Earlier today, I re-stumbled across the excellent and exceedingly timely “The True History Of The Hare And The Tortoise,” Lord Dunsany’s 1915 retelling of the well-worn story.

In Dunsany’s version, the race between the two is organized by the other animals, equally split in their beliefs that the Hare (“the swifter of the two because he had such long ears”) or the Tortoise (“anyone whose shell was so hard as that should be able to run hard too”) might prevail.

The Tortoise, in particular, draws an enthusiastically supportive crowd:

And “run hard” became a kind of catch-phrase which everybody repeated to one another. “Hard shell and hard living. That’s what the country wants. Run hard,” they said.

Indeed, run hard the Tortoise does. Whereas the Hare, struck by the overwhelming idiocy of the entire competition, simply bows out:

The Hare ran on for nearly three hundred yards, nearly in fact as far as the winning-post, when it suddenly struck him what a fool he looked running races with a Tortoise who was nowhere in sight, and he sat down again and scratched.

“Run hard. Run hard,” said the crowd, and “Let him rest.”

“Whatever is the use of it?” said the Hare, and this time he stopped for good. Some say he slept.

There was desperate excitement for an hour or two, and then the Tortoise won.

Which, of course, is exactly the vindication the Tortoise’s vigorous supporters had hoped for:

“Hard shell and hard living: that’s what has done it.” And then they asked the Tortoise what his achievement signified, and he went and asked the Turtle. And the Turtle said, “It is a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness.” And then the Tortoise repeated it to his friends. And all the beasts said nothing else for years. And even to this day, “a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness” is a catch-phrase in the house of the snail.

Touche.

Though, as Dunsany concludes, this true version of the tale isn’t widely known, because “very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after.”

It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest.

They sent the Tortoise.

It could be a long four years.