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any column inches (snigger snigger) have been devoted to the lack of morals demonstrated on many a website. More people will have signed up Internet accounts for this reason than to read this page. But never mind I am standing up (snigger) to be counted. I am the Moral Minority. I am not sure you can have a moral minority, certainly I do not think it would be possible in a social-democracy. However we do not live in such a democracy, our social patterns have more to do with the canine world than anything else. I have owned many dogs over the years from Great Danes to tiny little things which look like a rat on a string. Its those little insignificant ones that yap the most and consequently get heard the most.

So what is all this soapbox posturing all about? Cigarette cards of course, did you doubt it for a moment?

Fables on cigarette cards to be precise.

Infopedia UK defines it as thus: Fable Story, in either verse or prose, in which animals or inanimate objects are given the mentality and speech of human beings to point out a moral. Fables are common in folklore and children's literature, and range from the short fables of the ancient Greek writer Aesop to the modern novel Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Aesop is no doubt the most famous of the fable creators and this certainly is something underlined with cigarette cards.

So not for me the mere turning back of the moral clock to the heyday of morality; Victorian England, that halcyon period of British history when the British class system ensured everyone new their place, usually in squalor chained to industrial machinery for endless hours and a one way ticket to Australia for anyone suggesting worker rights might be in order. A Britain where one in nineteen women in London had turned to prostitution to make a living. Just the sort of thing the chattering (yapping?) classes of Britain today would like to see again if you believe everything you hear. I am not saying the world we live in today is perfect but I would rather be tapping away on this keyboard developing a website than being shoved up a chimney to support my poor ailing mother and my younger brother suffering from rickets due to poor diet caused by the economic crisis created when my father was killed in a cave in at the local coal mine. No matter things could get better, new ideas are coming into Parliament in 1886 the idea to give women votes is floated in the British Parliament. It got thrown out repeatedly until 1918 when women were given the right to vote in a limited manner, extended ten years later to all women over the age of 21.

All right, if constant upper-middle class, affluent, educated self-opinion is beginning to get on your nerves I will quit now and get on with the plot.

For me it is the great wealth of fable and moral that is Aesop et al. as translated through the Gallaher set of cards, Fables and their Morals [1912, 1922]. Aesop was a slave, something the UK abolished in 1807. It took the USA slightly longer abolishing the whole unpleasant business in 1865.

Obviously Gallaher felt moral tales were necessary and issued the set three times, 100 cards in each and then later issued two sets of Aesops fables (25 in each.). After the Victorian period of England there was a brief explosion of frivolity before World War One put a blot on the landscape. Luckily the British class system ensured all those folk that survived chimney service were unlikely to survive the trenches.

Quite why there were three imprints I do not know. Although on one, card 43 holds a spelling error in the title, 'The field of Threasure.' I do not have the other series to hand at present so I cannot make the comparison.

Well a flick through this set and I feel cleansed of all worldly vice and corruption. The Playful ass (ohh-urr) has taught me 'Those who do not know their right place must be taught it.' In fact the Ass seems to be a popular tutor, appearing as he does on a number of the cards.

Oh dear, pangs of guilt. Card 38, 'Make sure your sins will find you out.' Once again the ass has taught me this valuable lesson. This time with the help of his driver. A fairly apt moral I would suggest given the characters. I think, gentle reader, we will draw a discrete veil over card 38.

Nothing has changed, drinking and swearing still taint my lips. These are the things I readily admit to, so add lying to the list of sudden moral collapse.

Well, now I have been defrocked, back to business as usual.

The cards are very colourful drawings which have a certain primitive appeal. They have the feel of children's illustrations and well could this effect have been intended. All the cards are horizontal and unusually the reverse of the card is also printed in a landscape format (a real joy for the card framer who is looking for something different to hang in a child's bedroom.). Also unusual is the word copyright which appears in the bottom right hand corner of the picture-side of the card.

The reverse of the card is in Gallaher green (as I call it, though I do not know if anyone else does.) It neatly sums up the story as depicted and then underlines the moral in a separate caption. Some of the language is rather strained and there is a certain amount of twisting going on for the moral to be pulled from the text. Quiet frankly there are cards whose moral seems that have nothing to do with the text at all. This might be why when you think of Aesop's fables you can only think of half a dozen or so, the old chestnuts if you will.

Part of this problem could well be the brevity which the reverse of a cigarette card demands.

Gallaher were keen on sets with long runs of cards. I do not know if this was just a lack of imagination on the compilers part or a conscious decision to keep the smoker buying their brand. Fables & Morals was one of many 100 card sets

They saved the longest runs to their 'Irish' series 1908 & 1910. These were 400 card sets and then a second series which was labelled 401-600. These sets take quite a bit of collecting now so imagine what it was like to smoke your way to a collection.

Three of my childhood favourites are listed below. The hours of happy fun these tales originally gave me.

I have not checked all the cards but there does seem to be a certain sexiest element within them. The ne'er-do-wells seem more often than not to be female and the heroes men. Mind you in the Hare and the Tortoise the Hare seems oddly confused about its gender. Perhaps the moral should have been: If you're ahead of the game why change gender mid-race. Also notice the title of the cards might not be title you have come to know the fables as, I was always taught the tortoise and the hare, a small change but significant enough.

Usually I try to give you a checklist of the cards in the set. I would have done so with this set but we would all be downloading till Christmas for little effect. So, perhaps the grasshopper within me has chirruped and I am off to sing and frolic, though not rub my legs together in all manner of weird combination, I am not as supple as I was once. Actually the reality is I am about to write the article on Ardath I have been meaning to for a couple of months. Then perhaps some Kafkaesque transformation will take place.

Players, Fables of Aesop (a large format series of 25)

Ty-phoo Tea, Aesops Fables. (a series of 25)

A few things which perhaps I should tell you before you leave. This information is not going to be found on cigarette cards or Victorian versions of the fables:

There is some doubt as to whether Aesop actually lived.

Even if you accept he did live the next problem is did he write the fables.

It is unlikely he wrote all 350 (100 having been recently discovered) as lions, jackals and hyenas were animals the Greeks had no experience of. On that basis as many as 250 fables were not actually written by Aesop.

Victorians sanitized the fables somewhat, some in the original form were not for childish consumption.

Some fables which have not seen the light of day for a while:

The camel that shat in the river, is one which got away.

Asses appealing to Zeus. Which revolves around another bodily function also seems to have been dropped from the canon.

The Hyenas. Which revolves around a third bodily function which I do not think the Victorians admitted to knowing about in polite society also failed to get much of an airing in Victorian society. But as we know Aesop is unlikely to have known what a Hyena so we can dismiss this one as a bit of mischief, although we do know the Greeks did have a word for it.