Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art. H. A. Guerber
rulers, the animals all assembled at Whitsuntide around their king, Nobel the lion, who ruled over all the forest. This assembly, like the Champ de Mars, its prototype, was convened not only for the purpose of deciding upon the undertakings for the following year, but also as a special tribunal, where all accusations were made, all complaints heard, and justice meted out to all. The animals were all present, all except Reynard the fox, who, it soon became apparent, was accused of many a dark deed. Every beast present testified to some crime committed by him, and all accused him loudly except his nephew, Grimbart the badger.
“And yet there was one who was absent,
Reineke Fox, the rascal! who, deeply given to mischief,
Held aloof from half the Court. As shuns a bad conscience
Light and day, so the fox fought shy of the nobles assembled.
One and all had complaints to make, he had all of them injured;
Grimbart the badger, his brother’s son, alone was excepted.”
[Sidenote: Complaints against Reynard.] The complaint was voiced by Isegrim the wolf, who told with much feeling how cruelly Reynard had blinded three of his beloved children, and how shamefully he had insulted his wife, the fair lady Gieremund. This accusation had no sooner been formulated than Wackerlos the dog came forward, and, speaking French, pathetically described the finding of a little sausage in a thicket, and its purloining by Reynard, who seemed to have no regard whatever for his famished condition.
The tomcat Hintze, who at the mere mention of a sausage had listened more attentively, now angrily cried out that the sausage which Wackerlos had lost belonged by right to him, as he had concealed it in the thicket after stealing it from the miller’s wife. He added that he too had had much to suffer from Reynard, and was supported by the panther, who described how he had once found the miscreant cruelly beating poor Lampe the hare.
“Lampe he held by the collar,
Yes, and had certainly taken his life, if I by good fortune
Had not happened to pass by the road. There standing you see him.
Look and see the wounds of the gentle creature, whom no one
Ever would think of ill treating.”
[Sidenote: Vindication of Reynard.] The king, Nobel, was beginning to look very stern as one after another rose to accuse the absent Reynard, when Grimbart the badger courageously began to defend him, and artfully turned the tables upon the accusers. Taking up their complaints one by one, he described how Reynard, his uncle, once entered into partnership with Isegrim. To obtain some fish which a carter was conveying to market, the fox had lain as if dead in the middle of the road. He had been picked up by the man for the sake of his fur, and tossed up on top of the load of fish. But no sooner had the carter’s back been turned than the fox sprang up, threw all the fish down into the road to the expectant wolf, and only sprang down himself when the cart was empty. The wolf, ravenous as ever, devoured the fish as fast as they were thrown down, and when the fox claimed his share of the booty he had secured, Isegrim gave him only the bones.[1] [Footnote 1: For Russian version see Guerber’s Contes et Légendes, vol. i., p. 93.]
Not content with cheating his ally once, the wolf had induced the fox to steal a suckling pig from the larder of a sleeping peasant. With much exertion the cunning Reynard had thrown the prize out of the window to the waiting wolf; but when he asked for a portion of the meat as reward, he was dismissed with nothing but the piece of wood upon which it had been hung.
The badger further proceeded to relate that Reynard had wooed Gieremund seven years before, when she was still unmated, and that if Isegrim chose to consider that an insult, it was only on a par with the rest of his accusations, for the king could readily see that Reynard was sorely injured instead of being guilty.
Then, encouraged by the favorable impression he had produced, Grimbart airily disposed of the cases of Wackerlos and Hintze by proving that they had both stolen the disputed sausage, after which he went on to say that Reynard had undertaken to instruct Lampe the hare in psalmody, and that the ill treatment which the panther had described was only a little wholesome castigation inflicted by the teacher upon a lazy and refractory pupil.
“Should not the master his pupil
Sometimes chastise when he will not observe, and is stubborn in evil?
If boys were never punished, were thoughtlessness always passed over,
Were bad behavior allowed, how would our juveniles grow up?”
These plausible explanations were not without their effect, and when Grimbart went on to declare that, ever since Nobel proclaimed a general truce and amnesty among all the animals of the forest, Reynard had turned hermit and spent all his time in fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, the complaint was about to be dismissed.
[Sidenote: Story of Henning and the Cock.] Suddenly, however, Henning the cock appeared, followed by his two sons, Kryant and Kantart, bearing the mangled remains of a hen upon a bier. In broken accents the bereaved father related how happily he had dwelt in a convent henyard, with the ten sons and fourteen daughters which his excellent consort had hatched and brought up in a single summer. His only anxiety had been caused by the constant prowling of Reynard, who, however, had been successfully at a distance by the watchdogs. But when the general truce had been proclaimed, the dogs were dismissed. Reynard, in the garb of a monk, had made his way into the henyard to show Henning the royal proclamation with the attached seal, and to assure him of his altered mode of living.
Thus reassured, Henning had led his family out into the forest, where, alas! Reynard was lurking, and where he killed all but five of Henning’s promising brood. They had not only been killed, but devoured, with the exception of Scratch-foot, whose mangled remains were laid at the monarch’s feet in proof of the crime, as was customary in the mediaeval courts of justice.
The king, angry that his truce should thus have been broken, and sorry for the evident grief of the father, ordered a sumptuous funeral for the deceased, and commanded that a stone should be placed upon her grave, bearing the epitaph:
“’Scratch-foot, daughter of Henning, the cock, the best of the hen
tribe.
Many an egg did she lay in her nest, and was skillful in scratching.
Here she lies, lost, alas! to her friends, by Reineke murdered.
All the world should know of his false and cruel behavior,
As for the dead they lament.’ Thus ran the words that were
written.”
[Sidenote: Reynard and the Bear.] Then the king, having taken advice with his council, solemnly bade Brown the bear proceed immediately to Malepartus, Reynard’s home, and summon him to appear at Reynard and court forthwith, to answer the grave charges which had been made against him. But he warned his messenger to behave circumspectly and to beware of the wiles of the crafty fox. The bear rather resented these well-meant recommendations, and, confidently asserting his ability to take care of himself, set out for Reynard’s abode.
On his way to the mountains he was obliged to pass through an arid, sandy waste, and reached Malepartus weary and overheated. Standing before the fortress, which rejoiced in many labyrinthine passages, he loudly made known his errand; and when Reynard, peeping cautiously out, had ascertained that Brown was alone, he hastened out to welcome him.
With great volubility the fox commiserated his long journey, and excused the delay in admitting him under plea of an indisposition caused by eating too much honey, a diet which he abhorred.
At the mere mention of honey the bear forgot all his fatigue, and when his host lamented the fact that he had nothing else to offer him, he joyfully declared no food could suit him better, and that he could never get enough of it.
“’If that is so,’ continued the Red one, ‘I really can serve you,
For the peasant Rüsteviel lives at the foot of the mountain.
Honey he has, indeed, such that you and all of your kindred