Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookt it is not transformed. On the other hand, in the story of Beder, Prince of Persia, in the same collection--which, by the way, mentions a magic ring--we find Prince Beder transformed into a white bird, and recovering his shape on being sprinkled with magic water; but he does not speak while so metamorphosed. The story of a boy who understands the language of birds occurs in the Seven Sages, ed. Wright, p. 106; and Mr. Wright shews, in his Introduction, that such oriental tales are of great antiquity, and known in Europe in the thirteenth century. He refers us to an Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, et sur leur Introduction en Europe, by M. Deslongchamps, published in 1838. Cf. Weber, Met. Rom. iii. 137. The reader should not forget the hint in the Notes to the Minor Poems (vol. i. p. 534), that some expressions in the Squieres Tale are taken from the poem of Queen Anelida. With respect to the ending of the Squieres Tale, two attempts at least have been made to complete it. Spenser, in his Faerie Queene (bk. iv. c. 2. 30-3. 52), accounts for the fighting for Canacee, but he omits all about Cambinskan and the Falcon. Another ending was written by John Lane[157] in 1630, and is contained in MSS. Douce 170 and Ashmole 53, in the Bodleian Library. Warton (Observations on the Fairy Queen, p. 214) justly calls it a weak performance. Dr. Furnivall has printed the whole of this poem, in twelve tedious parts, for the Chaucer Society; and the result shews that Lane's work is bad almost beyond belief. It is the duty of every man who values his time to decline to read 237 pages of such stuff as this:-- Algarsif at his broother shooke his pike: Camballo stowtlie did att him the like; naie, quicklie, with a shock of pikes, chargd home, theare right to make his rendeuous first known: gainst whome Algarsif rann from thambuscado, to prove his ernest provd no French bravado.' Since I wrote the preceding remarks, which were formerly printed in my edition of The Prioresses Tale, &c., for the Clarendon Press, Mr. Clouston has taken up the subject in a very exhaustive manner. I must therefore refer the reader to his essay 'On the Magical Elements in Chaucer's Squire's Tale, with Analogues,' printed for the Chaucer Society in 1889. He there deals fully with the subjects of Magic Horses, Chariots, &c., Magic Mirrors and Images, Magic Rings and Gems, the Language of Animals, and Magic Swords and Spears. He lays particular stress upon the Romance of Cléomadès and Claremonde above mentioned, to which Keightley had already drawn attention. 'The French prose version, called L'Histoire et Chronique du vaillant Chevallier Cléomadès et la belle Claremonde, appeared about the year 1480[158]; and of this work Count Tressan published an _extrait_ in the Bibliothèque des romans, April 1777, t. i. 169 ff.; see also Oeuvres du Conte de Tressan, Paris, 1822, t. iii. pp. 255-298. Of this abstract Keightley gives an English translation in his Tales and Popular Fictions, pp. 43-69. 'Keightley has remarked that the name of Claremonde occurs in the romance of Valentine and Orson, it being that of the lady beloved by the valiant hero, and also that a magic horse figures in the same work; but he has strangely overlooked a number of incidents which have evidently been adopted from the story of Cléomadès and Claremonde. The magic horse is described in the 21st chapter of a chap-book version of The Renown'd History of Valentine and Orson, the two Sons of the Emperor of Greece. 'I quite agree with M. Paris in considering that the origin of the French metrical romance was Morisco-Spanish, whether Adenès derived his materials from Blanche of Castile, or otherwise.' With respect to the story of the Falcon, Mr. Clouston observes: 'The scene between Canacé and the Falcon is essentially Asiatic, and Warton's complaint that the bird is represented as talking of Troilus, Paris, and Jason, is utterly absurd. It is, in fact, an Indian fable, with a bird talking out of the Grecian classics instead of out of the Vedas and the Shastras. If the poet had any purpose in writing the story of the deserted Falcon, it could only have been that of any Asiatic fabler, namely, to convey certain moral lessons through the feigned speech of a bird. That Chaucer had before him, or in his memory, a model for his story of the Falcon is not only possible but highly probable. There exists a somewhat analogous ancient Indian tale of two birds--a male parrot and a hen-maina, a species of hill-starling--in which, however, it is the male bird who is distressed at the female's treachery, and is about to cast himself into the midst of a forest-fire, when he is rescued by a benevolent traveller, to whom he relates the story of his woes. This tale forms the third of the Twenty-five Tales of a Vampyre (Vetála panchavinsati), and may be found in Tawney's translation of the Kathá Sarit Ságara, vol. ii. pp. 245-250.' It is necessary to mention here that Prof. Brandl, of Göttingen, in Englische Studien, xii. 161, actually propounded a theory that Cambinskan was intended to represent Edward III., and that Canacee does not mean 'the king's daughter,' as Chaucer (who might be supposed to know) expressly says, but his daughter-in-law Constance, second wife of John of Gaunt; with much more to the same effect, all purely gratuitous. Fortunately, his theory was promptly shewn to be untenable by Prof. Kittredge, of Harvard University, in a paper which also appeared in Englische Studien, xiii. 1; and we may dismiss this dream as being wholly unfounded. The Tale was written after Edward's death. § 69. WORDS OF THE FRANKELEYN. See F 673-708. In at least fifteen MSS. and in the black-letter editions, the Squieres Tale is followed by the Marchantes Tale. In order to suit this arrangement, the word _Frankeleyn_ in F 675 is altered to _Marchant_. So again, in ll. 696 and 699. In the last case, the rime is affected; and, to bring this right, the words _the frankeleyn_ are altered to _the marchant, certeyn_. Tyrwhitt well points out two grave objections to this arrangement. The former is, that, in this case, the Marchant is made (in F 682, 690) to say that he has a son who has learnt to play at dice, and only a few lines further on (in E 1233-4) that he has been married just two months, and _not more_! The latter is, that the sentiments attributed to the speaker, who laments his son's extravagance and praises 'gentillesse,' are suitable to the character of the honest and hospitable Frankeleyn, but not to that of the Marchant, if we may judge of his sentiments from the loose character of his Tale. In the same editions and in most of the MSS., the Frankeleyns Tale follows the Clerkes Tale, causing further trouble. The editions also transpose one of the stanzas in Chaucer's Envoy to the Clerkes Tale, so as to make E 1195-1200 come at the end. They then insert the (genuine) stanza printed in the footnote to vol. iv. p. 424, and afterwards pass on at onc |