Recently Bridget McNulty – an author whose blog I like – decided to re-tell ‘The Tale of the Sheep-Lion‘, a story I don’t remember hearing before, but which seems to be quite well-known. Other tellings can be found here and here.
Everyone agrees on the basic elements of this story: a lion cub is separated from his own kind and raised by sheep. He therefore acquires their tendencies and behaves as sheep do. One day, a lion discovers the sheep-lion and, surprised by his sheep-like behaviour, challenges him and eventually teaches him to be more like a lion again.
This reminds me of the question I asked recently about the ugly duckling family of stories: do things happen to us because of who we are, or because of what we do?
The three versions of this story I’ve found online seem to interpret the sheep-lion’s return to lionhood as a return to his true self. McNulty writes:
What I find problematic about this interpretation is McNulty’s faith in “the truth of the situation”, that flashes up one day like a simple flick of a light switch.
I believe that identity is relational, that who we are at any given point is defined by our relationships with other people. In my interpretation, then, the sheep-lion’s identity is conditioned, first, by his relationship with the sheep, then, later, by his relationship with the lion. Neither of these selves is truer than the other: at each stage in his life, the sheep-lion’s relationships create him.
The ugly duckling is saved by his true self. So, in McNulty’s version of the story, is the sheep-lion. But I suspect these stories tell us more about their tellers’ thirst for truth than they do about truth itself.
Is there a truth outside our telling of it?