"Folliculus, a knight, was fond of hunting and tournaments. He had an
only son, for whom three nurses were provided. Next to this child, he
loved his falcon and his greyhound. It happened one day that he was
called to a tournament, whither his wife and domestics went also,
leaving the child in the cradle, the greyhound lying by him, and the
falcon on his perch. A serpent that inhabited a hole near the castle,
taking advantage of the profound silence that reigned, crept from his
habitation, and advanced towards the cradle to devour the child. The
falcon, perceiving the danger, fluttered with his wings till he awoke
the dog, who instantly attacked the invader, and after a fierce
conflict, in which he was sorely wounded, killed him. He then lay down
on the ground to lick and heal his wounds. When the nurses returned,
they found the cradle overturned, the child thrown out, and the ground
covered with blood, as was also the dog, who they immediately
concluded had killed the child.
"Terrified at the idea of meeting the anger of the parents, they
determined to escape; but in their flight fell in with their mistress,
to whom they were compelled to relate the supposed murder of the child
by the greyhound. The knight soon arrived to hear the sad story, and,
maddened with fury, rushed forward to the spot. The poor wounded and
faithful animal made an effort to rise and welcome his master with his
accustomed fondness; but the enraged knight received him on the point
of his sword, and he fell lifeless to the ground. On examination of
the cradle, the infant was found alive and unhurt, with the dead
serpent lying by him. The knight now perceived what had happened,
lamented bitterly over his faithful dog, and blamed himself for having
too hastily depended on the words of his wife. Abandoning the
profession of arms, he broke his lance in pieces, and vowed a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he spent the rest of his days in
peace."
The monkish hit at the wife is amusing, and might have been supposed
to have originated with those determined misogynists, as the gallant
Welshmen lay all the blame on the man. But the good compilers of the
"Gesta" wrote little of their own, except moral applications of the
tales they relate, and the story of Folliculus and his dog, like many
others in their collection, is drawn from a foreign source.
It occurs in the Seven Wise Masters, and in the "Calumnia Novercalis"
as well, so that it must have been popular throughout mediA|val Europe.
Now, the tales of the Seven Wise Masters are translations from a
Hebrew work, the Kalilah and Dimnah of Rabbi Joel, composed about
A. D. 1250, or from Simeon Seth's Greek Kylile and Dimne, written in
1080. These Greek and Hebrew works were derived from kindred sources.
That of Rabbi Joel was a translation from an Arabic version made by
Nasr-Allah in the twelfth century, whilst Simeon Seth's was a
translation of the Persian Kalilah and Dimnah. But the Persian
Kalilah and Dimnah was not either an original work; it was in turn a
translation from the Sanskrit Pantschatantra, made about A. D. 540.