[f. FABLE v. + -ING2.] That fables, in senses of the vb.; that invents or relates fables; addicted to fable, romancing; in bad sense, mendacious.
1548. Hall, Chron. (1809), 51. Confounde your simple Salicque lawe inuented by false fablers and crafty imaginers of you fablyng French menne.
1570–6. Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent (1826), 9. Rejecting the fonde dreames of doting monkes and fabling friars.
1613. Purchas, Pilgrimage, I. x. (1614), 52. As for Noah, the fabling Heathen, it is like, deified him.
1704. Pope, Windsor Forest, 227.
| Nor Po so swells the fabling poets lays, | |
| While led along the skies his current strays. |
1822. B. Cornwall, Ludovico Sforza, i. 4.
| Oh! she shone | |
| Like one of those bright shapes of fabling Greece. |
1861. The Saturday Review, XII. 21 Dec., 643/1. Fabling hatred was busy with the name of the fallen usurper, and that the evidence of the crimes traditionally imputed to him is a fair subject of historical criticism.
b. occas. said of utterances, etc.
1620. T. Peyton, Paradise, in Farr, S. P. Jas. I. (1848), 178.
| The fabling prayses of Elizium fields, | |
| The Turkes, Eutopia, nothing to it yeelds. |
1755. Gentl. Mag., XXV. Sept., 420/2.
| For back in time it lay encumber’d long, | |
| In close secrets avoiding vulgar ken; | |
| Confus’d mythology, and fabling song, | |
| In gloomy clouds involv’d their gods and men. |
1814. Southey, Roderick, XX. 208. False records, fabling creeds, and juggling priests.
