Once a Jackdaw found some feathers that had fallen from a Peacock. ‘Oh, what lovely colours! They will suit me wonderfully!’ he exclaimed, and  dressed himself up in the peacock feathers.

The vain Jackdaw now began to think himself the handsomest bird on earth. ‘Huh! Look at those dowdy, frowsty old Jackdaws! I am too beautiful for them!’ he declared to himself, and abandoning the other Jackdaws, off he went to join a flock of Peacocks.

The Peacocks stared at him in supercilious surprise. Who was this peculiar-looking, bedraggled creature, they asked each other haughtily, and what his business with them?

‘I am one of you!’ said the Jackdaw to the Peacocks, waving his borrowed feathers in their faces.

‘One of us! You?’ laughed the Peacocks, their raucous cries echoing through the trees.

‘Yes, one of you,’ insisted the Jackdaw. ‘Can’t you see my beautiful feathers?’

The Peacocks grew enraged at his presumption. ‘How dare you compare yourself to us? You are nothing but an imposter, and a common thief! Be off with you!’ they cried, and attacking him with their claws and beaks, they tore the fine feathers off him, and chased him away.

Bedraggled and bleeding, the Jackdaw returned to his own flock.

‘Why have you come back?’ cawed the other Jackdaws in anger. ‘We were not good enough for you then, and now you are not good enough for us!’ And his old friends turned their backs upon him in disgust.

The Jackdaw, vain and conceited no more, realized how foolish he had been.

We should not ascribe to ourselves the merits that belong to another, but rather, we should live contented to be who we are.