The Boy Who Cried Wolf1 / 17

A boy watched sheep on a hill above the village. Every day was exactly the same. The sheep ate grass and said baa.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

sheepwolvestelling the truth

A bored shepherd boy shouts "Wolf!" just to see the village come running. It's a great joke, until the day a real wolf comes.

The whole story on one page

The Boy Who Cried Wolf: the full story

Part One · Wolf! Wolf!

A boy watched sheep on a hill above the village. Every day was exactly the same. The sheep ate grass and said baa.

"This is so boring," said the boy. Then he had an idea. It was not a good idea.

He raced down the hill as fast as he could. "Wolf, wolf!" he shouted. "A wolf is after the sheep!"

The people in the village dropped their work. They grabbed sticks and hurried up the hill. But there was no wolf.

The boy laughed and laughed. "I tricked you!" he said. The people were cross, and they walked back down.

A few days later, the boy was bored again. "Wolf, wolf!" he cried. Up the hill ran the people once more.

Again, there was no wolf anywhere. "Fooled you!" said the boy, rolling in the grass.

An old man shook his head. "Never cry wolf when there is no wolf," he said. But the boy just giggled.

Then one evening, something moved in the trees. There were two yellow eyes and a long gray tail. It was a real wolf!

"Wolf, wolf!" shouted the boy. "Help, it's a real wolf this time!" He raced down to the village.

But nobody came. "He is playing another trick," the people said. "We will not be fooled again."

The wolf ran at the sheep. The frightened sheep scattered in every direction. They ran over the hills and far away.

The wolf chased them into the woods. Then it ran off with an empty tummy. The hill was very quiet.

It took the boy all night to find the sheep. He found them one by one, in bushes and ditches.

In the morning, he was tired and sad. The old man helped him bring the last sheep home.

"Nobody believes a fibber," said the old man. "Not even when he is telling the truth." The boy nodded slowly.

From that day on, the boy only told the truth. And when he shouted "Wolf!" again, the whole village came.

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About this story

A free Grade 2 story from the Peabody library, Level 2. It has 17 short pages and about 335 words, so it reads in a few minutes. It is also called “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf”.

The short version

A bored shepherd boy shouts “Wolf!” to make the villagers run up the hill, even though there is no wolf. He does it twice, and then a real wolf comes and nobody believes him. The sheep scatter, and the boy finds out that nobody believes a fibber, even when he is telling the truth.

Quick facts

One of Aesop's fables. The old Greek version ends with the lesson that liars are not believed, even when they tell the truth.
It was written down only in Greek and not translated into Latin until the 15th century.
To “cry wolf” means to give a false alarm.
In the Greek fable the wolf eats the sheep. Some later English verse retellings, such as John Hookham Frere's in 1830, have it eat the boy too.

What it teaches

If you fib, people stop believing you.

Where this story comes from

Aesop, a storyteller in Greece, told this about 2,600 years ago.

What is the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

Nobody believes a liar, even when the liar is finally telling the truth. The old Greek version of the fable puts it just that way: even if liars tell the truth, no one believes them. In this telling the boy learns it the hard way, and afterwards he tells only the truth.

Where does The Boy Who Cried Wolf come from?

It is attributed to Aesop and dates from classical times, in Greek. It was not translated into Latin until the 15th century, and a collection of fables by Heinrich Steinhöwel helped spread it across Europe.

Does the boy die in The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

Not in this telling: the wolf chases the sheep away, and the boy spends the night finding them. In the old Greek fable the wolf eats the sheep. Some later retellings in English verse have the wolf eat the boy as well.

What does “cry wolf” mean?

To “cry wolf” is to give a false alarm. If you do it often enough, people stop paying attention, even when the danger is real. It is just what the boy in this fable does.

More like this: Aesop's fables for kids · moral stories for kids

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