The Thieves and the Cock by Aesop for ESL students with a podcast, vocabulary practice in real context, and a Persian version to raise bilingual children
The Thieves and the Cock is now in the public domain available on Gutenberg Project.
Podcast of the Thieves and the Cock
The Thieves and the Cock
Some thieves broke into a house, and found nothing worth taking except a cock, which they seized and carried off with them.
When they were preparing their supper, one of them caught up the cock, and was about to wring his neck, when he cried out for mercy and said, “Pray do not kill me: you will find me a most useful bird, for I rouse honest men to their work in the morning by my crowing.”
But the thief replied with some heat, “Yes, I know you do, making it still harder for us to get a livelihood. Into the pot you go!”
English proverbs from the short story
A little something is better than nothing at all:
While the thieves hoped for a bigger score, they ended up with the rooster, which might be seen as a small reward compared to their expectations.
Better safe than sorry:
The cock’s crowing potentially alerted the homeowners and scared the thieves away, even though it meant losing its own safety.
Vocabulary in real context
- break in: to enter a building forcefully and illegally
- seize: to take hold of something
- supper: evening meal
- wring: to twist and compress something
- rouse: to wake someone
- livelihood: source of income
Questions and answers
Answer the following questions in the comment box below:
The theme of this short story, I think is that we should think wisely before doing something.
The rooster pleaded for his life because at first he wanted mercy and then he wanted to wake up the housowners.
I didn’t get why the thieves didn’t kill the rooster at the first place.
The rooster just gave a pretext to save his neck by suggesting to wake the thieves up in the morning, but this pretext was illogical and ridiculous as it was to the detriment of their livelihood.
According to the story, the thieves did not hesitate to kill the rooster at all. One of them just picked the rooster up and decided to wring or twist his neck (kill him before cooking him).
Feedback
housowners = houseowners
I actually didn’t get the last part of the story but I noticed that the chicken wanted help ( d.r Hariri I actually have a problem in the LELB SOCIETY that every thing is Persian for me like in the story and documentary)
In this short story, the rooster (not to be confused with a chicken) begged for his life when the thieves wanted to eat him. The rooster claimed to be pretty useful for the thieves. However, he was in fact such a nuisance for the thieves as they don’t need to get up early in the morning.
About the technical issue you’re referring to, I should say that most of our content, including short stories and some documentaries, come with Persian versions, as well, to feed our Persian / Farsi students. You might have accidentally clicked on the Persian versions. Another possible reason is that you might have set your internet browser up in a way that it automatically translates any language into Persian for you.