Read the fairy tale Nelly loves
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Six wise men, one elephant, and six very different answers to the same question — a gentle old parable about how much depends on where you’re standing.
In a village long ago, there lived six men who had been blind since birth. None of them had ever encountered an elephant, though they had all heard the word many times, and each secretly wondered what such a creature could possibly be like.
One day, a traveler passed through the village with an elephant of his own, and the six men, curious, asked if they might be allowed to examine it with their hands, to finally understand what everyone else already knew.
Six hands, six answers
The first man placed his hand on the elephant’s broad side and declared, “An elephant is like a wall — solid and wide.”
The second man felt the tusk and disagreed at once. “No, an elephant is like a spear — smooth and pointed.”
The third man took hold of the trunk as it curled around his arm. “You’re both wrong. An elephant is like a snake.”
The fourth man reached up and felt the ear, flapping gently. “It’s like a fan,” he insisted, “nothing like a snake at all.”
The fifth man wrapped his arms around a sturdy leg. “You’re all mistaken — an elephant is like the trunk of a tree.”
And the sixth man, holding the tail, was certain the others hadn’t understood anything at all. “An elephant,” he said firmly, “is like a rope.”
An argument with no winner
Each man was so certain of what his own hands had told him that the six of them began to argue, each insisting the others were wrong, none willing to consider that another man’s experience might be just as true as his own.
A wise traveler passing by heard their argument and understood at once what had happened. “You are each right,” he told them gently, “and each of you has only touched one part of the whole. If you want to understand the elephant completely, you’ll have to put together everything each of you has felt — not argue over who alone is correct.”
The six men grew quiet, and for the first time, listened carefully to each other’s descriptions — until, piece by piece, they began to understand the whole shape of the elephant together, something none of them could have managed alone.
Kerala Lullaby
Play this softly while you read this parable aloud — a traditional handplayed lullaby from Kerala, in southern India.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world — each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.