FABLIAUX. THE _ROMAN DU RENART_.
[Sidenote: Foreign Elements in Early French Literature.]
Singular as the statement may appear, no one of the branches of
literature hitherto discussed represents what may be called a specially
French spirit. Despite the astonishing popularity and extent of the
Chansons de Gestes, they are, as is admitted by the most patriotic
French students, Teutonic in origin probably, and certainly in genius.
The Arthurian legends have at least a tinge both of Celtic and Oriental
character; while the greater number of them were probably written by
Englishmen, and their distinguishing spirit is pretty clearly
Anglo-Norman rather than French. On the other hand, Provencal poetry
represents a temperament and a disposition which find their full
development rather in Spanish and Italian literature and character than
in the literature and character of France. All these divisions,
moreover, have this of artificial about them, that they are obviously
class literature--the literature of courtly and knightly society, not
that of the nation at large. Provencal literature gives but scanty
social information; from the earlier Chansons at least it would be hard
to tell that there were any classes but those of nobles, priests, and
fighting men; and though, as has been said, a more complicated state of
society appears in the Arthurian legends, what may be called their
atmosphere is even more artificial.
[Sidenote: The Esprit Gaulois makes its appearance.]
It is far otherwise with the division of literature which we are now
about to handle. The Fabliaux[60], or short verse tales of old France,
take in the whole of its society from king to peasant with all the
intervening classes, and represent for the most part the view taken of
those classes by each other. Perhaps the _bourgeois_ standpoint is most
prominent in them, but it is by no means the only one. Their tone too is
of the kind which has ever since been specially associated with the
French genius. What is called by French authors the _esprit gaulois_--a
spirit of mischievous and free-spoken jocularity--does not make its
appearance at once, or in all kinds of work. In most of the early
departments of French literature there is a remarkable deficiency of the
comic element, or rather that element is very much kept under. The
comedy of the Chansons consists almost entirely in the roughest
horse-play; while the knightly notion of _gabz_ or jests is exemplified
in the _Voyage de Charlemagne a Constantinople_, where it seems to be
limited to extravagant, and not always decent, boasts and gasconnades.
More comic, but still farcical in its comedy, is the curious running
fire of exaggerated expressions of poltroonery which the Red Lion keeps
up in _Antioche_, while the names and virtues of the Christian leaders
are being catalogued to Corbaran. In the Arthurian Romances also the
comic element is scantily represented, and still takes the same form of
exaggeration and horse-play. At the same time it is proper to say that
both these classes of compositions are distinguished, at least in their
earlier examples, by a very strict and remarkable decency of language.
In the Fabliaux the state of things is quite different. The attitude is
always a mocking one, not often going the length of serious satire or
moral indignation, but contenting itself with the peculiar ludicrous
presentation of life and humanity of which the French have ever since
been the masters. In the Fabliaux begins that long course of scoffing at
the weaknesses of the feminine sex which has never been interrupted
since. In the Fabliaux is to be found for the first time satirical
delineation of the frailties of churchmen instead of adoring celebration
of the mysteries of the Church. All classes come in by turns for
ridicule--knights, burghers, peasants. Unfortunately this freedom in
choice of subject is accompanied by a still greater freedom in the
choice of language. The coarseness of expression in many of the Fabliaux
equals, if it does not exceed, that to be found in any other branch of
Western literature.
[Sidenote: Definition of Fabliaux.]
The interest of the Fabliaux as a literary study is increased by the
precision with which they can be defined, and the well-marked period of
their composition. According to the excellent definition of its latest
editor, the Fabliau[61] is 'le recit, le plus souvent comique, d'une
aventure reelle ou possible, qui se passe dans les donnees moyennes de
la vie humaine,' the recital, for the most part comic, of a real or
possible event occurring in the ordinary conditions of human life. M. de
Montaiglon, to be rigidly accurate, should have added that it must be in
verse, and, with very rare, if any, exceptions, in octosyllabic
couplets. Of such Fabliaux, properly so called, we possess perhaps two
hundred. They are of the most various length, sometimes not extending to
more than a score or so of lines, sometimes containing several hundreds.
They are, like most contemporary literature, chiefly anonymous, or
attributed to persons of whom nothing is known, though some famous
names, especially that of the Trouvere Ruteboeuf, appear among their
authors. Their period of composition seems to have extended from the
latter half of the twelfth century to the latter half of the fourteenth,
no manuscript that we have of them being earlier than the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and none later than the beginning of the
fifteenth. If, however, their popularity in their original form ceased
at the latter period, their course was by no means run. They had passed
early from France into Italy (as indeed all the oldest French literature
did), and the stock-in-trade of all the Italian _Novellieri_ from
Boccaccio downwards was supplied by them. In England they found an
illustrious copyist in Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales are perfect
Fabliaux, informed by greater art and more poetical spirit than were
possessed by their original authors. In France itself the Fabliaux
simply became farces or prose tales, as the wandering reciter of verse
gave way to the actor and the bookseller. They appear again (sometimes
after a roundabout journey through Italian versions) in the pages of the
French tale-tellers of the Renaissance, and finally, as far as collected
appearance is concerned, receive their last but not their least
brilliant transformation in the _Contes_ of La Fontaine. In these the
cycle is curiously concluded by a return to the form of the original.
[Sidenote: Subjects and character of Fabliaux.]
Until MM. de Montaiglon and Raynaud undertook their edition, which has
been slowly completed, the study of the Fabliaux was complicated by the
somewhat chaotic conditions of the earlier collections. Barbazan and his
followers printed as Fabliaux almost everything that they found in verse
which was tolerably short. Thus, not merely the mediaeval poems called
_dits_ and _debats_, descriptions of objects either in monologue or
dialogue, which come sometimes very close to the Fabliau proper, but
moral discourses, short romances, legends like the _Lai d'Aristote_, and
such-like things, were included. This interferes with a comprehension of
the remarkably characteristic and clearly marked peculiarities of the
Fabliau indicated in the definition given above. As according to this
the Fabliau is a short comic verse tale of ordinary life, it will be
evident that the attempts which have been made to classify Fabliaux
according to their subjects were not very happy. It is of course
possible to take such headings as Priests, Women, Villeins, Knights,
etc., and arrange the existing Fabliaux under them. But it is not
obvious what is gained thereby. A better notion of the _genre_ may
perhaps be obtained from a short view of the subjects of some of the
principal of those Fabliaux whose subjects are capable of description.
_Les deux Bordeors Ribaux_ is a dispute between two Jongleurs who boast
their skill. It is remarkable for a very curious list of Chansons de
Gestes which the clumsy reciter quotes all wrong, and for a great
number of the sly hits at chivalry and the chivalrous romances which are
characteristic of all this literature. Thus one Jongleur, going through
the list of his knightly patrons, tells of Monseignor Augier Poupee--
'Qui a un seul coup de s'espee
Coupe bien a un chat l'oreille;'
and of Monseignor Rogier Ertaut, whose soundness in wind and limb is not
due to enchanted armour or skill in fight, but is accounted for thus--
'Quar onques ne ot cop feru' (for that never has he struck a blow).
_Le Vair Palefroi_ contains the story of a lover who carries off his
beloved on a palfrey grey from an aged wooer. _La Housse Partie_, a
great favourite, which appears in more than one form, tells the tale of
an unnatural son who turns his father out of doors, but is brought to a
better mind by his own child, who innocently gives him warning that he
in turn will copy his example. _Sire Hain et Dame Anieuse_ is one of the
innumerable stories of rough correction of scolding wives. _Brunain la
Vache au Prestre_ recounts a trick played on a covetous priest. In _Le
Dit des Perdrix_, a greedy wife eats a brace of partridges which her
husband has destined for his own dinner, and escapes his wrath by one of
the endless stratagems which these tales delight in assigning to
womankind. _Le sot Chevalier_, though extremely indecorous, deserves
notice for the Chaucerian breadth of its farce, at which it is
impossible to help laughing. _The two Englishmen and the Lamb_ is
perhaps the earliest example of English-French, and turns upon the
mistake which results in an ass's foal being bought instead of the
required animal. _Le Mantel Mautaillie_ is the famous Arthurian story
known in English as 'The Boy and the Mantle.' _Le Vilain Mire_ is the
original of Moliere's _Medecin malgre lui_. _Le Vilain qui conquist
Paradis par Plaist_ is characteristic of the curious irreverence which
accompanied mediaeval devotion. A villein comes to heaven's gate, is
refused admission, and successively silences St. Peter, St. Thomas, and
St. Paul, by very pointed references to their earthly weaknesses. As a
last specimen may be mentioned the curiously simple word-play of
_Estula_. This is the name of a little dog which, being pronounced,
certain thieves take for 'Es tu la?'
[Sidenote: Sources of Fabliaux.]
Such are a very few, selected as well as may be for their typical
character, of these stories. It is not unimportant to consider briefly
the question of their origin. Many of them belong no doubt to that
strange common fund of fiction which all nations of the earth
indiscriminately possess. A considerable number seem to be of purely
original and indigenous growth: but an actual literary source is not
wanting in many cases. The classics supplied some part of them, the
Scriptures and the lives of the saints another part; while not a little
was due to the importation of Eastern collections of stories resulting
from the Crusades. The chief of these collections were the fables of
Bidpai or Pilpai, in the form known as the romance of 'Calila and
Dimna,' and the story of Sendabar (in its Greek form Syntipas). This was
immensely popular in France under the verse form of _Dolopathos_, and
the prose form of _Les sept Sages de Rome_. The remarkable collection of
stories called the _Gesta Romanorum_ is apparently of later date than
most of the Fabliaux; but the tales of which it was composed no doubt
floated for some time in the mouths of Jongleurs before the unknown and
probably English author put them together in Latin.
[Sidenote: The Roman du Renart.]
Closely connected with the Fabliaux is one of the most singular works of
mediaeval imagination, the _Roman du Renart_[62]. This is no place to
examine the origin or antiquity of the custom of making animals the
mouthpieces of moral and satirical utterance on human affairs. It is
sufficient that the practice is an ancient one, and that the middle ages
were early acquainted with Aesop and his followers, as well as with
Oriental examples of the same sort. The original author, whoever he was,
of the epic (for it is no less) of 'Reynard the Fox,' had therefore
examples of a certain sort before his eyes. But these examples contented
themselves for the most part with work of small dimension, and had not
attempted connected or continuous story. A fierce battle has been fought
as to the nationality of Reynard. The facts are these. The oldest form
of the story now extant is in Latin. It is succeeded at no very great
interval by German, Flemish, and French versions. Of these the German as
it stands is apparently the oldest, the Latin version being probably of
the second half of the twelfth century, and the German a little later.
But (and this is a capital point) the names of the more important beasts
are in all the versions French. From this and some minute local
indications, it seems likely that the original language of the epic is
French, but French of the Walloon or Picard dialect, and that it was
written somewhere in the district between the Seine and the Rhine. This,
however, is a matter of the very smallest literary importance. What is
of great literary importance is the fact that it is in France that the
story receives its principal development, and that it makes its home.
The Latin, Flemish, and German Reynards, though they all cover nearly
the same ground, do not together amount to more than five-and-twenty
thousand lines. The French in its successive developments amounts to
more than ninety thousand in the texts already published or abstracted;
and this does not include the variants in the Vienna manuscript of
_Renart le Contrefait_, or the different developments of the _Ancien
Renart_, recently published by M. Ernest Martin.
[Sidenote: The Ancien Renart.]
The order and history of the building up of this vast composition are as
follows. The oldest known 'branches,' as the separate portions of the
story are called, date from the beginning of the thirteenth century.
These are due to a named author, Pierre de Saint Cloud. But it is
impossible to say that they were actually the first written in French:
indeed it is extremely improbable that they were so. However this may
be, during the thirteenth century a very large number of poets wrote
pieces independent of each other in composition, but possessing the same
general design, and putting the same personages into play. In what has
hitherto been the standard edition of _Renart_, Meon published
thirty-two such poems, amounting in the aggregate to more than thirty
thousand verses. Chabaille added five more in his supplement, and M.
Ernest Martin has found yet another in an Italianised version. This last
editor thinks that eleven branches, which he has printed together,
constitute an 'ancient collection' within the _Ancien Renart_, and have
a certain connection and interdependence. However this may be, the
general plan is extremely loose, or rather non-existent. Everybody knows
the outline of the story of Reynard; how he is among the animals (Noble
the lion, who is king, Chanticleer the cock, Firapel the leopard,
Grimbart the badger, Isengrin the wolf, and the rest) the special
representative of cunning and valour tempered by discretion, while his
enemy Isengrin is in the same way the type of stupid headlong force, and
many of the others have moral character less strongly marked but
tolerably well sustained. How this general idea is illustrated the
titles of the branches show better than the most elaborate description.
'How Reynard ate the carrier's fish;' 'how Reynard made Isengrin fish
for eels;' 'how Reynard cut the tail of Tybert the cat;' 'how Reynard
made Isengrin go down the well;' 'of Isengrin and the mare;' 'how
Reynard and Tybert sang vespers and matins;' 'the pilgrimage of
Reynard,' and so forth. Written by different persons, and at different
times, these branches are of course by no means uniform in literary
value. But the uniformity of spirit in most, if not in all of them, is
extremely remarkable. What is most noticeable in this spirit is the
perpetual undertone of satirical comment on human life and its affairs
which distinguishes it. The moral is never obtrusively put forward, and
it is especially noteworthy that in this _Ancien Renart_, as contrasted
with the later development of the poem, there is no mere allegorising,
and no attempt to make the animals men in disguise. They are quite
natural and distinct foxes, wolves, cats, and so forth, acting after
their kind, with the exception of their possession of reason and
language.
[Sidenote: Le Couronnement Renart.]
The next stage of the composition shows an alteration and a degradation.
_Renart le Couronne_, or _Le Couronnement Renart_[63], is a poem of some
3400 lines, which was once attributed to Marie de France, for no other
reason than that the manuscript which contains it subjoins her _Ysopet_
or fables. It is, however, certainly not hers, and is in all probability
a little later than her time. The main subject of it is the cunning of
the fox, who first reconciles the great preaching orders Franciscans and
Dominicans; then himself becomes a monk, and inculcates on them the art
of _Renardie_; then repairs to court as a confessor to the lion king
Noble who is ill, and contrives to be appointed his successor, after
which he holds tournaments, journeys to Palestine, and so forth. It is
characteristic of the decline of taste that in the list of his army a
whole bestiary (or list of the real and fictitious beasts of mediaeval
zoology) is thrust in; and the very introduction of the abstract term
_Renardie_, or foxiness, is an evil sign of the abstracting and
allegorising which was about to spoil poetry for a time, and to make
much of the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tedious
and heavy. The poem is of little value or interest. The only
chronological indication as to its composition is the eulogy of William
of Flanders, killed ('jadis,' says the author) in 1251.
[Sidenote: Renart le Nouvel.]
The next poem of the cycle is of much greater length, and of at least
proportionately greater value, though it has not the freshness and
_verve_ of the earlier branches. _Renart le Nouvel_ was written in 1288
by Jacquemart Gielee, a Fleming. This poem is in many ways interesting,
though not much can be said for its general conception, and though it
suffers terribly from the allegorising already alluded to. In its first
book (it consists of more than 8000 lines, divided into two books and
many branches) Renart, in consequence of one of his usual quarrels with
Isengrin, gets into trouble with the king, and is besieged in
Maupertuis. But the sense of verisimilitude is now so far lost, that
Maupertuis, instead of being a fox's earth, is an actual feudal castle;
and more than this, the animals which attack and defend it are armed in
panoply, ride horses, and fight like knights of the period. Besides this
the old familiar and homely personages are mixed up with a very strange
set of abstractions in the shape of the seven deadly sins. All this is
curiously blended with reminiscences and rehandlings of the older and
simpler adventures. Another remarkable feature about _Renart le Nouvel_
is that it is full of songs, chiefly love songs, which are given with
the music. Its descriptions, though prolix, and injured by allegorical
phrases, are sometimes vigorous.
[Sidenote: Renart le Contrefait.]
The cycle was finally completed in the second quarter of the fourteenth
century by the singular work or works called _Renart le Contrefait_.
This has, unfortunately, never been printed in full, nor in any but the
most meagre extracts and abstracts. Its length is enormous; though, in
the absence of opportunity for examining it, it is not easy to tell how
much is common to the three manuscripts which contain it. Two of these
are in Paris and one in Vienna, the latter being apparently identical
with one which Menage saw and read in the seventeenth century. One of
the Parisian manuscripts contains about 32,000 verses, the other about
19,000; and the Vienna version seems to consist of from 20,000 to 25,000
lines of verse, and about half that number of prose. The author (who, in
so far as he was a single person, appears to have been a clerk of
Troyes, in Champagne) wrote it, as he says, to avoid idleness, and seems
to have regarded it as a vast commonplace book, in which to insert the
result not merely of his satirical reflection, but of his miscellaneous
reading. A noteworthy point about this poem is that in one place the
writer expressly disowns any concealment of his satirical intention. His
book, he says, has nothing to do with the kind of fox that kills
pullets, has a big brush, and wears a red skin, but with the fox that
has two hands and, what is more, two faces under one hood[64].
Notwithstanding this, however, there are many passages where the old
'common form' of the epic is observed, and where the old personages make
their appearance. Indeed their former adventures are sometimes served up
again with slight alterations. Besides this there is a certain number of
amusing stories and _fabliaux_, the most frequently quoted of which is
the tale of an ugly but wise knight who married a silly but beautiful
girl in hopes of having children uniting the advantages of both parents,
whereas the actual offspring of the union were as ugly as the father and
as silly as the mother. Combined with these things are numerous
allusions to the grievances of the peasants and burghers of the time
against the upper classes, with some striking legends illustrative
thereof, such as the story of a noble dame, who, hearing that a vassal's
wife had been buried in a large shroud of good stuff, had the body taken
up and seized the shroud to make horsecloths of. This original matter,
however, is drowned in a deluge not merely of moralising but of didactic
verse of all kinds. The history of Alexander is told in one version by
Reynard to the lion king in 7000 verses, and is preluded and followed by
an account of the history of the world on a scarcely smaller scale. This
proceeding, at least in the Vienna version, seems to be burdensome even
to Noble himself, who, at the reign of Augustus, suggests that Reynard
should exchange verse for prose, and 'compress.' The warning cannot be
said to be unnecessary: but works as long as _Renart le Contrefait_,
and, as far as it is possible to judge, not more interesting, have been
printed of late years; and it is very much to be wished that the
publication of it might be undertaken by some competent scholar.
[Sidenote: Fauvel.]
Renart is not the only bestial personage who was made at this time a
vehicle of satire. In the days of Philippe le Bel a certain Francois de
Rues composed a poem entitled _Fauvel_, from the name of the hero, a
kind of Centaur, who represents vice of all kinds. The direct object of
the poem was to attack the pope and the clergy.
Some extracts from the _Fabliau_ of the Partridges and from _Renart_ may
appropriately now be given:--
Por ce que fabliaus dire sueil,
en lieu de fable dire vueil
une aventure qui est vraie,
d'un vilain qui deles sa haie
prist deus pertris par aventure.
en l'atorner mist moult sa cure;
sa fame les fist au feu metre.
ele s'en sot bien entremetre:
le feu a fait, la haste atorne.
et li vilains tantost s'en torne,
por le prestre s'en va corant.
mais au revenir targa tant
que cuites furent les pertris.
la dame a le haste jus mis,
s'en pinca une peleure,
quar molt ama la lecheure,
quant diex li dona a avoir.
ne beoit pas a grant avoir,
mais a tos ses bons acomplir.
l'une pertris cort envair:
andeus les eles en menjue.
puis est alee en mi la rue
savoir se ses sires venoit.
quant ele venir ne le voit,
tantost arriere s'en retorne,
et le remanant tel atorne
mal du morsel qui remainsist.
adonc s'apenssa et si dist
que l'autre encore mengera.
moult tres bien set qu'ele dira,
s'on li demande que devindrent:
ele dira que li chat vindrent,
quant ele les ot arrier traites;
tost li orent des mains retraites,
et chascuns la seue en porta.
* * * * * *
Tant dura cele demoree
que la dame fu saoulee,
et li vilains ne targa mie:
a l'ostel vint, en haut s'escrie
'diva, sont cuites les pertris?'
'sire,' dist ele. 'aincois va pis,
quar mengies les a li chas.'
li vilains saut isnel le pas,
seure li cort comme enragies.
ja li eust les iex sachies,
quant el crie 'c'est gas, c'est gas.
fuiies,' fet ele, 'Sathanas!
couvertes sont por tenir chaudes.'
(He accepts the excuse; bids her lay the table, and goes to sharpen his
knife. The priest arrives. She tells him that her husband is plotting
outrage against him, and as a proof shows him sharpening his knife. The
priest flies, and she tells her husband that he has run off with the
partridges. The husband pursues, but in vain, and the Fabliau thus
concludes:--)
A l'ostel li vilains retorne,
et lors sa feme en araisone:
'diva,' fait il, 'et quar me dis
coment tu perdis les pertris?'
cele li dist 'se diex m'ait,
tantost que li prestres me vit,
si me pria, se tant l'amasse,
que je les pertris li moustrasse,
quar moult volentiers les verroit
et je le menai la tout droit
ou je les avoie couvertes.
il ot tantost les mains ouvertes,
si les prist et si s'en fui.
mes je gueres ne le sivi,
ains le vous fis moult tost savoir.'
cil respont 'bien pues dire voir
or le laissons a itant estre.'
ainsi fu engingnies le prestre
et Gombaus qui les pertris prist.
par example cis fabliaus dist:
fame est faite por decevoir.
menconge fait devenir voir
et voir fait devenir menconge.
cil n'i vout metre plus d'alonge
qui fist cest fablel et ces dis.
ci faut li fabliaus des pertris.
(_Reynard and Isengrin go a-fishing._)
Ce fu un poi devant Noel
que l'en metoit bacons en sel,
li ciex fu clers et estelez,
et li vivier fu si gelez,
ou Ysengrin devoit peschier,
qu'on pooit par desus treschier,
fors tant c'un pertuis i avoit,
qui des vilains faiz i estoit,
ou il menoient lor atoivre
chascune nuit juer et boivre:
un seel i estoit laissiez.
la vint Renarz toz eslaissiez
et son compere apela.
'sire,' fait il, 'traiiez vos ca:
ci est la plente des poissons
et li engins ou nos peschons
les anguiles et les barbiaus
et autres poissons bons et biaus.'
dist Ysengrins 'sire Renart,
or le prenez de l'une part,
sel me laciez bien a la qeue.'
Renarz le prent et si li neue
entor la qeue au miex qu'il puet.
'frere,' fait il, 'or vos estuet
moult sagement a maintenir
por les poissons avant venir.'
lors s'est en un buisson fichiez:
si mist son groing entre ses piez
tant que il voie que il face.
et Ysengrins est seur la glace
et li seaus en la fontaine
plains de glacons a bone estraine.
l'aive conmence a englacier
et li seaus a enlacier
qui a la qeue fu noez:
de glacons fu bien serondez.
la qeue est en l'aive gelee
et en la glace seelee.
This chapter would be incomplete without a reference to the _Ysopet_ of
Marie de France[65], which may be said to be a link of juncture between
the Fabliau and the _Roman du Renart_. _Ysopet_ (diminutive of Aesop)
became a common term in the middle ages for a collection of fables.
There is one known as the _Ysopet of Lyons_, which was published not
long ago[66]; but that of Marie is by far the most important. It
consists of 103 pieces, written in octosyllabic couplets, with
moralities, and a conclusion which informs us that the author wrote it
'for the love of Count William' (supposed to be Long-Sword), translating
it from an English version of a Latin translation of the Greek. Marie's
graceful style and her easy versification are very noticeable here,
while her morals are often well deduced and sharply put. The famous
'Wolf and Lamb' will serve as a specimen.
Ce dist dou leu e dou aignel,
qui beveient a un rossel:
li lox a lo sorse beveit
e li aigniaus aval esteit.
irieement parla li lus
ki mult esteit cuntralius;
par mautalent palla a lui:
'tu m'as,' dist il, 'fet grant anui.'
li aignez li ad respundu
'sire, eh quei?' 'dunc ne veis tu?
tu m'as ci ceste aigue tourblee:
n'en puis beivre ma saolee.
autresi m'en irai, ce crei,
cum jeo ving, tut murant de sei.'
li aignelez adunc respunt
'sire, ja bevez vus amunt:
de vus me vient kankes j'ai beu.'
'qoi,' fist li lox, 'maldis me tu?'
l'aigneus respunt 'n'en ai voleir.'
lous li dit 'jeo sai de veir:
ce meisme me fist tes pere
a ceste surce u od lui ere,
or ad sis meis, si cum jeo crei.'
'qu'en retraiez,' feit il, 'sor mei?
n'ere pas nez, si cum jeo cuit.'
'e cei pur ce,' li lus a dit:
'ja me fais tu ore cuntraire
e chose ke tu ne deiz faire.'
dunc prist li lox l'engnel petit,
as denz l'estrangle, si l'ocit.
_Moralite._
Ci funt li riche robeur,
li vesconte e li jugeur,
de ceus k'il unt en lur justise.
fausse aqoison par cuveitise
truevent assez pur eus cunfundre.
suvent les funt as plaiz semundre,
la char lur tolent e la pel,
si cum li lox fist a l'aingnel.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] The first collection of Fabliaux was published by Barbazan in 1756.
This was re-edited by Meon in 1808, and reinforced by the same author
with a fresh collection in 1823. Meanwhile Le Grand d'Aussy had
(1774-1781) given extracts, abstracts, and translations into modern
French of many of them. Jubinal, Robert, and others enriched the
collection further, and in vol. xxiii. of the _Histoire Litteraire_ M.
V. Le Clerc published an excellent study of the subject. A complete
collection of Fabliaux has, however, only recently been attempted, by M.
M. A. de Montaiglon and G. Raynaud (6 vols., Paris, 1872-1888).
[61] _Fabliau_ is, of course, the Latin _fabula_. The genealogy of the
word is _fabula_, _fabella_, _fabel_, _fable_, _fablel_, _fableau_,
_fabliau_. All these last five forms exist.
[62] It should be noticed that this title, though consecrated by usage,
is a misnomer. It should be _Roman_ de _Renart_, for this latter is a
proper name. The class name is _goupil_ (vulpes). The standard edition
is that of Meon (4 vols., Paris, 1826) with the supplement of Chabaille,
1835. This includes not merely the _Ancien Renart_, but the
_Couronnement_ and _Renart le Nouvel_. _Renart le Contrefait_ has never
been printed. Rothe (Paris, 1845) and Wolf (Vienna, 1861) have given the
best accounts of it. Recently M. Ernest Martin has given a new critical
edition of the _Ancien Renart_ (3 vols., Strasburg and Paris,
1882-1887).
[63] The necessary expression of the genitive by _de_ is later than
this. Mediaeval French retained the inflection of nouns, though in a
dilapidated condition. Properly speaking _Renars_ is the nominative,
_Renart_ the general inflected case.
[64] This is a free translation of the last line of the original, which
is as follows:--
Pour renard qui gelines tue,
Qui a la rousse peau vestue,
Qui a grand queue et quatre pies,
N'est pas ce livre communies;
Mais pour cellui qui a deux mains
Dont il sont en ce siecle mains,
Qui ont sous la chappe Faulx Semblant.
Wolf, _Op. cit._ p. 5.
The final allusion is to a personage of the _Roman de la Rose_.
[65] Ed. Roquefort, vol. ii. See next chapter.
[66] By Dr. W. Foerster. Heilbronn, 1882.