The Frog in the Well

From the bottom of a dry well, the sky is only a small circle, no wider than the lid of a cooking pot. It is deep blue and quiet and neat, set inside a ring of earth. There are no distant clouds and no wide horizon, nothing at all but that little round patch of blue.

That was the whole sky of a frog in a fable the old folk of Vietnam have told for generations.

The frog had lived for a long time at the bottom of a shallow well, where only a little water lay. Day after day it sat there, and everything it looked at was familiar. Above was the circle of sky, as small as a pot lid. All around were the damp earthen walls, green with moss, and the frog's small companions.

Those companions were a few crabs and a handful of tiny frogs. They were the frog's entire world. In that world, the frog was the biggest, the strongest and the loudest.

Each time the frog let out one loud croak, the sound rang against the walls of the well and came back in a happy echo. The crabs shrank back. The little frogs jumped and went still. The whole well fell silent.

The frog was delighted. It thought, "With a single cry I frighten the whole world. I must be the master here. The sky is only the size of a lid, but still I am the biggest. And my whole world is only as wide as the mouth of the well, but that is a small matter." The frog lifted its head and gazed up at the little round sky with deep satisfaction.

Then one day the rain came down. It was not a light drizzle but a true downpour, and it lasted from morning until evening. Water ran from the ground into the well and rose little by little. It rose and rose. The frog swam, but the water climbed faster. At last the water spilled over the rim, and the frog was carried out with it.

For the first time in its life, the frog stood on wide ground.

For the first time it saw the real sky. It was no longer the familiar small circle but a great stretch of blue opening out with no edge at all.

Around the frog lay an empty field, vast and open. The grass grew taller than its head. Noise came from every side, and the wind blew. The sky was so wide that the frog did not know where to look.

But the frog did not stop to look. It did not raise its head to the new sky. It did not glance to either side. It walked just as it had in the well, head held high, swaggering, its eyes fixed straight up as if it were still measuring whether the round sky was as small as a lid.

From far off, a water buffalo came strolling along. Its feet were huge and its steps were sure, and its eyes were turned to the ground, as they always were from pulling the plow. The buffalo did not see the frog. The frog did not look aside to see the buffalo.

The buffalo's step passed by.

And the frog was gone.

The scholar Nguyễn Đổng Chi collected this fable in his Treasury of Vietnamese Folktales. It has long been taught in Vietnamese primary school textbooks. The phrase "the frog at the bottom of the well" entered the Vietnamese language as a saying.

The dry well is still there. The water drained away long ago. Green moss has grown back on the earthen walls. And if anyone leans over and looks down into it, and then looks up from the bottom, the sky is only a small circle, no wider than a pot lid.

Deep blue, quiet and neat. So small that it seems to be everything.