John Izod suggests that the frog and scorpion tale is Aesop.  I don't
think so (which is not to say that Jordan got it from Welles).
 
Welles himself claimed to Peter Bogdanovich (who had thought that Welles
might have made it up) that he got it was an old Arabic fable, but cannot
remember exactly where he got it from.
 
-- Ben Alpers
   Princeton University