SOURCE: "The Homing Instinct: A Folklore Theme in Phaedrus," in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Vol. 23, 1977, pp. 17-31.

[In the following essay, Henderson examines the possible historical conduits by which Phaedrus's literary work might have been dispersed, and suggests that the parallelism of Phaedrus's narratives and modern "analogues " may be based in archetypal structures.]

This paper examines a diffusionist view shared by several classical scholars and folklorists. The 'popular theme' cast into Latin senarii by the fabulist Phaedrus in the early 1st century A.D. which appears in modern editions has, it is as 'Appendix been Perottina' 16 Perry / 14 Poatgage¹ has, it is supposed, been transmitted to modern West Europe, where it is to be identified in a set of subliterary 'versions'. The counter-suggestion made here is that (1) this supposition is methodologically dubious and (2) that a close understanding of the nature and history of Phaedrus' collection of fabulae makes it unlikely. The study is also intended to notice some of the central problems, procedural and practical, which are to be encountered in such investigations into folkloric subliterature.

For information we turn first to 'An analytical survey of Greek and Latin fables in the Aesopic tradition', the massively helpful appendix to Β. Ε. Perry's Babrius and Phaedrus² The numbering as 'AES.544' (p.523) indicates that no 'version' in ancient Greek Aesopic collections or in Greek literature has been found,³ silence here spells the same for the Latin collections. It is unfortunate that Perry's projected volumes of commentary on the texts presented in his 'Aesopica Γ have not appeared: we must simply follow his entry on to Stith Thompson's massive Motif-Index of folkliterature (TMI)⁴, with the references 'K1371.1, 'N721. This, the most influential work of the most renowned scholar in folkliterature,⁵ calls for comment.

The first entry runs: Κ 'Deceptions', 1371 'Bride-stealing', 1 'Lover steals bride from wedding with unwelcome suitor'. This motif need not detain us here. The second reference breaks down as: Ν 'Chance and Fate', 721 'Runaway horse carries bride to her lover. Bridegroom unwittingly hires a horse belonging to his rival for his bride to ride to the wedding. A storm arises and the horse carries her to his master'. The note here gives two references to Joseph Bédier's Les fabliaux (pp.119,473).⁶

'All the Index is attempting is to make a sensible arrangement of such motifs as form the stock-in-trade of narratives over the world.'⁷ Still, it is hard to see how such a rubric as 'Chance and Fate' can either do other than invite chaos or serve as a basis for 'motivai' classification.⁸ On inspection we also find that the specific summary quoted is misleading. Bédier deals with two texts, of which Phaedrus' has no 'horse' and the fabliau concerned, 'Du Vair Palefroy par Huon le Roy', has no 'storm'. The summary, then, is an artificial construct, reminding us that, while 'the system used in the … Motif-Index … is not based on any philosophical principles at all',⁹ Thompson's work is nevertheless the 'epitome of the atomistic emphasis in folklore',¹⁰ rooted in the so-called Finnish 'historical-geographical' method: 'The users of the historical-geographical method attempt to determine the paths of dissemination and the process of development of folkloristic materials. By assembling all the known versions of a particular tale, the folklorist seeks to reconstruct the hypothetical original form of the tale'.¹¹ This 'endless quest for the land of Ur as in Ur-form, or "archetype" in Finnish method parlance' is obsolete, its 'theoretical premises' exploded.¹²

For practical purposes it is perhaps more alarming to reflect that the existence of one of the elements fused in the TMI summary, Phaedrus' contribution, can only be discovered from consultation of Bédier. The practical constraints on TMI, 'in itself quite uncritical of the material involved',¹³ must be clear to its user.

Further dangers inhere in Thompson's techniques of compilation: 'Representative collections from various cultures were gone through, the compendiums of mythology of people through the world, the indexes of the European tales and some of the great Oriental collections, and large numbers of monographs on traditions, legends, exempla, and the traditional literature of the Middle Ages—all these were excerpted and classified'.¹⁴ A Herculean task, but also a procedure with limitations.

TMI in the present case clearly excerpts Les fabliaux via the index provided by Bédier: the listing of 'Du Vair Palefroy' as item 'Cc' on p.473 provides the back-reference to p.l 19. There Bédier argues to the conclusion: 'Ainsi, parmi les fabliaux conserves, cinque ou six au moins, à ma connaissance, sont attestés dans l'antiquité classique'. In this half dozen Bédier includes the poems of Huon and Phaedrus.¹⁵ On the latter he says (p.120): 'Transportez-le, sans y rien modifier d'essentiel, dans un milieu chevaleresque. Transformez seulement l'humble maudet en un noble palefroi, confiez-le à un poète moins désespérément sec que Phèdre ce sera le charmant fabliau d'Huon le Roi.' The claim seems clear and authoritative. But a reading of Les fabliaux shows that Bédier has more to say—or rather unsay—on the subject of Huon and Phaedrus than we can realise via TMI.

Bédier's book was the iconoclastic work of a young man.¹⁶ The remarks quoted occur in a polemical context, disposing posing of the orthodoxy of the day. The central thesis of the first part of the book, 'La question de l'origine et de la propagation des fabliaux' (pp.45ff.), is the refutation of universalistic 'migrational' theories—associated with the name of Theodor Benfey—which supposed that the European fund of tales is traceable to Oriental origins.¹⁷ It has been shown that so far as the fabliau, Bédier's main interest, is concerned, the 'Orientalist' salient under fire was manned by Gaston Paris—dedicatee of Les fabliaux—and by Paris alone among Bédier's contemporaries.¹⁸ Thus the claim to have found half a dozen cases of themes 'attested in classical antiquity' is designed as a (literally) ad hominem argument: it is not a statement of Bédier's own position.

If opportunistic indication of'parallelisms' could substantiate cross-cultural derivation of tales from the East, then Bédier could reply that on the same basis, in so far as his 'five or six' fabliaux had an ancestry, they were traceable a millennium back to classical culture. His conclusion (p.121): 'C'est peu, dira-t-on. Combien donc sont attestés dans l'Orient, de l'Inde à l'Arabie, et de la Perse à la Chine?—Onze.'

But Bédier went on to discredit Orientalist methodology as well as its conclusions. After long argumentation he produced a sceptical 'loi' to cover the whole range of folk-narrative (p.285): 'On peut rechercher l'origine et le propagation d'un conte au cas et au cas seulement où le conte, réduit à sa forme organique, renferme sous cette forme des éléments qui en limitent la diffusion ou la durée. Au contraire si cette forme organique ne renferme que des éléments qui ne supposent aucune condition d'adhésion spéciale—sociale, morale, surnaturelle—le recherche de la propagation et de l'origine de ce conte est vaine, et c'est le cas de tous ceux pour lesquels se bâtissent les théories.' In the second category is included 'Du Vair Palefroy': 'Nous ne saurons jamais ni où, ni quand ils se propagent'.¹⁹

We are now in a position to see that Bédier's scepticism meant that he could not demonstrate derivation of Huon's fabliau from Phaedrus. While he could not countenance a universalistic 'théorie des coincidences accidentelles' (pp.62ff.), he did conceive of folknarrative as an amorphous mass of almost entirely impenetrable communication, in some cases doubtless extending over vast areas and spanning the centuries, but its conduits essentially unchartable.²⁰

On the one hand Les fabliaux commands respect and deserves to be read. It is hardly an exaggeration to see in it the fons et origo of 20th century folkloristics, challenging the 'geographical-historical' approach to vindicate its scientific status²¹ and adumbrating both structural or 'morphological' analysis of folknarrative²² and sociological or 'functionalist' interpretations of culture-bound folklore.²³ And on the other hand folklore methodology has not stood still since 1893, when the theses of Les fabliaux were in all important respects presented in their final form.²⁴ More or less devastating criticisms have of course been formulated over the course of this century. But it is a common experience that the monumental status and impassive style of TMI may serve both to encourage the facile practice of inappropriate excerption and to perpetuate progressively obsolescent conceptions.

'Du Vair Palefroy' has been widely available through its inclusion in the great fabliau collections of Barbazan revised by Méon (1808)²⁵ and of Montaiglon et Raynaud (1872).²⁶ It has been anthologised, translated and reworked.²⁷ Our next information is indeed provided by a recent English translator, Pauline Matarasso.²⁸ We learn from her introduction to The dapple-grey palfrey (p. 83): 'The earliest known version of the story is to be found in an appendix to the fables of Phaedrus, and scholars hold it to be from his pen. There is also a 15th. C. version, entitled De Er(r)ard de Voysines, qui espousa Philomena, which adheres more closely to the Latin original. In between, the tale in one form or another must have featured in many an entertainer's repertory, refashioned each time to suit the audience or the teller's fancy.' This is to repeat the analysis of Langlois, responsible for the editto princeps of the anonymous 15th century nouvelle.²⁹ In the nouvelle we find Huon's 'horse' and Phaedrus' 'storm' are present in the same tale—in accordance with the bastard summary of TMI. Langlois accordingly argues that the unambitious nouvelle draws on an oral tradition traceable back to Phaedrus and that the enterprising entertainer Huon has departed from this.

We have seen the methodological objections to this mode of analysis raised by Bédier.³⁰ Paradoxically, these are ignored by modern contributors, although all start from the discussion in Les fabliaux?³¹ The same problem is involved in the treatment of another subliterary analogue provided by A. H. Krappe.³² Making the point that the 'migratory legend' may on occasion become attached to a locality, Krappe first summarises Phaedrus' poem, then continues (p. 133): 'This story was picked up by a medieval French clerc, Huon le Roi, with considerably more talent than Phaedrus' and the result was transposed into a courtois environment. The two rivals are uncle and nephew;³³ the former gets the better of the latter by a horrible treason of which nothing is said in the ancient story, and the peaceful donkey has been metamorphosed into a palfrey. In this form the tale migrated from France to Germany, carried thither, no doubt, by the medieval minstrels, and as a result it came to be localised at a castle in the Rhine country.' The opening comments derive from Bédier, but the 'Rheinsagen' adds a new item—this time, it seems, 'fakeloric'—to the 'historical-geographical' pattern of diffusion supposed by our contributors.³⁴

The full 'stemma' has, I think, nowhere been assembled: Phaedrus' source (=?)—Phaedrus' poem (1st century A.D., freedman of Augustus, presumably working in Rome)—Huon le Roy (13th century, Picardy)—Anonymous nouvelle (15th century, from the region of Sens to judge from its personnel³⁵)—Rheinsagen (Early 19th century, set in the gorge between Koblenz and Mainz³⁶)—Modern literary revivals, reproductions and translations of 'Du Vair Palefroy' (and of Phaedrus).

It will now be argued that, methodological objections aparts, it is historically unlikely that a conduit, an unbroken line of transmission, could connect the modern texts with Phaedrus' poem. First we must understand how and when the poem reached our editions.

The 'Appendix Perottina' is an entirely artificial as semblage of certain poems excerpted from the 'Epitome fabellarum Aesopi Avieni et Phaedri', the anthology made c.1474 for his nephews' benefit by Nicolai Perotti, scholarly archbishop of Sipontino.³⁷ This contains (roughly) 157 pieces, including most of Avianus, a miscellany of Perottine juvenilia and 32 fables known from books 2 to 5 of Phaedrus as they are recoverable from our principal MS of Phaedrus, the Pithoeanus produced at Rheims in the 9th century,³⁸ and from the testimonia to its gemellus, the Codex Sancti Remigii Remensis, destroyed in the arson of Rheims Abbey in 1774.³⁹ There are besides 32 poems or fragments of Phaedrus which are otherwise lost⁴⁰ (except that in 8 cases much-disfigured versions in the mediaeval prose paraphrases of Phaedrus survive to establish the attribution of the tales to Phaedrus).⁴¹ Editors of Phaedrus therefore excerpt this group of 32 fabulae and print them as an 'appendix' to the Pithoean Phaedrus, keeping the order in which they are found in Perotti's 'Epitome'. The Phaedrian ingredients of the 'Epitome' have been thoroughly jumbled and interspersed with the other elements (e.g. 11 pieces intervene in the 'Epitome' between the poems which we know as 'App.Perott. 15-16 Perry / 13-14 Postgate'). So far as our texts are concerned, we know from the 32 poems of Phaedrus which are preserved in the Pithoeanus that Perotti's versions are severely streamlined by the avuncular anthologist—bowdlerised, simplified, abbreviated. Clearly Perotti's texts which constitute our 'Appendix' are vitiated by the same degree of licence. (There is something to be said for printing Perotti's texts as they stand in the 'Epitome', complete with defective verses, since editors have consistently failed to make it clear that they are doctoring a deliberately insincere witness to Phaedrus' text.) It will later be necessary to suggest where in Phaedrus' original collection of five books our poem once stood: textual criticism is beyond the scope of this paper.⁴²

Here the possible routes by which Phaedrus' theme might have been available to modern tradition are to be considered:

(1) We may feel sure that none of the 'versions' on our 'stemma' is traceable to Perotti's 'Epitome': Perotti evidently discovered an otherwise unknown MS of Phaedrus, more complete than the text of the Pithoean/Remensis stream.⁴³ His 'Epitome' of c.1474 was apparently left literally to rot in waterlogged oblivion in Naples, until disturbed by the collator J. P. D'Orville working on Burman's behalf in the 1720's.⁴⁴ Since scholars of the day supposed that the poems of our 'Appendix' were Perotti's own work, D'Orville's notes on them were suppressed by Burman and the 'Appendix' was left to be rediscovered in the Naples Biblioteca Nazionale in 1808. J. A. Cassitto rushed out a scrappy 'pirate edition' at once;⁴⁵ the brilliant text of the commissioned editor, C. Jannelli, appeared in 1811.⁴⁶ A single poor copy of the 'Epitome', Codex Vat.Lat. (Urbin.) 368 (late 15th century), languished in the Vatican until exhumed by A. Mai towards 1830.⁴⁷

(2) How widely available to tradition was our poem in MSS of Phaedrus' full collection? In the centuries between Avianus, who refers to the five libelli of what was presumably a complete Phaedrus,⁴⁸ and the discovery of the Pithoean MS. by F. Pithou, first edited by brother Pierre in his last months in 1596,⁴⁹ Phaedrus' collection was known and circulating across Europe—but only in the much-reduced and distorted form of the prose paraphrase tradition. This was the product of a decision, taken perhaps in the 5th century or soon thereafter, to assemble a new collection of Aesopic fables from the materials of a complete copy of Phaedrus. Only 'beast-fables' were retained, the order of fables was shuffled, their metrical form lost, the texts progressively re-written, and their Phaedrian parentage forgotten and/or disavowed. Our poem was disqualified as the modern stereotype which equates Aesopica with 'beast-fable' was created by the paraphrasts' selective excerption from Phaedrus.⁵⁰ The paraphrase tradition became the vehicle for the widespread dissemination of the beast-fable in mediaeval culture in Western Europe, essentially unchanged in the first printed edition of Heinrich Stainhöwel (Ulm 1476). This repertory has remained the core of Aesopic collections ever since.⁵¹

All evidence which has been claimed to show knowledge of any poem in Phaedrus' original collection which was not included by the paraphrasts in the 12 centuries between Avianus and the editio princeps of Pithou dissolves entirely on inspection.⁵² Thus a conduit between Huon le Roy or his source and a text of Phaedrus' poem could only depend on the handful of MSS in monastery libraries: of those known, the Pithoean/Remensis stream at Rheims had lost the poem by the 9th century; we do not know how complete was the ancestor of our small fragment of book I preserved in 'P. Danielis schedae' (Codex Reg.Lat.1616 Q23), a 9th century parchment from St. Benoît-sur-Loire ransomed by Daniel in the Huguenot sack of Fleury monastery in 1562,⁵³ a 9th century breviary of the library of Abbot Isghter mentions 'Fabulae Aviani et Esopi et Phedri et Allexandri et Didimi',⁵⁴ otherwise we know only that the mysterious MS available to Perotti and its ancestors preserved our poem. It seems likely that Phaedrus' MSS sheltered unread in a very few monastery libraries.

(3) Did Phaedrus' poem enter oral tradition in Italy or Gaul in the centuries between their publication and their refuge in the monasteries? Evidence for the circulation of the collection in antiquity is confined to a probable citation by Martial,⁵⁵ Avianus' notice⁵⁶ and the existence of our streams of MSS tradition. We will make poor bricks of this straw. We may instead examine the tone of its author's work, his intended public and—perhaps—the cultural parameters within which Roman poetry operated. Full discussion is impossible here, but a sketch may suffice.

Phaedrus' fabulae were produced by an imperial librarian, archivist or tutor⁵⁷ as a modest literary extension of the generic range of Latin poetry;⁵⁸ the collection was to be an oddity in the reading-diet of some eccentric few with a taste for sub-literature;⁵⁹ redundant in the nursery and unsuitable for school use,⁶⁰ the fables were caught up inside the esoteric range of a venner culture's poetry. We may suspect that popular dissemination of material from Phaedrus' collection first occurred when the Church saw a use for his tales—and the new prose paraphrases were copied and re-copied across Christendom: at that stage, as we have seen, poems such as ours 'fell by the wayside'.

(4) Did Phaedrus himself pick up a tale from oral tradition in Italy which continued to live and travel until it reached Huon le Roy after 12 centuries? A complicated investigation into the make-up of Phaedrus' collection, with unorthodox conclusions, must be summarised here. The likelihood is that Phaedrus' 'Aesopic' source, a Hellenistic collection which may have been compiled in the 3rd century, differed from the extant Greek collections in including a much wider range of story. We must be careful not to impose any conception of generic propriety of our own on to the material.⁶¹

Nevertheless it is probable that our poem, together with the rest of the 'Appendix', once stood in one of the later books in Phaedrus' oeuvre⁶² and by this stage Phaedrus is to all appearances introducing on his own initiative an array of themes from non-Aesopic sources—noticeably three historical anecdotes (a brace of 'Simonidea', 4.23, 26 Perry / 4.22, 25 Postgate, and a confrontation between 'Menander and Demetrius', 5.1), but also a number of themes at least reminiscent of Hellenistic rhetoric and gnomology (e.g. the epideixis of 'Kairos', 5.8, and the 'Allegory of Tartarus', App.Perott. 7 Perry / 5 Postgate). Phaedrus has also taken the decision already in his second book to include the odd Italian anecdote, picked up and embellished from oral tradition (2.5, 3.10, 5.7, App.Perott. 10 Perry / 8 Postgate). Is it possible to decide whether our poem is to be located among Phaedrus' inherited 'Aisopika' or his Greek-derived additions on the one hand, or his Italian 'Elementi fedriani' on the other? In my own view, internal considerations cannot be used to establish or disprove Greek provenance for our theme.⁶³ But close examination of each individual poem in the collection leads me to the conclusion that Phaedrus draws on material gleaned from Greek sources for all poems except the extended anecdotes already mentioned (featuring respectively Tiberius, Augustus, Bathyllus' piper and Pompey the Great).⁶⁴ On balance, our piece—whether we classify it as 'novella' or 'Wundererzählung'—may be regarded as inherited from Phaedrus' usual Aesopic source, like his 'Aesop anecdotes' (3.5, 4.5, App.Perott. 17, 20 Perry / 15, 18 Postgate), his dramatic articulations of'chriae' featuring Aesop (2.3, 3.3, 3.14, 3.19, App.Perott. 9, 13 Perry / 7, 11 Postgate), his pair of 'Socratic quips' (3.9, App.Perott. 27 Perry / 25 Postgate), and his fairytale 'Wunschmärchen' (App.Perott. 4 Perry / 3 Postgate).

If this analysis is accepted, Phaedrus draws indirectly on Hellenistic Greek folklore of the 3rd century B.C. It follows that to trace Huon's fabliau to the tradition used by Phaedrus involves survival over 15 centuries and a crossing of the (admittedly not unbridgeable) linguistic chasm of the Adriatic.

It is true that the parallelism between Phaedrus' poem and the modern 'analogues' is striking. It may indeed seem to make little difference in practice whether we apply the 'historical-geographical' method—which certainly takes the credit for connecting the comparative material—or the 'morphological' approach. But false notions are endemic in 'motivai' or 'tale type' analysis from which 'structuralists' are free. As we move from the classification of texts as 'variants' on an 'archetype' abstracted from them and proceed to trace out a hypothetical cross-cultural pattern of the 'instantiations' of the 'tale', the shift easily occurs subconsciously from 'the assumption that genres are analytical conceptual categories' to the 'notion that they are forms that have a historic and linguistic reality in cultures and societies'.⁶⁵ The sequential pattern abstracted by 'structural' analysis, by contrast, may be used to identify a 'genre' of folk-communication that exists in oral tradition—and outcrops into literature—rooted in human thought, imagination and expression.⁶⁶ The dynamics and distribution of patterns⁶⁷ and the range of 'allomotifs' which occupy any 'motifemic' slot in a 'genre'⁶⁸ provide insight into multi cultural, cultural, and—perhaps—individual problems and proclivities.⁶⁹

So far as classical studies are concerned, however, it is difficult to capitalize either on scientific 'geographical-historical' or on 'structural' analysis: the material, in particular sociological data on the circulation of lore, is simply not available.⁷⁰ It would, however, be a mistake to subside into traditional literary criticism of Phaedrus as a 'minor Latin poet'. If his work has value it is as a concentration of folk-materials transmitted in a relatively 'pure' medium: we have here the promise of a rare glimpse, if through a glass darkly, into the mental furniture of the man in the ancient (Hellenistic) street. In folkloric subliterature the gulf between literary creator and traditional narrative is at its muddiest. It may be that new techniques for the exploitation of such material as our poem of Phaedrus will emerge from current research into the problems of orality and literacy.⁷¹ At present the most promising approach to Phaedrus' theme on 'The Homing Instinct' seems to be a cross-comparison on structuralist lines with the set of 'analogues', with the limited aim of sharpening our perception of the manipulative quality of the Latin poem.⁷²

Notes

¹ For convenience I give a version, following the text of Β. Ε. Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus (Loeb 1965) 394ff. with one exception: in v.12 I prefer referre (Jannelli) to déferre (Cassitto: ferre is given by Perotti's MS); cf. H. Heubner, 'Zu römischen Dichtern', Hermes 93 (1965) 351 n.l. 'Two young men were after the same girl and the moneybags prevailed over the poor one's pedigree and looks. Came the day set for the wedding and as he found the pain too much to bear the lover took himself off in sorrow to the gardens he had nearby. Just a little way past these stood the tycoon's dazzling country-residence, ready to welcome the girl from her mother's bosom. The house in town, you see, had seemed not quite palatial enough. The wedding-procession unwinds, a thronging crowd hurries up and out ahead Hymenaeus bears the marriage-torch. Now the poor suitor had an ass that used to bring in an income and there he was at his stand on the threshold of the city-gate. It so happened that the girl's people hired him for her, in case the tough going on the journey hurt her tender feet.

Suddenly—Venus' pity at work—winds rock the sky, the heavens crack in peals of thunder and bring on darkness stiff with thick rainclouds. Just as the light is snatched from their eyes a flattening burst of hail disperses the bride's party in alarm, to all points of the compass, forcing them to turn tail and seek shelter, every man for himself.

The ass, he makes off to get the familiar roof nearby over his head and at the top of his voice lets it be known he's home. The slave-lads come running out, see the stunning girl and react with amazement; then they go and tell master. He was there, in his place at table with just a handful of friends round him, trying to charm his love away by piling in the drinks: when the word came elation made a new man of him—with Bacchus plus Venus egging him on he got his wedding-tackle performing right there and then, surrounded by his cheering band of young mates … Mummy and Daddy send out a crier in search of their daughter. The bridegroom is smitten—his wife is lost. But, once the whole story got round the community, everyone agreed in endorsing what had heaven's blessing.'

References to poems of Phaedrus are given as in Perry (Loeb) and J. P. Postgate, Phaedri fabulae Aesopiae (OCT 1919).

²Pp.419-610.

³ Cf. B. E. Perry, 'Aesopica' 1 (1952) viiiff. for the rationale of his repertory of fables.

⁴ Bloomington 1955-8² (= FFC 106-9 Helsinki 1932-6) 1-6.

⁵ Cf. K. & M. Clarke, Introducing folklore (N.Y. 1963) 18: 'Stith Thompson … has long been unofficially known as Mr. Folklore'.

⁶Études de littérature populaire et d'histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge (Paris 1964⁶ (=1894²).

⁷ S. Thompson, 'Narrative motif-analysis as a folklore method', FFC 161 (Helsinki 1955) 6.

⁸ Cf. V. Propp, Morphology of the folktale, tr. L. Scott (Texas 1968) (=IJAL 24.4, pt.3) 10f.

⁹ Thompson, ibid. 6f.

¹⁰ A. Dundes, Analytic essays in folklore (The Hague 1975) 73.

¹¹ Dundes 61; cf. M. S. Edmonson, Lore. An introduction to the science of folklore and literature (N.Y. 1971) 42ff.

¹² Dundes 17.

¹³ TMI 1 11.

¹⁴ Thompson, loc.cit. in n.6.

¹⁵ Also included is Phaedrus' fairytale, App.Perott. 4 Perry / 3 Postgate, as classical analogue to 'Les Quatre Souhaits Saint Martin': see Bédier 212ff. for a pioneer study. The best-known text considered is Perrault's 'Les trois souhaits'.

¹⁶ The first edition, a doctoral thesis, appeared as Bibl. de l'école des hautes études 98. This was toned down for the second edition, see P. Nykrog, 'Les fabliaux', Publ. romanes etfranòais 123 (Geneva 1973²) xxixff. for a full critique (e.g. the first-edition suggestion that investigators into the origins and propagation of folktales would do better to take up stamp-collecting (p.216) was cut out).

¹⁷ Cf. S. Thompson, The folktale (N.Y. 1941) 375f., C. W. von Sydow, 'Selected papers on folklore', ed. L. Bødker (Copenhagen 1948) in A. Dundes, The study of folklore (N.J. 1965) 225f, Edmonson 42. But care is needed here, see Nykrog, xxxiiiff.

¹⁸ Nykrog, xxvff, esp. xxxvi.

¹⁹ On p.284 Bédier places 'Du Vair Palefroy' within social parameters, among tales which 'se rapprochent, par les données psychologiques qu'ils exploitent, des conceptions purement littéraires'. For criticisms see Nykrog, xxxixff (Nykrog himself excludes 'Du Vair Palefroy' from his range of fabliaux, p.xvii).

²⁰ Bédier's own position (p.285), 'Je crois selon l'expression de M. Gaidoz à la polygenése des contes', did not stop him 'admitting, however, that (the French origin of the fabliaux) could not strictly be proved, and that the same type of tale might well arise independently in any place' (von Sydow, 228).

²¹ Cf. K. Krohn, Folklore methodology (Texas 1971) 122, 139f.

²²Propp 13, Dundes 66.

²³ Von Sydow 219ff.

²⁴ Cf. n. 16.

²⁵ M. Méon, Fabliaux et contes des poètes français des XI, XII, XIII, XIV et XV^e siécles publiès par E. Barbazan I (Paris 1808) 164ff.

²⁶ A. de Montaiglon et G. Raynaud, Recueil des fabliaux 1 (Paris 1872) 24ff.

²⁷ Montaiglon et Raynaud II 278 refer to an imitation by 'Imbert'; G. Thiele, 'Phaedrusstudien 2', Hermes 43 (1908) 371 notes W. Hertz, Spielmannsbuch² 201ff., 'Der bunte Zelter'; O. Weinreich, 'Fabel, Aretalogie, Novelle. Beiträge zu Phädrus, Petron, Martial und Apuleius', SHAW 21 (1930-1) 7, 12n. refers to the translation by A. Hausrath & A. Marx, Griechische Mäarchen², 3, and ibid. 3If. examines Julius Grosse, 'Graue Zelter' (Enstanden 1858), cf. Ausgew. Werke 1.2, 124-83; K. Vossler, 'Zu den Anfängen der französischen Novelle', Stud.f.vergleich.Litt.-gesch. 2 (1902) 15f. notes V. Widmann, 'Der Zeiter', in Jung und Alt (Leipzig 1894).

²⁸Aucassin andNicolette and other tales (Penguin Clas-sics 1971).

²⁹ E. Langlois, 'Nouvelles françaises inédites du quinziéme siècle', Bibl.de 15^ème siècle 6 (Paris 1908) 71ff, Anon. nouvelles ap. MS. Vat.Reg.Christ. 1716, ch. 14. His commentary begins (p.73): 'La plus ancienne version de ce conte est une fable de Phèdre … '.

³⁰ Cf. Propp 10f, Dundes 62f, D. Ben-Amos, Folklore genres (Texas 1976) xvff.

³¹ E.g. Langlois, Vossler, the modem editor of the fabliau A. Lângfors, Les classiques françaises du Moyen Age VIII (Paris 1912), and among classical scholars Thiele, Weinreich and S. Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the classical period (Cambridge 1958) 8If. (cf. the criticisms of B. E. Perry in AJPh 81 (1960) 446f.).

³²The science of folklore (London 1974³) (= 1930): cf. Dundes 13.

³³ For this trait cf. Dundes 156, referring to W. O. Farnsworth, Uncle and nephew in the Old French Chansons de Geste (N.Y. 1913).

³⁴ See K. Simrock, Rheinsagen aus dem Munde des Volks und deutscher Dichter (Bonn 1841) 215f. (no.98): the song is attributed to A. von Stolterfoth, whether as composèr or collector, non liquet.

³⁵ See Langlois.

³⁶ Simrock, Introduction: the material is arranged to take the reader on a 'romantic' trip up the Rhine.

³⁷ See R. P. Oliver, 'Perotti's Cornucopiae', TAPhA 78 (1947) 376ff., esp. 386f.

³⁸ Cf. U. Robert, Les fables de Phèdre. Edition paléographique publiée d'après le MS. Rosanbo (Paris 1893) 23f; now in the Pierpont Morgan Library (M.A.906), cf. Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus cii.

³⁹ Four collations provide our testimonia: Sirmond's, published in the editions of N. Rigault (1617, 1630), cf. H. Omont in CRAIBL 1912, 11; Gude's, published in Burman's edition of 1698, cf. L. Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins I (Paris 1883) 74f.; Roche's, published by E. Chatélain, 'Un nouveau document sur le codex Remensis de Phèdre', RPh 11 (1887) 8Iff.; the notes made by Dom. Vincent, librarian at Rheims, five years before the fire, cf. P. von Premerstein, 'Eine neue Fascimile der Reimser Hdschr. des Phaedrus und Querolus', WS 19 (1897) 258ff., Hervieux 1.64f.

⁴⁰ Oliver 394: 'It may be taken for granted that Perotti was unaware of the unique value of the MS of Phaedrus that he had used'; in later work on his mammoth Cornucopiae, 'he simply did not use a MS which he must have had at hand'.

⁴¹ The long dispute over the authenticity of the poems in the 'Appendix' just failed to survive the 19th century, cf. Oliver 389f., G. Moroncini, 'Sull' autenticità delle favole di Fedro', RFIC 23 (1895) 23ff.

The only scholarly edition of the paraphrases, G. Thiele's massive Der lateinische Äsop des Romulus und die Prosa-Fassungen des Phaedrus, (Heidelberg 1910), is unfortunately based on a misbegotten theory: for their status cf. C. Zander, 'De generibus et libris paraphrasium Phaedrianarum', Acta Univ.Lund. 33 (1897) and 'Phaedrus solutus vel Phaedri fabulae novae XXX', Skr.utgiv.av humanist. Vetenskappsamfund.i.Lund 3 (1921).

⁴² Perotti has, as was his usual practice, suppressed Phaedrus' 'moral'. Scholars have supposed lacunae in the text, either misunderstanding the mechanics of the plot or wishing Phaedrus to be more explicit: see Heubner 349ff.

⁴³ For a contemporary's just praise of Perotti's industrious and excited research see Oliver 383 and n.25 (Raphaelis Volterranus).

⁴⁴ Cf. Hervieux 1.101f., A.Guaglianone, Phaedri Augusti liberti liber fabularum (sic) (Turin 1969) Praef.xixff., referring to his article in Att. Ace.Pont, n.s.7 (1957) 231ff.

⁴⁵Jul. Phaedri fabularum liber novus e M.S. cod. Perottino regiae bibliothecae nunc primum edidit J. A. Cassittus (Naples 1808).

⁴⁶Codex Perottinus ms. regiae bibliothecae Neapolitanae … digestus et editus a Cataldo Jannellio eiusdem regiae bibliothecae scriptore (Naples 1811).

⁴⁷Classicorum auctorum e Vaticanis codicibus editorum tomus III, curante Angelo Mai (Rome 1831) 285f., cf. Hervieux 1.133ff., A. Guaglianone in GIF 2 (1948) 131ff.

⁴⁸ Fab.Praef. Cf. the explicit of the Remensis (teste Vincent): 'Phaedri Aug. liberti Liber Quintus explicit feliciter'.

⁴⁹Phaedri Aug. liberti fabularum aesopiarum libri V, nunc primum in lucem editi (Troyes 1596). cf. Hervieux 1.34ff.

⁵⁰ The only exceptions are the misogynist themes of App.Perott. 15,29 Perry / 13,27 Postgate, which form a thematic sequence after App.Perott. 11 Perry / 9 Postgate in Romulus 3.8-10!

⁵¹ Cf. Hervieux 1 317f, Thiele, op.cit. in n.41, Einleit, 152. For two influential translations see J. Jacobs, Caxton's Aesop, the fables of Aesop as first published by William Caxton in 1484 (London 1889) 1-2, B. Holbek, Aesops levned og fabler; Christien Pedersens oversnettelse af Stainhoewels Aesop (Copenhagen 1961) 1-2.

⁵² E.g. R. Ellis, The fables of Phaedrus. An inaugural lecture (Oxford 1895) 10; such lists of testimonia as that of Guaglianone, p. 117f., should be scrutinized carefully. L. Herrmann, 'Les fables antiques de la broderie de Bayeux', Collection Latomus 59 (Brussels 1964) no. 15 curiously suggests that he can identify our theme beneath the word 'Haroldus'.

⁵³ Cf. Hervieux 1.84ff, E. K. Rand, 'Note on the Vossianus Q86 and the Reginenses 333 and 1616', AJPh 44 (1923) 171f, F. M. Carey, 'The Vatican fragment of Phaedrus', TAPhA 57 (1926) 96ff.

⁵⁴ Cf. Guaglianone 118.

⁵⁵ 3.20.5 (disputed).

⁵⁶ Fab.Praef.

⁵⁷ We may perhaps see Phaedrus among figures such as Verrius Flaccus, Iulius Hyginus, 'Antiochus Ti. Claudi Caesaris a bibliotheca Latina Apollinis' of CIL 6 5884 (cf. J. Griffin in JRS 66 (1976) 105) and the subjects of Suetonius' De grammaticis.

⁵⁸ Cf. Phaedr. 2 Epil.8f., 4 Epil. 5f.

⁵⁹ For 'esoteric' Callimachean pronouncements cf. 2 Epil. 12ff., 4 Prol. 17ff. The dedicatees named, 'Eutychus' (3 Prol.2), 'Particulo' (4 Prol. 10, 4 Epil.5) and (?) 'Philetus' (5.10.10), remain shadows. But something of their activities and interests can be seen from Phaedrus' editorials.

⁶⁰ On Quint. Inst.Orat. 1.9.1f. see F. R. Colson in CR 33 (1919) 59, J. P. Postgate, ibid. 23,108, Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus 1 f.

⁶¹ Cf. the arguments of B. E. Perry, 'Fable', Stud Gen 12 (1959) 19ff. Taxonomic exercises under the influence of the 'historical-geographical' method such as that of W. Wienert, 'Die Typen der griechisch-roemischen Fabel' FFC 56 (Helsinki 1925) tend to reinforce such misconceptions: our poem appears (p.37) with the obviously heteronomous 3.10, App.Perott. 15 Perry / 13 Postgate and Aes. 388 Perry, under the classification 'Reine Novellen'. On my analysis, Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus, lxxxvff. falls victim of the temptation.

⁶² The argument is convoluted and to some extent necessarily circular: this conclusion involves the rider that the 'beast-fables' uniquely attested in the Phaedrian paraphrases once stood in the earlier books of the original collection. For Phaedrus' claims to originality by adding to his Aesopic inheritance cf. 2 Prol. 9ff., 3 Prol. 38f., 4 Prol. 11ff.

⁶³ Weinreich argues at length (p.14ff.) that 'Venus' (v.15) renders a Hellenistic 'All-Mutter' of a Greek original—Isis-Tyche, or Aphrodite Ourania. But 'Venus Pronuba' may as easily function here in her own right, cf. R. Schilling, 'La réligion romaine de Vénus depuis les origines jusqu'au temps d'Auguste', BEFAR 178 (Paris 1954) 47. P. Perdrizet, 'La vierge de miséricorde', BEFAR 101 (Paris 1908), W. Deonna in RHR 73 (1916) 190f.

In favour of an Italian origin for the tale it might be argued that in a Greek wedding-cortège it would be impossible to have the bride escape: the happy couple and best man, parochos, rode home on a carriage, a plain wain with special upholstery, klinis, added for the occasion, led by the 'coachman', orekomos, on foot (Hyperid. Pro Lycophr.5, H. L. Lorimer, 'The country cart of ancient Greece', JHS 23 (1903) 132ff., U. E. Paoli, Donna Greca nell'antichità (Florence 1953) 51). But this pattern was not universal, if paradigmatic: cf. Pollux Onom. 3.40: … P. Fedeli, 'It carme 61 di Catullo', Seges 16 (Freib./S. 1972)74. A Greek original with the party on foot except for the bride on the donkey could, for the sake of the story, be isolated in the general panic at the storm! (On the Roman model of weddings, the groom is left vainly waiting at the other end.)

⁶⁴ I discount here the literary satire of 4.7,22 Perry / 21 Postgate and the prologues and epilogues; among the narratives, 4.11 may be the exception which proves the rule, an overdone and ill-fitted aetiology explaining why altar-lights may not be lit from a lamp 'and vice versa', cf. v. 15?

⁶⁵ Ben-Amos xx.

⁶⁶ Ibid, xxvif.

⁶⁷ E. Meletinsky, 'Structural-typological study of the folktale', tr. R. Dietrich, Genre 4 (1971) 267f.

⁶⁸ Dundes 68ff., P. J. Petto, Anthropological research. The structure of enquiry (N.Y. 1970) 68ff., 'The emic or "New Ethnography" approach'.

⁶⁹ A. Dundes, 'The making and breaking of friendship as a structural frame in African folktales', in P. Maranda and E. Köngäs Maranda, Structural analysis of oral tradition (Pennsylvania 1971) 182f.

⁷⁰ Cf. D. Ben-Amos and K. S. Goldstein, 'Folklore. Performance and communication', Approaches to semiotics 40 (The Hague 1975) 1ff., e.g.5: 'For contextual folklore studies a text is necessary but not sufficient documentation; they require proxemic, kinesic, paralinguistic, interactional descriptions, all of which might provide clues to the principles underlining the communicative processes of folklore and its performing attributes'. We may, however, learn not to make mistakes: cf. Ben-Amos, Folklore genres 217 on H. J. Rose's discussion of the 'Märchen in Greece and Italy' in A handbook of Greek mythology including its extension to Rome (London 1964⁴ (1928)) 286ff.

⁷¹ A. Taylor, 'Folklore and the student of literature', in Dundes, The study of folklore, 34ff., gives a modest review of the complex relationship between folklore and literature; Dundes' introductory note gives a useful bibliography, ibid. Studies such as E. Obiechina, Culture, tradition and society in the West African novel (Cambridge 1975), and B. A. Lohof, 'morphology of the modern fable', Journal of popular culture 8 (Summer 1974) 15ff. (on short short stories in Good Housekeeping), show what can be learned from very different kinds of'traditional' sub-literature.

⁷² I hope to tackle this elsewhere.

Tales built round the domestic animal's 'homing instinct' could be multiplied indefinitely, perhaps, 'until the cows come home'. My collection runs: Juv. Sat.4.52 (imperial sycophants claim the monster fish for Domitian on the grounds that it has the 'animus revertendi', in law a test of ownership for domestic animals, cf. J. G. Griffith in G&R n.s.16 (1969) 149n.l, Gaius Inst. 2.68, Ulp. Dig. 10.2.8.1, A. Berger, 'Encyclopedic dictionary of Roman law', TAPhS 43.2 (1953) 362-3. TMI J1179 2), Paulin. Nolan. Carm. 18.220ff., MPL 61.495ff. (St. Felix restores a peasant's missing pair of oxen. I owe this to Prof. P. G. Walsh); A. Lang, The brown fairybook (London 1904) 202 (a modern 'Anatolian' tale), 'Fortune and the woodcutter' (a neighbour borrows mules and loads on his secret treasure-trove; surprised by soldiers, he flees and 'the mules, left to themselves, took the path that led them to their master's stable …'); R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen, Two Old French Gawain romances (Edinburgh 1972) 6Iff., 'La mule sans frein', by 'Paiens de Maisières' (a mysterious lady's mule leads Gauvains to her mysterious sister's castle); R. Hellman and R. O'Gorman, Fabliaux (London 1965) 27ff, 'De Brunain la vache au prestre', by Jean Bodel (c. 1200, cf. Nykrog 165ff; text in Montaiglon et Raynaud 1.132ff. Peasant couple hear a sermon, 'He who has given from the heart, God will return him twice as much' and give their poor cow to the priest; put out to graze tied to the priest's big cow, she tugs it back home …; cf. Hellman and O'Gorman 29, Montaiglon et Raynaud 2 293, 3 335. I owe this to Dr Jill Mann); A. F. Brown, The book of Saints and friendly beasts (London 1901) 42ff., 'St. Launomar's cow' (thieves steal Mignon, the Saint's favourite cow, but lose their way in the night; they agree to follow the cow and after walking round until dawn are met by Launomar close to his monastery: the thieves confess …); ibid. 114ff, 'Saint Fronto's camels' (sent off across the desert to relieve monks, the camels find their own way back; cf. TMI B151 1 1 0 1); T. Wright, 'Les cent nouvelles nouvelles' by La Sal(l)e (Paris 1858) 1. 183ff. no. 31 by Jehan d'Estuer, 'Chacun à son tour' (a squire rejected by a lady dines with a knight, her lover, who will not reveal his lady's identity; sent to bed early on an excuse, the guest sees a mule ready-saddled and lets it carry him to the lady. When the confusion and conflict is over, the men share her, 'chacun à son tour'; cf. TMI K1349 3, Weinreich 32f.); TMI J1881, 'Animal or object expected to go alone' (J1881 2 1, 'Ass loaded and commanded to go home' by Nasr' Eddin).