The Great Oracle at the End of the World

Once long ago a dog set out to visit the Great Oracle at the End of the World.  His journey took many months but at the end he came to the Great Oracle at the End of the World which gave him many wise sayings.

On his long weary journey back he repeated the sayings over and over again to fix them in his mind as well as he could.

When he returned he went from place to place repeating them.  The animals were moved and delighted and many tried to repeat them and pass them on also.

After many generations, crow scholars were able to show that different variations of the current wise sayings existed in different places among the animals, and that some of the sayings attributed to the Great Oracle at the End of the World were of more recent provenance, showing no sign at all of reverent antiquity; and other sayings had been corrupted.  One that stuck in everyone’s mind was a saying ‘when life is darkest,  there is the piggest hope.’  The actual saying was ‘biggest’ it turned out.

The crows also unearthed a saying from the dog where he admitted that he himself was not sure he remembered all the sayings accurately.  “These are the best I’ve got,” he said.

From  then on, when anyone tried to repeat some wisdom from the sayings, the jackals and the parrots and the hyenas and even the crows would jeer, ‘biggest piggest these are the best I’ve got!’

So on the one hand you had all the nasty animals and even some decent ones mocking and disgusted with the sayings because they had flaws.  And you had good and decent animals defending them and benefiting from them.

But there were no more dogs proposing to make another trip to the Great Oracle at the End of the World.