, and chased away through a wide breach cut in the hedge for the lord’s convenience. Though the gardener tries to console himself that this is princely sport, the party has destroyed and consumed in an hour far more than generations of foraging hares could have damaged. The tale warns small princes that when they use kings as instruments to settle their quarrels, they make themselves both losers and fools.

By Jean de La Fontaine · First published 1668 · Genre: Fable, Political Satire, Moral Allegory · 959 words

First lines

A lover of gardens, half cit and half clown, / Possess'd a nice garden beside a small town; / And with it a field by a live hedge inclosed, / Where sorrel and lettuce, at random disposed, / A little of jasmine, and much of wild thyme, / Grew gaily, and all in their prime / To make up Miss Peggy's bouquet, / The grace of her bright wedding day. / For poaching in such a nice field -- 'twas a shame; / A foraging, cud-chewing hare was to blame. / Whereof the good owner bore down / This tale to the lord of the town: -- / 'Some mischievous animal, morning and night, / In spite of my caution, comes in for his bite. / He laughs at my cunning-set dead-falls and snares; / For clubbing and stoning as little he cares. / I think him a wizard. A wizard! the coot! / I'd catch him if he were a devil to boot! ' / The lord said, in haste to have sport for his hounds, / 'I'll clear him, I warrant you, out of your grounds; / To morrow I'll do it without any fail.'

• Open reader

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Genres

• Fable — The narrative is a concise moral tale in which the gardener's appeal to a powerful lord produces a worse disaster than the hare, ending with an explicit lesson for lesser rulers.
• Political Satire — It satirizes the abuse of aristocratic and royal power: the lord treats the gardener's home, food, daughter, and land as possessions available for his pleasure.
• Moral Allegory — The gardener, hare, lord, and destructive hunt function allegorically, illustrating how seeking powerful intervention in a minor dispute can lead to far greater oppression and loss.
• Verse Narrative — The work tells a complete sequence of events through rhymed, rhythmic verse, using vivid descriptive and dramatic passages.

Tags

French fable · verse narrative · seventeenth-century France · garden setting · rural life · town and country · gardener · hare hunting · aristocratic hunting party · lords and peasants · abuse of power · social satire

What this Textopian page supports

The Gardener and his Lord is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, dated 1668 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

• Work type: Fable
• Author: Jean de La Fontaine
• Date: 1668 CE
• Language: English
• Genres: Fable, Political Satire, Moral Allegory, Verse Narrative, Didactic Poetry
• Length: 959 words
• Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
• Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

Good citation fit

• Work identity for The Gardener and his Lord by Jean de La Fontaine
• Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
• Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
• Readability and classroom-planning context
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More by Jean de La Fontaine

• To Monseigneur the Dauphin (1668)
• The Grasshopper and the Ant (1668)
• The Raven and the Fox (1668)
• The Frog that Wished to be as Big as the Ox (1668)
• The Two Mules (1668)
• The Wolf and the Dog (1668)
• The Heifer, the Goat, and the Sheep, in Company with the Lion (1668)
• The Wallet (1668)
• All works by Jean de La Fontaine