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SECTION XVI.

THE TALE of the NONNES PRIEST is perhaps a story of English growth. The story of the cock and the fox is evidently borrowed from a collection of Esopean and other fables, written by Marie a French poetess, whose LAIS are preserved in MSS. HARL. Beside the absolute resemblance, it appears still more probable that Chaucer copied from Marie, because no such fable is to be found either in the Greek Esop, or in any of the Latin Esopean compilations of the dark ages†. All the manuscripts of Marie's fables in the British Museum prove, that she translated her work "de l'Anglois en Roman." Probably her English original was Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Esop modernised, and still bearing his name. She professes to follow the version of a king; who, in the best of the Harleian copies, is called LI REIS ALURED‡. She appears, from passages in her LAIS, to have understood English§. I will give her Epilogue to the Fables from MSS. JAMES. viii. p. 23. Bibl. Bodl.

Al finement de cest escrit
Qu'en romanz ai treite e dit
Me numerai pour remembraunce
Marie ai nun sui de France
Pur cel estre que clerc plusur
Prendreient sur eus mun labeur
Ne voit que nul sur li sa die
Eil feit que fol que sei ublie
Pur amur le cunte Wllame
Le plus vaillant de nul realme

[ut infr. see f. 139.]

See MSS. HARL. 978. f. 76.]
[MSS. HARL. 978. supr. citat.]

$[See Chaucer's CANTERB. TALES, vol. iv. p. 179.]

Meinlemir de ceste livre feire

E des Engleis en romanz treire
Esop apelum cest livre

Quil translata e fist escrire
Del Gru en Latin le turna
Le Reiz Alurez que mut lama
Le translata puis en Engleis
E jeo lai rimee en Franceis

Si cum jeo poi plus proprement
Ore pri a dieu omnipotent, &c.

a

The figment of Dan Burnell's Ass is taken from a Latin poem entitled SPECULUM STULTORUM, written by Nigellus de Wireker, monk and precentor of Canterbury cathedral, a profound theologist, who flourished about the year 1200. The narrative of the two pilgrims is borrowed from Valerius Maximus. It is also related by Cicero, a less known and a less favourite author. There is much humour in the description of the prodigious confusion which happened in the farm-yard after the fox had conveyed away the cock.

-After him they ran,

And eke with staves many another man.

Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerlond",

And Malkin with her distaf in hire hond.

Ran cow and calf, and eke the very hogges.

The dokes crieden as men wold hem quelle f,

The

gees for fere flewen over the trees,

Out of the hive came the swarme of bees.

Even Jack Strawe's insurrection, a recent transaction, was not attended with so much noise and disturbance.

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So hidous was the noise, ah Benedicite!
Certes he Jacke Strawe, and his meine,

Ne maden never shoutes half so shrille, &c.

The importance and affectation of sagacity with which dame Partlett communicates her medical advice, and displays her knowledge in physic, is a ridicule on the state of medicine and its professors.i

In another strain, the cock is thus beautifully described, and not without some striking and picturesque allusions to the manners of the times.

-A cok highte chaunteclere,

In all the land of crowing n'as his pere.
His vois was merier than the mery orgon
On masse-daiès that in the cherches gon.
Wel sikerer was his crowing in his logem
Than is a clok, or any abbey orloge.-
His combe was redder than the fin corall,
Enbattelled as it were a castel wall,

n

His bill was black and as the jet it shone,
Like asure were his legges, and his tone°:
His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,

And like the burned gold was his colour. P

q

In this poem the fox is compared to the three arch-traitors Judas Iscariot, Virgil's Sinon, and Ganilion who betrayed the Christian army under Charlemagne to the Saracens, and is mentioned by archbishop Turpin. Here also are cited, as writers of high note or authority, Cato, Physiologus or Pliny* the elder, Boethius on music, the author of the legend of the life of saint Kenelme, Josephus, the historian of Sir Lancelot du Lake, Saint Austin, bishop Bradwardine, Jeffrey Vinesauf who wrote a monody in Latin verse on the death of king Richard the First, Ecclesiastes, Virgil, and Macrobius.

h v. 1509. q This is a proof that the CANTERBURY TALES were not written till after the year 1381. i v. 1070. k organ. clearer, [surer. RITSON.] " embattelled.

m

pen; yard. O toes.

P v. 96

v. 1341. See also Monk. T. v. 806. * [Dr. Warton afterwards discovered that by Physiologus, Florinus was intended, and not Pliny; and has corrected his mistake in Section xxvII. vol. iii. p. 5. Note']

Our author's JANUARY AND MAY, or the MARCHAUNT'S TALE, seems to be an old Lombard story. But many passages in it are evidently taken from the POLYCRATICON of John of Salisbury. De molestiis et oneribus conjugiorum secundum Hieronymum et alios philosophos. Et de pernicie libidinis. Et de mulieris Ephesinæ et similium fide. And by the way, about forty verses belonging to this argument are translated from the same chapter of the POLYCRATICON, in the WIFE OF BATH'S Prologues. In the mean time it is not improbable, that this tale might have originally been Oriental. A Persian tale is just published which it extremely resembles'; and it has much of the allegory of an Eastern apologue.

The following description of the wedding-feast of January and May is conceived and expressed with a distinguished degree of poetical elegance.

Thus ben they wedded with solempnite,

And at the feste sitteth he and she,
With other worthy folk upon the deis":
Al ful of joye and blisse is the paleis,

L. viii. c. 11. fol. 193. b. edit. 1513. Mention is made in this Prologue of St. Jerom and Theophrast, on that subject, v. 671. 674. The author of the Polycraticon quotes Theophrastus from Jerom, viz. "Fertur auctore Hieronimo aureolus Theophrasti libellus de non ducenda uxore." fol. 194. a. Chaucer likewise, on this occasion, cites Valerie, v. 671. This is not the favorite historian of the middle ages, Valerius Maximus. It is a book written by Walter Mapes, archdeacon of Oxford,under the assumed name of Valerius, entitled, Valerius ad Rufinum de non ducenda urore. This piece is in the Bodleian library with a large Gloss. MSS. Digb. 166. ii. 147. Mapes perhaps adopted this name, because one Valerius had written a treatise on the same subject, inserted in St. Jerom's works. Some copies of this Prologue, instead of "Valerie and Theophrast," read Paraphrast. If that be the true reading, which I do not believe, Chaucer alludes to the gloss above mentioned. Helowis, cited just after

wards, is the celebrated Eloisa. Trottula is mentioned, v. 677. Among the manuscripts of Merton College in Oxford, is, "Trottula Mulier Salernitana de passionibus mulierum." There is also extant, "Trottula, seu potius Erotis medici muliebrium liber." Basil. 1586. 4to. See also Montfauc. Catal. MSS. p. 385. And Fabric. Bibl. Gr. xii. p. 439.

By Mr. Dow, ch. xv. p. 252.

[The ludicrous adventure of the Pear Tree, in JANUARY AND MAY, is taken from a collection of Fables in Latin elegiacs, written by one Adolphus in the year 1815. Leyser. HIST. POET. MED. Evi, p. 2008. The same fable is among the Fables of Alphonse, in Caxton's Esop. -ADDITIONS.]

"I have explained this word, vol.i.p. 43. But will here add some new illustrations of it. Undoubtedly the high table in a public refectory, as appears from these words in Mathew Paris, "Priore prandente ad MAGNAM MENSAM quam DAIS vulgo appellamus." In Vit. Abbat. S.

And ful of instruments and of vitaille,
The most daynteous of all Itaille.

Before hem stood swiche instruments of soun,
That Orpheus, ne of Thebes Amphion
Ne maden never swiche a melodie;
At every cours in cam loude minstralcie,
That never Joab tromped", for to here,
Ne he Theodamas yet half so clere,
At Thebes, whan the citee was in doute".
Bacchus the win hem skinketh al aboute,
And Venus laugheth upon every wight,
For January was become hire knight,
And wolde bothe assaien his corage
In libertee and eke in mariage,

And with hire firebronde in hire hond aboute
Danceth before the bride and al the route.
And certainly I dare right wel say this,
Ymeneus that god of wedding is

Saw never his life so mery a wedded man.
Hold thou thy pees, thou poet Marcian1,
That writest us that ilke wedding mery
Of hire Philologie and him Mercurie,

Albani, p. 92. And again the same
writer says, that a cup, with a foot, or
stand, was not permitted in the hall of
the monastery," Nisi tantum in MAJORI
MENSA quam DAIS appellamus." Addi-
tam. p. 148. There is an old French
word, DAIS, which signifies a throne, or
canopy, usually placed over the head of
the principal person at a magnificent
feast. Hence it was transferred to the
table at which he sate. In the antient
French Roman de Garin;

Au plus haut DAIS sist roy Anseis. Either at the first table, or, which is much the same thing, under the highest canopy.

[I apprehend that [dais] originally signified the wooden floor [d'ais Fr. de assibus Lat.] which was laid at the upper end of the hall, as we still see it in college halls &c. That part of the room thereVOL. II.

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fore which was floored with planks, was
called the dais (the rest being either the
bare ground, or at best paved with stone);
and being raised above the level of the
other parts, it was often called the high
dais. As the principal table was always
placed upon a dais, it began very soon,
by a natural abuse of words, to be called
itself a dais; and people were said to sit
at the dais, instead of at the table upon
the dais. Menage, whose authority seems
to have led later antiquaries to interprét
dais a canopy, has evidently confounded
deis with ders, [which] as he observes,
meant properly the hangings at the back
of the company. But as the same hang-
ings were often drawn over, so as to form
a kind of canopy over their heads, the
whole was called a ders.-T.]
""such as Joab never," &c.
y danger.
z fill, pour.
* See supr. p. 227.

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