Aesop's Fables
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Moral:
Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Aesop's Fable / Moral:
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing /
Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Other ways of saying it:
Appearances are deceiving.
Don't trust just your eyes.

Aesop's Fable:

A Wolf was having trouble getting at a herd of sheep because of how well the shepherd and his dogs watched them.

But one day the Wolf found the skin of a sheep that had already been killed. He put it on over its own pelt and strolled down among the sheep.

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The lamb who was the child of the dead sheep - the one whose skin the Wolf was wearing - began to follow the Wolf wearing her mother's skin.

Leading the Lamb away, he soon made a meal of her, and for quite some time he succeeded in deceiving the other sheep too and making hearty meals of them.

Comment: Here's a rather brutal fable; fortunately we don't get to know the lamb before the Wolf kills it.

Note the similarity with the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood - who, depending on the telling, may outsmart her Wolf. You might find that a more agreeable tale for children than this one, with its message: Mommy might not be Mommy, in which case she'll probably kill you.

There is another telling of this fable wherein the Shepherd, meaning to butcher one of his flock, butchers the wolf instead - a different lesson entirely, obviously. The moral for that one:

Seek to harm, find harm.

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Appearances Can Be Deceiving.

How to use Aesop's Fables.

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