Question: According to Wikipedia the common expression "[the sky is falling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny)" is from a folk tale: 

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> * ***Henny Penny***, more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" and sometimes as "Chicken Licken", is a folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes the world is coming to an end.
> * ***The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.***
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* Earlier versions of the tale have appeared in print from the beginning of the 19th century in northen european countries (Germany, Denmark etc.)

[Ngram](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the%20sky%20is%20falling&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cthe%20sky%20is%20falling%3B%2Cc0) shows usage examples of the expression 'the sky is falling' from the late 19th century.

Questions:

1) Was the expression coined in the English version of the tale or was it just translated from earlier foreign versions?

2) Can the expression actually have a much earlier origin, such as a biblical one for instance, possibly with a different connotation?

Answer: 
T.W. Rolleston, [Celtic Myths and Legends](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Celtic_Myths_and_Legends/xXNtDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0) (1990) writes of the alliance between the Celts and Alexander in the latter's conquest of Asia in 334 BC:

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> As the Celtic envoys, who are described as men of haughty bearing and great stature, their mission concluded, were drinking with the king, he asked them, it is said, what was the thing they, the Celts, most feared. The envoys replied: "We fear no man: there is but one thing that we fear, namely, that **the sky should fall on us**; be we regard nothing so much as the friendship of a man such as thou."
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This is said to be quoted by Ptolemy Soter, a friend of Alexander's. The footnote also admits that Ptolemy's work has not survived, "but is quoted by Arrian and other historians."

Later, Rolleston writes:

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> The national oath by which the Celts bound themselves to the observance of their covenant with Alexander is remarkable. "If we observe not this engagement," they said, "**may the sky fall on us** and crush us, may the earth gape and swallow us up, may the sea burst out and overwhelm us."
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The connection between "the sky is falling" and larks appears also in Ben Jonson's "Inviting a Friend to Supper" (1616), where he promises his guest some larks as a dish:
"And though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
The sky not falling, think we may have larks."