[Breaking News: The "Folk Process" traced and documented! "Old Aesop Tale" a first or second generation Hybrid! Is this as big as documented proof of evolution? Maybe!]
trouble traced one parent:
The Blind Man and the Lame Man.
pedanther traced the other:
The Man, His Son, and His Donkey.
Both stories were on the same site (i.e. a Web version of a single book):
Aesop's Fables, by J. (Jenny) H. Stickney, originally published in 1915. There are only 21 stories listed between the one and the other -- so, in a paper-printed book, less than a dozen pages between them.
My mother was born in 1934. I bet
Aesop's Fables was on her family bookshelf -- or perhaps even more likely, the local library (Schoolhouse or public) -- and mother, in her youth, wolfed down several stories in one sitting, the way you do, when the stories are short and witty and wry.
Years later, when I came along, she remembered
both stories, but her memory mushed them together, and she couldn't go back to check the source.
Hee! Bonus glimpse into my mother's childhood! *\o/*
( The Old News )