Various French, English and Italian authors have written imitations of
this tale, concerning which Dunlop writes as follows in his History of
Fiction:--
“The plot of Bandello’s thirty-fifth story is the same as that of Horace
Walpole’s comedy _The Mysterious Mother_, and of the Queen of Navarre’s
thirtieth tale. The earlier portion will be found also in Masuccio’s
twenty-third tale: but the second part, relating to the marriage, occurs
only in Bandello’s work and the _Heptameron_. It is not likely, however,
that the French or the Italian novelist borrowed from one another. The
tales of Bandello were first published in 1554, and as the Queen of
Navarre died in 1549, it is improbable that she ever had an opportunity
of seeing them. On the other hand, the work of the Queen was not printed
till 1558, nine years after her death, so it is not likely that any part
of it was copied by Bandello, whose tales had been edited some years
before.”
Walpole, it may be mentioned, denied having had any knowledge either of
the _Heptameron_ or of Bandello when he wrote _The Mysterious Mother_,
which was suggested to him, he declared, by a tale he had heard when
very young, of a lady who had waited on Archbishop Tillotson with a
story similar to that which is told by Queen Margaret’s heroine to
the Legate of Avignon. According to Walpole, Tillotson’s advice was
identical with that given by the Legate.
Dunlop mentions that a tale of this character is given in Byshop’s
_Blossoms_ (vol. xi.); and other authors whose writings contain similar
stories are: Giovani Brevio, _Rime e Prose vulgari_, Roma, 1545 (Novella
iv.); Desfontaine’s _L’Inceste innocent, histoire véritable_, Paris,
1644 5 Tommaso Grappulo, or Grappolino, _Il Convito Borghesiano_,
Londra, 1800 (Novella vii.); Luther, _Colloquia Mens alia_ (article on
auricular confession); and Masuccio de Solerac, _Novellino_, Ginevra,
1765 (Novella xxiii.).
Curiously enough, Bandello declares that the story was related to him by
a lady of Navarre (Queen Margaret?) as having occurred in that country,
while Julio de Medrano, a Spanish author of the sixteenth century,
asserts that it was told to him in the Bourbonnais as being actual fact,
and that he positively saw the house where the lady’s son and his wife
resided; but on the other hand we find the tale related, in its broad
lines, in _Amadis de Gaule_ as being an old-time legend, and in proof of
this, it figures in an ancient French poem of the life of St. Gregory,
the MS. of which still exists at Tours, and was printed in 1854.
In support of the theory that the tale is based on actual fact, the
following passage from Millin’s _Antiquités Nationales_ (vol. iii. f.
xxviii. p. 6) is quoted--
“In the middle of the nave of the collégial church of Ecouis, in the
cross aisle, was found a white marble slab on which was inscribed this
epitaph:--
“Hore lies the child, here lies the father,
Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,
Here lie the wife and the husband,
Yet there are but two bodies here.”
“The tradition is that a son of Madame d’Écouis had by his mother,
without knowing her or being recognised by her, a daughter named
Cecilia, whom he afterwards married in Lorraine, she then being in the
service of the Duchess of Bar. Thus Cecilia was at one and the same time
her husband’s daughter, sister and wife. They were interred together in
the same grave at Écouis in 1512.”
According to Millin, a similar tradition will be found with variations
in different parts of France. For instance, at the church of Alincourt,
a village between Amiens and Abbeville, there was to be seen in Millin’s
time an epitaph running as follows:--
“Here lies the son, here lies the mother,
Here lies the daughter with the father;
Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,
Here lie the wife and the husband;
And there are only three bodies here.”
Gaspard Meturas, it may be added, gives the same epitaph in his _Hortus
Epitaphiomm Selectorum_, issued in 1648, but declares that it is to be
found at Clermont in Auvergne--a long way from Amiens--and explains it
by saying that the mother engendered her husband by intercourse with her
own father; whence it follows that he was at the same time her husband,
son and brother.--L. M. and Ed.
End of vol. III.