The Miller His Son And The Ass

The moral is stated directly at the end of the fable: "If you try to please all, you please none." The miller and his son change their behavior every time a new group of strangers criticizes them, ultimately losing the donkey they intended to sell. The story warns that abandoning your own judgment to satisfy every outside opinion leads to worse outcomes than simply committing to a reasonable course of action.

The central theme is the futility of people-pleasing. The fable explores how public opinion is inherently contradictory—each group of travelers offers advice that directly contradicts the last—and how deferring to every critic strips a person of autonomy and common sense. Secondary themes include the danger of valuing appearances over substance and the social dynamic in which unsolicited critics bear no consequences for their bad advice.

After being criticized for walking beside the donkey, for letting the son ride, for letting the father ride, and for both riding at once, the miller ran out of conventional options. A group of travelers accused them of overloading the poor animal, so in desperation, the miller and his son tied the donkey’s legs to a pole and carried it between them. This absurd escalation illustrates how people-pleasing can push someone from reasonable compromises into completely irrational behavior.

As the miller and his son carried the donkey across a bridge, the animal began to kick and bray because of the noise from a crowd that had gathered to laugh at the spectacle. The ropes holding the donkey gave way, and it tumbled into the river below. The miller lost the very asset he had been trying to bring to market, making the consequences of his indecisiveness concrete and irreversible.

This fable is listed as Perry Index 721. Unlike most fables attributed to Aesop, the earliest known written version comes from the 13th-century Arab writer Ibn Said rather than from classical Greek or Latin sources. It later entered European literature through Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables (Book III, No. 1, published in 1668) and has been included in Aesop collections ever since.

Yes, they are essentially the same fable with minor variations in framing and detail. Both share Perry Index 721 and convey the identical moral about the futility of trying to please everyone. The version titled "The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey" sometimes differs in how the donkey is lost—in some retellings it drowns, in others it simply runs away—but the core narrative arc and lesson are the same.

For young readers, the fable teaches that you cannot make everyone happy, and that trying to do so often makes things worse. It encourages children to think for themselves and make decisions based on their own reasoning rather than constantly changing course because of what others say. The humorous image of two people carrying a donkey on a pole makes the lesson memorable and easy to understand.

Several Aesop fables explore related themes of misguided effort, futile action, and public opinion. The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey is a direct variant of this same tale. The Belly and the Members examines how parts of a whole undermine themselves by refusing cooperation. The Mountain in Labor warns about grand efforts that produce trivial results. And The Bald Man and the Fly shows how overreacting to a minor annoyance causes self-inflicted harm.