SOURCE: Walsh, Elizabeth. “John Lydgate and the Proverbial Tiger.” In The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature, edited by Larry D. Benson, pp. 291-303. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

[In the following essay, Walsh provides an analysis of several of Lydgate's works to show that his use of recurrent tiger imagery marks a distinction between Christian and pagan heroes.]

In his collection of Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases B. J. Whiting gives fourteen entries having the tiger as the central focus of the expression.¹ The fourteen entries contain fifty-four citations. In his survey of Scottish proverbs² he lists seven tiger entries which include eight citations, three of which have been repeated in the larger work. Hence, there are fifty-nine references in all. Of these, forty are drawn from the works of John Lydgate, the monk of Bury St. Edmunds. The greater part are contained in poems which are either translations or medieval adaptations of classical works.

In all probability, however, the poet had never seen a tiger nor had many of his contemporaries. The illuminators of medieval bestiaries depicted a charming creature with the head of a wolf (dog?), the paws and tail of a lion, the neck of a horse. One of the clearest and most finely delineated is that found in Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 53. The picture illustrates the traditional legend of the tiger and its cubs. The story, found ultimately in Pliny, Ambrose, and Isidore, was an elaboration of the tiger's famed swiftness. So swift was the tiger that it could overtake a hunter riding the fleetest of horses. If a tiger discovered that some thief on horseback had stolen its cubs, it would pursue and overtake him. The thief, seeing the superior speed of the beast, would cast behind him a glass sphere to distract the animal. The tiger, mistaking its own image in the ball for its cub, would give up the pursuit, but upon realizing its mistake it would renew the chase and again overtake the horseman.³

The popularity of the tale is evident from its appearance in art and literature. University Library MS, Cambridge Ii 4 26, a twelfth-century manuscript,⁴ contains a miniature similar to that in CCC Cambridge 53. The story appears in the margins of the Queen Mary Psalter and is carved on one of the misericords in Chester Cathedral. The author of Kyng Alisaunder recalls the legend in describing the savage intensity of Alexander's army marching to Arabia to attack Darius;⁵ Chaucer utilizes the tale to illustrate the ferocity of Arcite;⁶ Lydgate refers to the tradition in “Reson and Sensuallyte,” a dream vision (c. 1408) attributed to him in the manuscripts of the poem.⁷ The poet is in the Garden of Pleasure engaged in a game of chess with a fair Maid. The third of his pawns, Sweetness of Thought, bears a shield upon which is emblazoned a tiger:

And in hys shelde he bare a beste,
A Tigre, which that ys so rage
And a best[e] most savage,
Swyfes[t] to renne for his pray.
Whan his fovnes be lad away,
He ys deceyved by merours
Which the hountys for socours
Caste in the way[e] for a treyne.

(6974-81)

Thus Lydgate knew of the tiger from legendary sources. It would be difficult to believe that he had not also encountered tigris in classical literature. Horace recalls Orpheus' fabled power to tame “tigris rabidosque leones.”⁸ Virgil describes Turnus rushing towards Pandarus “immanem veluti pecora inter inertia tigrim.”⁹ Translated by Gavin Douglas “as ane rageand wyld tygyr onstabill,” it is this quality of the tiger which most of Lydgate's proverbs express. What took root in the popular mind was not the image of the tiger as a symbol of paternal fidelity, as suggested by Ambrose, not the symbol of a man seduced by the pleasures of the world as reasoned Pierre de Beauvais,¹⁰ but the simpler and evidently more realistic understanding of the tiger found in classical literature.

Nevertheless it was John Lydgate who crystallized this view in English literature. The tiger, to him, was a mad, raging, fierce old fellow.¹¹ Although the actual Bengal tiger was not known in heraldry until the end of the eighteenth century, the notion of the animal's ferocity surpassed that of his swiftness in the later Middle Ages. No doubt Lydgate expressed the colloquial understanding of the beast's attributes current in the fifteenth century. But it may well be, too, that his expression was influential in establishing the reputation of the tiger.

Although most of his tiger images are found in works of classical origin, in most cases the figure seems to have been Lydgate's own contribution. That he attached a certain weight to the tiger metaphor becomes evident when one analyzes the texts and discovers that it marks a distinction between Christian and pagan heroes. A survey of these texts may clarify this point.

Lydgate's Troy Book, begun in 1412 and completed eight years later, contains several proverbial tigers. The poet begins his account of the Trojan War by recounting the ancestry of the Myrmidons who were descended from King Peleus. Peleus was hostile to his nephew Jason and plotted to do away with him. The author describes the king as “Dowble as a tygre sliȝly to compasse” (I.217).¹² The imagery is not in Guido delle Colonne's version of the story, which was Lydgate's source.¹³ Somewhat later Hercules is likened to a tiger. At Jason's request King Peleus and the Greeks have attacked the city of Troy. The Trojan king Lamedon is terrified to see the archetypal hero coming into the field:

Liche a lyoun, wood and dispitous,
Or a tigre in rage furious.

(I.4283-84)

In Guido (Book IV, p. 41) Hercules is described: “… ille vir strenuus tam fortis tam audax Hercules supervenit …”

In Book II when Paris and the Trojans have plundered the Temple of Venus and carried off Helen as well, the Greek soldiers waken and give battle:

Þei ran I-fere as tigres al vnmylde,
Liche wode liouns or þis boris wylde.

(3857-58)

The similes are not in Guido (VII, p. 75).

In Book III Troilus, who “By his knyȝthod kylled many Greke,” is described as “a tigre, gredy on his pray,” (991). Guido reads “… in qua erat Troylus, qui Grecos mirabiliter opprimebat …” (XV, p. 136). In the same battle Archelaus, the king of Boetia, “Lik a tigre or a wylde bore,” (1142) fights fiercely against the Trojans. Again the imagery is Lydgate's for Guido reads: “Contra quos rex Prothenor et rex Archelaus cum gente sua de regno Boecie exiuerunt. Durum bellum committitum inter eos” (XV, p. 137). Later in the battle Hector, his horse having been killed, defends himself “lik a tigre in Ynde” (1394).¹⁴ Later in Book III the two manly champions Hector and Ajax encounter one another:

Eueryche on oþer lik tigers or lyons
Be-gan to falle, and proudly to assaille.

(2054-55)

Guido: “Committitur ergo durum prelium inter duos tam fortes sed …” (XV, p. 146). In the following battle Hector and Achilles meet “in her fiȝt … / Like wode tigres, or bores in her rage,” (2468-69). As the story nears its climax and Hector and Achilles have vowed to fight to the death, everyone begins to fear for Hector's life. One day as he is about to ride to battle his father Priam forces him to dismount. The knight obeys but longs to be in the field. The poet inserts a reference to the tiger of the bestiaries:

So inwardly sterid was his blod,
Þat like a tigre or a lyoun wood,
Þat were deprived newly of hir praye,
Riȝt so firde he al þat ilke day,—
Or liche a bore þat his tusshes whette,
While þe Grekis and þei of Troye mette.

(5137-42)

Whereas in Guido: “Qui demum in multa contradiccione iussui patris obtemperans redit invitus …” (XXI, p. 173). However, after the death of Margariton, his bastard brother, Hector “More furious þan tigre or lyoun” (5246) dons his armor and goes to his last battle. When Achilles sees the harm Hector is doing to the Greek forces he becomes outraged and waxes “as wood / As boor or tigre in her cruel mood” (5297-98). Guido reads: “Achilles autem furibundus irruit in Hectorem …” (XXII, p. 175).

Warriors continue to fight with animallike fierceness in Book IV. Deiphobus, beholding Ajax' slaying of Cecilian, a son of Priam, grows “Woder anon þan tigre or lyoun,” (1271). Later Troilus, surrounded by the Greeks, displays his manliness: he “As a tigre stondeth at diffence” (2724). The Queen of the Amazons, too, can fight like a beast. Enraged by the death of Hector, Penthesilea attacks the Greeks in vengeance:

And like a tigre in his gredinesse,
Or like, in soth, to a lyounesse,
Þat day she ferde, ridynge vp & doun
Among þe Grekis.

(3901-04)

Challenged by the queen, Pyrrhus “wexen gan as wood / As any tigre, boor, or wood lyoun—” (4158-59).

The tiger was also an image of cruelty. Polyxena, condemned to death by the Greeks, prays to the gods for mercy and denounces those who are about to slay her as “more cruel … / For lak of pite, þan tigre or lyoun” (6787-88). Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, then slays her, and the author comments on his lack of humanity:

I am astonid, sothly, whan I rede,
After hir deth, how it dide hym good,
Like a tiraunte to cast abrood hir blood,
Or a tigre, þat can no routhe haue,
Rounde enviroun aboute his fadris graue.

(6860-64)

This personal comment is not in Guido (XXXI, p. 237).

Book V, which concludes Lydgate's Troy Book, deals with the aftermath of the war and the Greeks' homeward journeys, including the fateful return of Agamemnon. In a speech prefatory to describing the death of the king, Lydgate beseeches Almighty God to punish murderers, especially those so bold as to slay a king:

Suffre non swiche to live vp-on þe grounde—
Wers þan tigre or Cerberus þe hounde.

(1059-60)

In an ensuing episode Diomedes is as angry as a tiger when King Telephus slays his brother-in-law Assandrus (1264-65). Finally Pyrrhus is again compared to a tiger when he is about to slay King Atastus (2577-78), who is subsequently saved through the pleading of his wife.

The Siege of Thebes (c. 1421), Lydgate's contribution to the Canterbury Tales, is the tragic story of Oedipus. According to the editors of the work, his principal source was the medieval French Roman de Thèbes written c. 1150; his most immediate source was Le Roman de edipus, a prose version of the former.¹⁵ As in the Troy Book the use of the tiger simile seems to be the English poet's invention.

Among the guests (all of whom augured ill for the kingdom) at the wedding of Edippus and Iocasta was

Cruel mars as eny Tygre wood,
Brennyng Ire of unkynde blood.

(867-868)

These guests are not mentioned in the Roman de Thèbes.¹⁶ After the death of Edippus his sons cast his body into a pit Lydgate comments on their unnatural cruelty: “Wers than serpent or eny tigre wood” (1013). The editors note that this was not in the source nor is it in the Roman de Thèbes. Later, when Polyneices and Tydeus have both been driven by a storm to seek shelter on the same porch, a fight between them is described. They draw their swords and rush upon each other “In her fury lik Tygres or lyouns” (1356). The author of the Roman used a different simile:

Al porche sont li dui baron,
Combatent sei come dragon.

(723-724)

In the continuing description of the battle the simile of a lion is used:

Ensemble jostent li baron,
Requierent sei come leon.

(765-766)

Finally the two cursed brothers slay each other in mortal combat. They attack one another “lik two Tygres in her rage wood” (4274). In describing the battle the monk considerably expanded his source.

The Fall of Princes (c. 1439) is Lydgate's paraphrase of Laurence de Premierfait's Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes, a French prose redaction of Boccaccio's De Casibus virorum illustrium (1355-1360). Again the poet's free use of his sources can be seen in the tiger images. In recounting the fortunes of King Minos, King of Crete, Lydgate tells of Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, King of Megara. This king aided the Athenians against Minos, but Scylla fell in love with the Cretan king and conspired in her own father's death. The poet takes the occasion to remark on the strange behavior of the young woman:

But offte it fallith, that creatures sclendre,
Vnder a face off angelik lokyng,
Been verrai wolues outward in werkyng.
Eek vnder colour off ther port femynyne,
Summe be founde verray serpentyne,
Lambis in shewyng, shadwid with meeknesse,
Cruel as tigres, who doth to hem offence.

(I.2509-15)¹⁷

The text of Laurence quoted by Bergen reads simply:

… mais apres ce que Nisus roy des mesgarensoys fut occis mo yennant le barat de sa fille cilla.

(IV, p. 148)

In retelling the story of Oedipus Lydgate again uses the tiger image to describe the ferocity with which his sons fought one another (I.3732-33). Another woman with tigerlike qualities was Queen Olympias who, in Lydgate's eyes, becomes a paradigm of the cruelty of all women. Wife of Philip of Macedon and mother of Alexander the Great, she defamed the body of her murdered husband and honored that of his murderer. The monk asserts:

What malis may, yif it be declared,
Vnto the malis of wommen be compared?
I speke of them that be malicious
And list of custum for to be vengable:
Among a thousand oon may be vertuous,
And in too thousand sum oon is merciable;
But when thei been of rancour vntretable,
Ther is no tigre mor cruel dout[e]les,
Record I take off Olympiades.

(II.2499-57)

The commentary on the cruelty of women is contained in Laurence:

Ie dis certes que il nest chose si cruelle comme est couraige de femme courroucee. Et qui pis est ainsi comme la maniere des femmes est plus cruelle que de toutes les bestes sauluaiges …

(IV, p. 217)

But the tiger is Lydgate's. Cleopatra's second husband was also known for his cruelty, and Lydgate compares him, too, to tiger. By his marriage to the queen, Euergetes became lord of Egypt, but his title was no guarantee of virtue, for on the day of his marriage “lik a tigre” he slew her eldest son (II.2905).

Another work of Lydgate's dealing with classical lore is The Serpent of Division (1422), the only well-authenticated prose work of the monk. In actuality it is a treatise written shortly after the death of Henry V when, because of the youth of Henry VI, civil war was a real possibility. Lydgate utilizes the history of Julius Caesar to illustrate the dangers of civil dissension. In describing Caesar's conquest of Britain the author tells of fighting between the Roman and the brother of the British king Cassibelan. The two warriors “ferden as Tigres and lions, eueryche wowndinge other full mortally”; but by the perversity of Fortune Caesar killed the Briton and gained sway over the land.¹⁸

For the most part the tiger similes in the above passages convey some rather unpleasant aspects of human nature: tigers are furious, harsh, greedy, mad, cruel, merciless, deceitful. Yet Lydgate has used the image of the beast to describe both heroes and villains, the honorable and the dishonorable.

These images do not appear only in works dealing with classical subjects. Lydgate also made use of tiger images in his religious poems; in these, however, the tiger image is always used to characterize the enemies of God. Pagan heroes may at times have fought like tigers, but Christian heroes did not. In the year when Henry VI celebrated Christmas at Bury (1433) the Abbot requested the monk to compose a poetic version of the life of St. Edmund, the martyred king of East Anglia and patron saint of the monastery. In the poem the Danish princes who come to Anglia seeking revenge for the death of their father begin to plunder and murder. They are described as “woode prynces,” who, contrary to the laws of God and nature:

Be title of wil, as any tigres fel,
To moordre and robbe spared no creature.

(311-312)¹⁹

Later in the story one of these sons, Hyngwar, demands that Edmund forsake the Christian faith and yield his kingdom. The saint refuses, and when the messenger returns to Hyngwar the Dane responds “as any tigre wood,” proceeding to besiege the king's castle (654-655). But Edmund has learned the price of war and will not take up arms. His reward is the crown of martyrdom.

Two other martyrs eulogized by the poet are Saints Albon and Amphabel. Written in 1439, St. Albon and Amphabel is the story of two Britons who were converted and later martyred in the time of Diocletian. The infidels, both Romans and Britons, are likened to tigers. In Book Two Lydgate relates how Albon, converted by Amphabel, is sought in Verolamy (a town in Britain) by the Romans:

For whiche agaynst hym so obstynate they stode
Lyke wylde boores or tygyrs in theyr rage,
Vengeable of herte, furyous and wode …

(I.849-851)²⁰

When he is about to be slain the people who have come to see his execution begin to suffer from thirst. At the saint's prayer a clear stream of water gushes forth for which the pagans thank the sun. Lydgate admonishes their blindness:

O most unhappy, o people ungratious,
Worse than beastis, o voyde of all reason,
O cruell tygrys, o wolfes furyous,
O folysshe asses …

(II. 1724-27)

Book Three relates the martyrdom of Amphabel. Through the influence of these saints many Britons have been converted. When the pagans learn this they threaten the converts with death unless they worship the pagan gods. The Christians refuse, and the pagans fall upon them “Lyke tygrys fell, vengeable as lyons” (III.276). The same imagery is used to describe the pagans' ferocity in lines 990 and 1131.

The image is used in similar fashion in “The Fifteen Ooes of Christ,” a hymn in honor of the sorrows of Christ. The poet compares his Lord's enemies to fierce beasts: “Fersere than Tygrees, woder than lyowns” (130).²¹

In another of his minor poems, “Horns Away,” Lydgate picks up the antifeminist theme. He delivers an admonition to women which is just the contrary of Chaucer's exhortation at the end of the Clerk's Tale. The monk of St. Edmunds advises women to follow the example of simple maidens such as the Virgin Mary and cast away all horns. The poet laments that some women have not the gentility to do away with their horns, which were given to beasts for defense but are unseemly for ladies:

          But arche wives, egre in ther vyolence,
Fers as tygre ffor to make affray,
          They haue despit, and ageyn concyence,
Lyst nat of pryde, ther hornes cast away.

(37-40)²²

William Dunbar's “wedo” too seems to take it for granted that women are “terne” (fierce), but she advises the “tua mariit wemen” to learn and practice the art of deception:

Thought ye be kene, inconstant, and cruell of mynd;
Thought ye as tygris be terne, be tretable in luf.

(260-261)²³

Dunbar's esteem for Lydgate can be surmised from the honorarium given him in “Lament for the Makaris.” The Scottish poet devotes one stanza to mourning the loss of “The noble Chaucer, … / The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre.”²⁴

Thus Lydgate's reputation and influence extended beyond the geographic confines of east Anglia, beyond the era to which he was born. This would seem to be a fitting note upon which to conclude this study of the tiger image in the monk's works. It is interesting to observe, from the study of the preceding texts, that he seems to have discerned three categories of persons comparable to tigers: pagan warriors, enemies of the Church, and women. It seems redundant to say that he did not look upon these tigerlike people very favorably.

And his understanding is, for the most part, our own. Anyone who is “as fierce as a tiger” is to be avoided. Whether Lydgate drew this image from the bestiaries, from seeing or reading of tigers emblazoned on shields, from his study of the classics or of Chaucer, is not evident. What is clear is that he shaped and developed the simile used by his literary predecessor, gave it a greater range of meaning and a wider circulation. He gave expression to the popular understanding of what this fabulous beast—tiger—was. The fact that he seems to have been primarily responsible for the literary establishment of this understanding is significant. Lydgate is generally conceded to have been a minor, though prolific, writer. Yet Professor Whiting's listing of tiger proverbs would indicate that his influence was considerable. This small study may serve to show that the tracking of proverbs, like the tracking of tigers, may prove an adventure wherein one may discover some interesting facts about the course of events—and the coursings of the human mind. It is sometimes the minor figures of literary works and of literary history who play a major role in determining both.

Notes

1. Barlett Jere Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences and Proverbial Phrases from English Writings Mainly before 1500 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). In this study of the proverbial use of the tiger I have confined myself to and allowed myself to be guided by the work done by Professor Whiting. In all probability many more examples of “tiger” passages might be cited. This paper makes no claim to be an exhaustive survey; however, a glance at Professor Whiting's sources gives one reason to hope that, if not exhaustive, the samplings are at least representative.

2. Bartlett Jere Whiting, “Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings from Scottish Writings before 1600,” Part Two, Mediaeval Studies, 13 (1951), 87-164.

3. C. Plinius Secundus, Natural History, Book VIII, chap. xxv; Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiarum, Book XII, Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, vol. LXXXII; Ambrose, Hexameron, VI.4.21 in Sancti Ambrosi Opera, ed. Carl Schenkl, 3 vols. (Prague, 1896-1902).

4. Montague Rhodes James, The Bestiary, Roxburghe Club (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928).

5. Kyng Alisaunder, ed. Geoffrey V. Smithers, Earl English Text Society, 227, 237 (London, 1952, 1957), 1881-86.

6. “The Knight's Tale,” 2626-29, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

7. John Lydgate, Reson and Sensuallyte, ed. Ernst Sieper, Early English Text Society 84, 89 (London, 1901-1903), II, 1ff.

8. “Ars Poetica,” 393, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, rev. 1929). See also Carminum liber III.xi.13, Horace, The Odes and Epodes (London, William Heinemann 1914).

9. Aeneid, IX.728-730, Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

10. Mélanges d'archélogie d'histoire et de littérature, ed. Charles Cahier and Arthur Martin (Paris, 1847-1856), II, 140-142.

11. The only exception I have noted occurs in Lydgate's translation of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pélerinage de vie humaine. In the course of his pilgrimage to the Heavenly City the Pilgrim encounters the goddess of Love, who taunts him and asserts that even if he is “Swyfft as A tygre in rennyng” (13458), he will not escape her as long as he is dominated by her associate Gluttony. In this case Lydgate did translate literally, for the simile was also used by the French poet both in the first and second recensions of his poem. See John Lydgate, The Pilgrim age of the Life of Man from the French of Guillaume de Deguileville ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, Extra Ser. 77, 83, 92 (London, 1899-1904); Guillaume de Deguileville, Le pelerinage de l'homme, Verard (Paris, 1511), fol. lii. See also the first recension, ed. J. J. Stürzinger, Roxburghe Club (London, 1893), p. 331, 10679-82.

12. John Lydgate, Lydgate's Troy Book, ed. Henry Bergen, EETS ES 97, 103, 106, 126 (London, 1906-1935).

13. Guido de Columnis, Historia Destructionis Troiae, ed. Nathaniel Edward Griffin (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936), p. 6.

14. Lydgate may well have borrowed this simile from his acknowledged master. Chaucer, in his response to the Clerk's tale of the patient Griselda, counsels women to be “egre as is a tygre yond in Ynde” (1199).

15. John Lydgate, The Siege of Thebes, ed. Axel Erdmann and Eiler Ekwall, EETS ES 108, 125 (London, 1911, 1930), II, 6-7.

16. Le Roman de Thèbes, ed. Léopold Constans, 2 vols., Société de Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1890).

17. John Lydgate, Lydgate's Fall of Princes, ed. Henry Bergen, EETS ES 121-124 (London, 1924-1927). References are to the EETS volume page, and line numbering.

18. John Lydgate, The Serpent of Division, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken (London, H. Frowde, 1911), p. 54, 17-18.

19. John Lydgate, “S. Edmund und Fremund,” Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden, ed. Carl Horstmann (Heilbronn, 1878), pp. 376-440.

20. John Lydgate, S. Albon und Amphabel, ed. Carl Horstmann (repr. from Festschrift der Königstädtischen Realschule), (Berlin, 1882), p. 41.

21. John Lydgate, “The Fifteen Ooes of Christ,” Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, EETS ES 107 (London, 1911), pp. 238-249.

22. Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, EETS 192 (London, 1934), p. 663.

23. The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. W. Mackay Mackenzie (Edinburgh: Faber and Faber, 1932), p. 91.

24. Ibid., p. 21, 50-51.