That is, they're (reconstructed PIE) texts, not reconstructed (PIE texts). I knew Schleicher's tale, but I hadn't seen "The King and the God" before. I think Schleicher's point is, um, "sheep mistakenly believe themselves to be freer than horses". Which in turn imparts the moral, um... look, haven't you ever had to compose something in a language where you had limited command of the vocabulary, and ended up with something rather eccentric?

Let's see, what characters am I missing here... oh, hey, they used the wrong kind of schwa. Let's fix that...

Woo, coming through with the art links. That is a nice site (Kabuki 21).

As for the Fable point, it seems to be saying "Before you pity/judge, look at yourself", since both the horse and the sheep are in service in their own way.

Hey, that interpretation works for me. Nice, Ali!

Tim: I wonder what a reconstructed (PIE text) would actually look like. "Kwey, let's nspread kwest and nsouth nd kwinvent sanskwrit!"

No, no, it's a political fable. The horse is Bismarck, the man is the King of Prussia, and the sheep are the hapless members of the Reichstag.

*waits to see if anyone buys it*

Great find, by the way! But why don't they post the fourth version?

Maybe they didn't have a copy handy? I've found another version here, on a page which cites the EIEC as it's primary reference, so that's probably the one. Unfortunately the author has stripped out a lot of the accents etc. (and quite reasonably, but I wouldn't want to put it in the Wikipedia like that next to the other versions).

Perhaps if you were to post about it, Hat, someone with access to a copy could put it in?