No. 51. The Fox Provided.
Reynard’s mediæval celebrity dates certainly from a rather early period. Montflaucon has given an alphabet of ornamental initial letters, formed chiefly of figures of men and animals, from a manuscript which he ascribes to the ninth century, among which is the one copied in our cut No. 51, representing a fox walking upon his hind legs, and carrying two small cocks, suspended at the ends of a cross staff. It is hardly necessary to say that this group forms the letter T. Long before this, the Frankish historian Fredegarius, who wrote about the middle of the seventh century, introduces a fable in which the fox figures at the court of the lion. The same fable is repeated by a monkish writer of Bavaria, named Fromond, who flourished in the tenth century, and by another named Aimoinus, who lived about the year 1,000. At length, in the twelfth century, Guibert de Nogent, who died about the year 1124, and who has left us his autobiography (de Vita sua), relates an anecdote in that work, in explanation of which he tells us that the wolf was then popularly designated by the name of Isengrin; and in the fables of Odo, as we have already seen, this name is commonly given to the wolf, Reynard to the fox, Teburg to the cat, and so on with the others. This only shows that in the fables of the twelfth century the various animals were known by these names, but it does not prove that what we know as the romance of Reynard existed. Jacob Grimm argued from the derivation and forms of these names, that the fables themselves, and the romance, originated with the Teutonic peoples, and were indigenous to them; but his reasons appear to me to be more specious than conclusive, and I certainly lean to the opinion of my friend Paulin Paris, that the romance of Reynard was native of France,[27] and that it was partly founded upon old Latin legends perhaps poems. Its character is altogether feudal, and it is strictly a picture of society, in France primarily, and secondly in England and the other nations of feudalism, in the twelfth century. The earliest form in which this romance is known is in the French poem—or rather poems, for it consists of several branches or continuations—and is supposed to date from about the middle of the twelfth century. It soon became so popular, that it appeared in different forms in all the languages of Western Europe, except in England, where there appears to have existed no edition of the romance of Reynard the Fox until Caxton printed his prose English version of the story. From that time it became, if possible, more popular in England than elsewhere, and that popularity had hardly diminished down to the commencement of the present century.
The popularity of the story of Reynard caused it to be imitated in a variety of shapes, and this form of satire, in which animals acted the part of men, became altogether popular. In the latter part of the twelfth century, an Anglo-Latin poet, named Nigellus Wireker, composed a very severe satire in elegiac verse, under the title of Speculum Stultorum, the “Mirror of Fools.” It is not a wise animal like the fox, but a simple animal, the ass, who, under the name of Brunellus, passes among the various ranks and classes of society, and notes their crimes and vices. A prose introduction to this poem informs us that its hero is the representative of the monks in general, who were always longing for some new acquisition which was inconsistent with their profession. In fact, Brunellus is absorbed with the notion that his tail was too short, and his great ambition is to get it lengthened. For this purpose he consults a physician, who, after representing to him in vain the folly of his pursuit, gives him a receipt to make his tail grow longer, and sends him to the celebrated medical school of Salerno to obtain the ingredients. After various adventures, in the course of which he loses a part of his tail instead of its being lengthened, Brunellus proceeds to the University of Paris to study and obtain knowledge; and we are treated with a most amusingly satirical account of the condition and manners of the scholars of that time. Soon convinced of his incapacity for learning, Brunellus abandons the university in despair, and he resolves to enter one of the monastic orders, the character of all which he passes in review. The greater part of the poem consists of a very bitter satire on the corruptions of the monkish orders and of the Church in general. While still hesitating which order to choose, Brunellus falls into the hands of his old master, from whom he had run away in order to seek his fortune in the world, and he is compelled to pass the rest of his days in the same humble and servile condition in which he had begun them.
A more direct imitation of “Reynard the Fox” is found in the early French romance of “Fauvel,” the hero of which is neither a fox nor an ass, but a horse. People of all ranks and classes repair to the court of Fauvel, the horse, and furnish abundant matter for satire on the moral, political, and religious hypocrisy which pervaded the whole frame of society. At length the hero resolves to marry, and, in a finely illuminated manuscript of this romance, preserved in the Imperial Library in Paris, this marriage furnishes the subject of a picture, which gives the only representation I have met with of one of the popular burlesque ceremonies which were so common in the middle ages.
No. 52. A Mediæval Charivari.
Among other such ceremonies, it was customary with the populace, on the occasion of a man’s or woman’s second marriage, or an ill-sorted match, or on the espousals of people who were obnoxious to their neighbours, to assemble outside the house, and greet them with discordant music. This custom is said to have been practised especially in France, and it was called a charivari. There is still a last remnant of it in our country in the music of marrow-bones and cleavers, with which the marriages of butchers are popularly celebrated; but the derivation of the French name appears not to be known. It occurs in old Latin documents, for it gave rise to such scandalous scenes of riot and licentiousness, that the Church did all it could, though in vain, to suppress it. The earliest mention of this custom, furnished in the Glossarium of Ducange, is contained in the synodal statutes of the church of Avignon, passed in the year 1337, from which we learn that when such marriages occurred, people forced their way into the houses of the married couple, and carried away their goods, which they were obliged to pay a ransom for before they were returned, and the money thus raised was spent in getting up what is called in the statute relating to it a Chalvaricum. It appears from this statute, that the individuals who performed the charivari accompanied the happy couple to the church, and returned with them to their residence, with coarse and indecent gestures and discordant music, and uttering scurrilous and indecent abuse, and that they ended with feasting. In the statutes of Meaux, in 1365, and in those of Hugh, bishop of Beziers, in 1368, the same practice is forbidden, under the name of Charavallium; and it is mentioned in a document of the year 1372, also quoted by Ducange, under that of Carivarium, as then existing at Nîmes. Again, in 1445, the Council of Tours made a decree, forbidding, under pain of excommunication, “the insolences, clamours, sounds, and other tumults practised at second and third nuptials, called by the vulgar a Charivarium, on account of the many and grave evils arising out of them.”[28] It will be observed that these early allusions to the charivari are found almost solely in documents coming from the Roman towns in the south of France, so that this practice was probably one of the many popular customs derived directly from the Romans. When Cotgrave’s “Dictionary” was published (that is, in 1632) the practice of the charivari appears to have become more general in its existence, as well as its application; for he describes it as “a public defamation, or traducing of; a foule noise made, blacke santus rung, to the shame and disgrace of another; hence an infamous (or infaming) ballad sung, by an armed troupe, under the window of an old dotard, married the day before unto a yong wanton, in