The fable has been used comparatively rarely. In France an illustration of it appeared in the first emblem book of Guillaume Guéroult, accompanied by a long poem on the importance of educating children early.[2] The introductory verse comments on how a new pot will always carry the savour of the first liquid that filled it. In "The Barrel", the Russian Fabulist Ivan Krylov told a similar illustrative story and applied it to education.[3]