[In the essay that follows, von Kreisler discusses the dream setting of “The Lyoun and the Mous” and also comments on the political context of the fable.]

Among the thirteen lively narratives that comprise the Morall Fabillis, the rendition of the familiar story that Henryson entitles “The Taill of the Lyoun and the Mous” stands out as most innovative. To begin this poem of the royal beast who escapes the hunters' net with the aid of his least subject, Henryson relates in a separate prologue how he met his authority, Aesop, in a dream, and then he records the fable, which is the subject of his dream-vision, as if in Aesop's own words. Both the dream framework and Aesopic narration of his rendition are sharply at odds with the overall design of the Morall Fabillis and, more significantly, with the broader tradition of fabulary literature to which the collection belongs. Henryson presents no other fable as originating in a dream,¹ a device utterly without precedent in classical and medieval literature; conversely, he reinforces his prefatory claim to have “translated” the collection in all of them, either by alluding to one in another or by referring to Aesop as if the sage were his “literary” source, in the manner of fabulists from Babrius and Phaedrus to La Fontaine, who pretend to bear the heritage of Aesopic writing whatever the diverse origins of their composition.²

Were it not for the obvious political cast of his renditions, Henryson's reasons for fusing two distinct genres into a unique visionary fable might remain obscure. Expanding upon the usual moral lesson of the story—that pity shall always be rewarded—Henryson alters his source material to illustrate to certain unnamed “Lordis of Prudence” the obligations that exist between a ruler and his subjects,³ and he concludes with a long moralitas expressing the hope that “tressoun of this cuntrie be exyld, / and Justice Regne, and Lordis keip thair fay / Unto thair Soverane King” (ll. 1617-1619). So forceful is the rendition a judgment upon the exercise of contemporaneous political authority that Marshall W. Stearns, the poet's most able student, has remarked that

The concluding moralitas …, if it had been asserted independently, might well have goaded a harassed monarch into hasty vengeance … it should be noted that in this fable alone Henryson goes to extravagant lengths to keep himself in the background: not only is the vehicle for this criticism a dream vision from which the poet wakes at the conclusion of the moralitas, but also the criticism itself is placed in the mouth of Aesop.⁴

Despite the aptness of Stearn's observations, much about the relation of form to purpose in this unique fable remains unsaid. “The Lyoun and the Mous” has been examined neither as a fable set within the tradition of visionary literature nor as the recreation of a familiar story to comment upon a political milieu.⁵ Taken together, these inseparable aspects of tradition and craftsmanship in the most original of the Morall Fabillis bear meaningfully upon Henryson's achievement as a court poet of medieval Scotland and storyteller for all time.⁶

As a fable cast in the form of a dream-vision,⁷ “The Lyoun and the Mous” has as its distinguishing feature the account of a visionary experience that Henryson pretends to have had and that he uses as a vehicle to convey some “doctrine” or “sentence” in an engaging way. In Henryson's day, of course, the effectiveness of the dream-poem as a didactic work depended upon the audience's response to certain literary conventions—more accurately termed authorial strategies—that were grounded in the poet's appeal to traditional beliefs about truth, its nature, and the way man apprehends it. Abundantly reinforced in the Middle Ages in scriptural and secular writing,⁸ the tradition that fostered these strategies was, stated simply, that the most valuable of the ways a man knows truth are the dreams, visions, trances, swoons, ravishings, and ecstasies wherein his soul frees itself from the operation of his body and apprehends truth directly and insensibly, as if it had flown to its own immutable and immaterial realms.

Sensitive as every medieval to the visionary tradition, Henryson cultivated in “The Lyoun and the Mous” the chief strategies that transfer what men thought about real visionary experience to the didactic literary work. Most obviously, before Henryson identifies his poem as the stuff of dreams (ll. 1344-1348), he observes the near-formulaic convention of setting it in the paradisiacal locus amoenus of Latin poetry, of which the pleasant grove, babbling brook, and birds that fill the wholesome spring air with song (ll. 1321-1343) provide an atmosphere so thoroughly harmonious with man's nature that, one should think, his soul might well be able to free itself for its metaphorical flight to the realms of truth.⁹ Second, upon identifying his poem as a dream, Henryson signals that the truth it offers is disguised in a form that the senses and imagination may grasp, and thus, one is to understand, the words, interaction, and delineation of his characters are allegorical and subject to interpretation.¹⁰ Finally, in establishing the inevitable first-person point of view of the dreamer-narrator, Henryson adopts the commonplace persona of the untutored witness who, accompanied by his audience, leaves his dream-experience a wiser man, once the truth that informs it has been offered to him.¹¹

Imposed upon “The Lyoun and the Mous,” the chief strategies of the dream-vision poet enabled Henryson to bolster in his fable the impression of objectivity and authority, the sine qua non of didactic fiction generally. As a student of Boccaccio, Henryson recognized that the fabulist's task was to “repreif the haill misleving / Off man be figure of ane uther thing” (ll. 6-7), but he knew too that these virtue-inspiring “figures” made the fable appear “feinyeit” and “not al grunded upon truth” (ll. 1-2).¹² The strategies of the dream-vision helped overcome the inherent weakness of “The Lyoun and the Mous,” for where Henryson the fabulist could offer to his audience some matter of worldly wisdom that one could purportedly verify in the natural world of man and beast,¹³ Henryson the visionary could offer that same truth in the pretense that it had been apprehended incorporeally and inspired by divine powers. In identifying “The Lyoun and the Mous” as a dream-vision, therefore, Henryson sought at once to objectify his lesson and to invest it with greater authority than the fabulist ordinarily enjoyed. Specifically, in signifying that his lesson derived from the divine inspiration of the visionary as well as the fabulist's keen worldly observation, Henryson added force to his allegory, for his unmistakable implication was that its “figures” were sensible embodiments or personifications of the truth one could know from the soul's dream-flight as well as symbols of the universal truths knowable in the material world.¹⁴ Moreover, in adopting the persona of the dreamer-narrator, Henryson made it possible to establish Aesop as his “guide”—the conventional voice of wisdom and truth in dream-vision poetry—as well as the “literary” authority of whom he had read.

Henryson's guise as an untutored supplicant and the corresponding relationship he sets up with Aesop are especially indicative of his effort to have the strategies of visionary literature serve his own didactic poem. Departing entirely from his fabulary source material,¹⁵ wherein Aesop appears as a deformed, thick-featured slave of Ethiopian or Phrygian descent, Henryson describes his Aesop as an imposing character “Off stature large, and with ane feirfull face” (l. 1361), dressed in rich and dignified array. Most important in establishing the sage as an unimpeachable authority, however, are the noble birth, education, and spiritual abode that Henryson has Aesop claim:

“My sone” (said he), “I am off gentill blude;
My native land is Rome withoutin nay;
And in that Towne first to the Sculis I yude,
In Civile Law studyit full mony ane day;
And now my winning is in Hevin ffor ay;
Esope I hecht; my writing and my werk
Is couth and kend to mony cunning Clerk.”

(ll. 1370-1376)

To stand in relation to Aesop as novice to authority, in the manner of Scipio to Africanus, Boethius to Dame Philosophy, Dante to Virgil, or Langland to Holy Church, Henryson also subsumes the fabulist's role of translator to call attention to the visionary's role of petitioner, the supplicant who seeks to learn—and who will learn—truth firsthand:

I said, “Esope, my maister venerabill,
I yow beseik hartlie, ffor cheritie,
Ye wald not disdayne to tell ane prettie Fabill,
Concludand with ane gude Moralitie,”

(11. 1384-1387)

and later,

“Yis, gentill Schir” (said I), “for my requeist,
Not to displeis your Fatherheid, I pray,
Under the figure off ane brutall beist,
Ane morall Fabill ye wald denye to say;
Quha wait, nor I may leir and beir away
Sum thing thairby heireafter may availl?”

(ll. 1398-1403)

Why Henryson so dramatically wished to lend the authority and objectivity of the dream-vision to his lesson in “The Lyoun and the Mous” rather than to that in another fable almost certainly finds explanation in the political implications of his narrative. Reshaping an old fable which asserts that pity is always rewarded, Henryson stresses the Lion's role as king of beasts and traces his change from an indolent though high-handed ruler to a just and merciful one in order to illustrate how pity in a king inspires his subjects to glad and faithful service. If in fact Henryson meant to address his plea to James III,¹⁶ a weak king notorious for petulance, indulgence, and unwillingness to involve himself in the exigencies of just governance,¹⁷ his reasons for imposing the dream-vision framework upon his fable become apparent: its strategies would permit him to state with added force his remonstrance to his king, as if it were a divinely sanctioned truth, but at the same time they would leave the impression that he wished to appear aloof in its offering, as if, though possessed of truth, he were not responsible for it. The audacity the dream-vision framework affords the poem—if not the tact it implies—characterizes Henryson's treatment of his fabulary material.

Traditional versions of the fable, some of which Henryson certainly knew, advocate pity by suggesting that it is certain to be rewarded. Babrius' Greek version advises the reader to “spare the poor, and don't hesitate to rely on them”;¹⁸ the rendering in the Augustana collection cautions that “as circumstances change, the most powerful stand in need of those who are weaker”;¹⁹ and Caxton, following a French translation based through intermediate sources upon the fables of Phaedrus or “Romulus,” warns that “the myghty and puyssaunt must pardonne and forgyue to the lytyll and febel and ought to kepe hym fro al euylle for oftyme the lytyll may welgyue ayd and help to the grete.”²⁰ Like the authors of those versions, Henryson ends his work with a lesson of general application on the practical advantages of pity, but he also offers his own corollary lesson that specifically applies the concept of pity to the art of kingship: that a ruler must “reule and steir the land, and Justice keip” (l. 1576), as the Lion did when he showed pity to the Mouse, if he means to ensure the prosperity of his realm. To its presentation, obviously relevant to James and the spirit of his governance, Henryson dedicates entirely his rendition.

To convey allegorically his corollary political lesson Henryson identifies precisely the behavior that is natural to his characters. Portraying animal-characters acting “naturally” is of course the pretense of the fabulist, but Henryson goes beyond the usual moral characterization of prideful lions, avaricious wolves, and sly foxes to relate the behavior of his Lion, Mouse, and “rurall men” exactly to the degree of mankind each is said to represent in the moralitas. The “lytill Myis,” identified as “the commountie, / Wantoun, unwyse, without correctioun” (ll. 1587-1588), quite predictably dance upon the sleeping Lion when “the sweit sesoun provokit [them] to dance, / And mak sic mirth as nature to [them] leird” (ll. 1442-1443). The country folk, described as “hurt men” who “waitit alway amendis for to get” (ll. 1610-1611), react naturally with snares and traps when the Lion attacks tame and wild beasts indiscriminately and makes “in the cuntrie … ane grit deray” (ll. 1512-1513). In contrast, the Lion, who signifies “ane Prince … or yit ane King with Croun” (l. 1575), acts in no way according to his degree. His important initial impression is that of a slothful beast who

                    at his Pray war foirrun,
To recreat his limmis and to rest,
Beikand his breist and belly at the Sun,
Under ane tre lay in the fair forest.

(ll. 1405-1408)

Though basking in the warm sun may seem perfectly natural to lions, Henryson suggests in no uncertain terms that it is not a prerogative of rulers. The Lion's posture invites the unwitting mice to cavort upon his undignified carcass; moreover, it characterizes him in the moralitas as a ruler who “takis na labour / To reule and steir the land, and Justice keip” (ll. 1577-1578), but prefers instead to indulge himself in “lustis, sleuth, and sleip” (l. 1579). It may be for mice to dance gaily in the “fair forest,” Henryson suggests, meaning that commoners may pursue “the warld and his prosperitie” (l. 1582) that “thame desavis / Quhilk in thair lustis maist confidence havis” (ll. 1585-1586), but a king “suld be walkrife gyde and Governour / Of his pepill” (ll. 1576-1577). By the nature of his degree he is obliged to surmount worldly temptations and rule his realm with justice.

Because Henryson implies in the characterization of the indulgent king of beasts an allegorical identification with his own dilettantish monarch, the principle of behavior that he has the Mouse advocate to the Lion seems likewise pointed at James. In this wholly innovative section of the fable, the Lion first demands to know if the Mouse did not recognize that he “wes baith Lord and King / Off beistis all” (ll. 1430-1431), to which the terrified Mouse responds that the “misknew, because [he] lay so law” (l. 1432). Asserting that his skin stuffed with straw should signify his royalty, the Lion then roars that the Mouse shall die “sic as to tressoun is decreit” (l. 1459), to which the Mouse replies (in a long passage discussed below) that the “King off beistis Coronate” (l. 1462) must ignore her trespass because it is his duty to temper justice with compassion. While Henryson uses this conflict incidentally to direct his allegory toward the traditional lesson of the rewards of pity, his chief purpose is to outline as the issue of his own lesson the natural obligations of kingship. Hence the Lion maintains that his title alone should command obedience from his subjects, a view corresponding to the notion of the divine right of kings which James firmly espoused,²¹ and the Mouse holds that the Lion can ensure the obedience of his subjects, and subsequently the prosperity of his realm, only by following the imperatives of his royal nature, a reflection of the respectful attitude of James' subjects who, through parliamentary procedure on six different occasions, censured their king for his failure to govern justly.²²

While the words between Mouse and Lion veil in this allegory the ignobility of James' kingship, the summary speech Henryson assigns to the Mouse provides an eloquent comment on the obligations of monarchy. Like other authors of the fable, Henryson has his Mouse claim that she is scarcely edible, but her argument departs from the obvious one by appealing to the better nature that her captor ought exhibit. The Mouse argues first that pity is simply a manifestation of the mercy, the honor, and the dignity with which a king must act:

“In everie Juge mercy and reuth suld be,
As Assessouris, and Collaterall;
Without mercie Justice is crueltie,
As said is in the Lawis speciall:
Quhen Rigour sittis in the Tribunall,
The equitie off Law quha may sustene?
Richt few or nane, but mercie gang betwene.
“Alswa ye knaw the honour Triumphall
Off all victour upon the strenth dependis
Off his conqueist, quhilk manlie in battell
Throw Jeopardie of weir lang defendis.
Quhat pryce or loving, quhen the battell endis,
Is said off him that overcummis ane man,
Him to defend quhilk nouther may nor can?
“Ane thowsand Myis to kill, and eik devoir,
Is lytill manheid to ane strang Lyoun;
Full lytill worschip have ye wyn thairfoir,
To quhais strenth is na comparisoun;
It will degraid sum part off your renoun
To sla ane mous, quhilk may mak na defence,
Bot askand mercie at your excellence.”

(ll. 1468-1488)

Only after establishing that pity is the natural imperative of the king does Henryson permit the Mouse to argue in the practical vein of her counterparts:

“My lyfe is lytill worth, my deith is les,
Yit and I leif, I may peradventure
Supple your hienes beand in distres;
For oft is sene ane man off small stature
Reskewit hes ane Lord off hie honour,
Keipit that wes in poynt to be overthrawin
Throw misfortoun: sic cace may be your awin.”

(ll. 1496-1502)

Having given pity both an ideal value that applies specifically to the Lion as king and a practical value that applies to men generally, including those in high places, Henryson moves the fable toward its resolution. On the surface, his plot aims toward the traditional conclusion. The Lion releases the Mouse; he falls into the hunters' nets; the Mouse and her friends chew through the ropes to save him. Thus will an act of pity be rewarded, even if from the unlikeliest quarters, even to the mightiest of men. In the context that Henryson has given the Lion's act, however, the plot takes on its more pointed meaning. Just as the Lion, in rising above his petulance to release the Mouse, responds to her eloquent appeal and begins to act the part of a true monarch, the mice, in rising above their natural impertinence to free the Lion, respond to the figure whom they recognize as their king and begin to act the part of faithful and obedient subjects. The mutual relationship between king and subjects is summed up in the Mouse's words upon finding the trapped Lion: “Now were I fals, and richt unkynd / Bot gif I quit sompart of thy gentrace / Thow did to me” (ll. 1547-1549). In life generally, Henryson suggests, an act of pity will be rewarded; but in a king, pity is an obligation upon which depends his own prosperity, that of his subjects, and that of the whole realm.

Henryson gives his views on the obligations of kingship more explicit direction when he has Aesop deliver his moralitas. The Lion regains his freedom, Aesop asserts, “because he had pietie” (l. 1569):

Be this Fabill ye Lordis of Prudence
May considder the vertew of Pietie.

(ll. 1594-1595)

More general in meaning than “mercy” or “compassion,” Aesop's word is aptly chosen. A borrowing from Old French pietie (Latin pietas), “pietie” in the later Middle Ages signified both pity and faithfulness to duty.²³ Its ambiguity reinforces the traditional lesson of the fable as well as the more pointed one toward which Henryson has shaped his material throughout. In successive stanzas, just before he marks “the vertew of Pietie” as the topic of his fable, Henryson equates the Lion with a ruler or a “King with Croun” (ll. 1573-1575); he likens the Lion's slothful conduct to indulging in “fals plesance myngit with cair repleit” (ll. 1580-1587); and he identifies the mice as the commons who

Thair Lordis and Princis quhen that thay se
Of Justice mak nane executioun,
… dreid na thing to mak Rebellioun,
And disobey. …

(ll. 1589-1592)

In this context, Henryson's admonition to his “Lordis of Prudence” becomes all but overt. Pity or compassion will be rewarded, but in a king or ruler observance of the highest principles is a duty. If the king chooses to lie “rolland in warldle lust and vane pleasance” (l. 1602), who can tell when he “may be overthrawin, destroyit, and put doun / Throw fals fortoun” (ll. 1603-1604)? But if he governs rightly and well, with justice and compassion, his nobility will inspire obedience and loyalty in his subjects and ensure prosperity in his realm.

It is to the hope of harmony between the king and his subjects, which only the king can initiate, that Henryson has Aesop allude in the closing lines of the poem:

“I the beseik and all men for to pray
That tressoun of this cuntrie be exyld,
And Justice Regne, and Lordis keip thair fay
Unto thair Soverane King, baith nycht and day.”

(ll. 1616-1619)

Nothing in Aesop's remark derives from the traditional lesson of the fable about a lion who regains his freedom because he had pity on a mouse. But King James, who could not have misunderstood the meanings of “pietie” as Henryson has them acted out in his fable and explained in its moralitas, must have found Aesop's remarks unmistakably pertinent to his troubled reign.

As the means by which Henryson shaped an old fable into a bold analysis of the cause of Scotland's ills, the innovations that distinguish “The Lyoun and the Mous” from the rest of the Morall Fabillis and from fabulary literature generally are brilliantly conceived. Henryson meant to deliver a highly charged message about the “vertew of Pietie” to a noble audience, and in the form of a conventional fable his judgment may have seemed more impertinent than considered. In presenting his fable as a dream-vision, however, Henryson spoke like the wise physician who offers his prognosis in subjunctives, showing himself as sensitive to his patient's feelings as to the urgency of his condition.

While having it both ways is one of Henryson's aims in “The Lyoun and the Mous,” modern evaluations of his work have stressed creativity apart from context. The virtue of the Morall Fabillis has been identified recently as Henryson's ability to make “the moralitas an integral part of a completely unified whole,”²⁴ or to “reduce” and “amplify” material to sharpen its “comic point,”²⁵ or to combine “traditional genres and stories into new wholes.”²⁶ In proclaiming the poet's ability to give traditional materials his individual stamp, such statements rightly suggest that Henryson is more than a “period” writer of interest mainly to literary historians, but they are of limited use as descriptions of the craft of “The Lyoun and the Mous.” A true estimate must relate the formal aspects of this unique poem to its raison d'être, and therefore it must take into account both the spirit of the age to which Henryson addressed himself and those aspects of his literary heritage with which he was concerned, particularly the traditions of fabulary and visionary literature and the variants of the old story upon which he based his own.

Regarded in both its literary and historical context, then, “The Lyoun and the Mous” provides a yardstick by which to measure the worth of Henryson's craftsmanship to his day and our own. Henryson gave his “Lordis of Prudence” an old moral tale with a vital new twist. His topic was the art of kingship that was sorely wanting in his age, and he addressed his audience from the viewpoint of the archetype of wisdom whom he pretended to have met in a dream. Thus he wrote as an advocate for his country and teacher of his king. But just as he asked his lords to accept his fable with all the authority the visionary tradition could confer, he also asked them to accept the pretense that he had no more personal involvement in its content than would any man who had witnessed truth in dreams. And so he acted as a poet of the court. Henryson's achievement in “The Lyoun and the Mous” lies finally in his ability to balance conscience and discretion. His is not craftsmanship of the highest order, but it created for his lords a tale of “sentence” and “solaas,” and after nearly five hundred years readers may still delight in watching him tug upon the sleeve of his derelict king with patriotic charm.

Notes

1. As John MacQueen has observed in Robert Henryson: A Study of the Major Narrative Poems (Oxford, 1967), pp. 162 ff., the prologue to The Preiching of the Swallow follows many of the conventions of dream-vision literature. In that fable, however, Henryson does not attempt to evoke the visionary tradition (as discussed above), and his long philosophical prologue seems intended primarily to introduce the complex theme of human wisdom and providence that the fable explores.

2. Though the MF derive from as many as five different sources, Henryson asserts that “Of this Authour, … / In Mother toung of Latyng I wald preif / To mak ane maner of Translatioun …” (ll. 29-32). That Henryson's claim is purely conventional may be assured upon examining Ben Edwin Perry's definitive survey of the complex Aesopic tradition in classical fabulary literature, Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop (Haverford, Pa., 1936), and Aesopica (Urbana, Ill., 1952). The preceding and all subsequent quotations from Henryson's works are taken from the edition of H. Harvey Wood, The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson (New York, rep. ed., 1968), with line references given parenthetically.

3. The political orientation of L& M is so pronounced that scholars have speculated that Henryson adapted its plot and characterization to fit specific events and personages. See especially the studies of Marshall W. Stearns, Robert Henryson (New York, 1949), pp. 15-18; and MacQueen, pp. 165-173. See also Mary Rowlands, “The Fables of Robert Henryson,” Dalhousie Review, 39 (1960), 496 ff.

4. Stearns, pp. 15-17.

5. Remarkably, in a period of growing interest in the artistry of the MF, L& M has been studied only in its constituent units but not hitherto as a unified whole. For studies of the political ramifications of the fable apart from the prologue, see note 3, above. For studies of the prologue to determine the date and sources for the collection and to bolster the scant knowledge of Henryson's life, see David K. Crowne, “A Date for the Composition of Henryson's Fables,” JEGP, 61 (1962), 583-590; and MacQueen, pp. 19-20 and 168-170. The single explanation of the prologue and fable as a unit—that L& M was published independently prior to publication of the MF—has been offered only tentatively and without evidence, principally because “no convincing explanation of the existence of the Prologue has otherwise ever been given” (MacQueen, p. 168).

6. For commentaries on Henryson's skill as a fabulist in works other than L& M, see H. Harvey Wood, Scottish Literature (London, 1952), pp. 15-16, and Two Scots Chaucerians: Robert Henryson and William Dunbar (London, 1967), p. 17; Denton Fox, “Henryson's Fables,” ELH, 29 (1962), 337-356; I. W. Jamieson, “A Further Source for Henryson's ‘Fabillis,’” N & Q, 14 (1967), 403-405; and Donald Macdonald, “Narrative Art in Henryson's Fables,” SSL, 3 (1965), 101-113.

7. Dream-vision literature as such has not received much study, generally because it is customarily subsumed under such amorphous categories as allegory and romance. The standard work for supplementary material on dreams remains Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences (New York, rev. ed., 1968), pp. 195-218. One may also consult Arnold B. Van Os, Religious Visions: The Development of the Eschatological Elements in Medieval Religious Literature (Amsterdam, N.J., 1932); B. G. Koonce, Chaucer and the Tradition of Fame (Princeton, N.J., 1966), pp. 46-57; Constance B. Hieatt, The Realism of Dream Visions (The Hague, 1967), pp. 23-49. A more comprehensive and theoretical study is that of Paul Piehler, The Visionary Landscape (London, 1971), and William C. Ehrensperger's “Dreams in Middle English Literature,” Diss. Harvard University 1921, is extremely useful for the compilation of data it offers. For a broader perspective on the lore of dreams and visions in the Western world, ancient and medieval, see also the anthology of Ralph L. Woods, The World of Dreams (New York, 1947).

8. The most authoritative of the many theoreticians on visionary experience were Augustine and Macrobius. Augustine's epistemological doctrine may be found in Book XII of De genesi ad litteram, ed. Joseph Zycha (The Prague, 1894), pp. 379-435, conveniently summarized by Francis X. Newman, “The Structure of the Vision in Apocalypsis Goliae,” MS, 29 (1967), 116-117. Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio has been edited by William H. Stahl (New York, 1952).

9. For a discussion of the spiritual elements and implications of descriptions of the dream-setting, see Piehler, pp. 70 ff., and N. von Kreisler, “The Locus Amoenus and Eschatological Lore in the Parliament of Fowls 204-10,” PQ, 50 (1971), 16 ff. For a statistical summary of the frequency with which dreams were localized and given specific times and dates, see Ehrensperger, pp. 319 and 326-327.

10. Medieval theory recognized many types of truth-bearing dreams, some of which were thought to require interpretation and some not—for example, Macrobius' somnium and oraculum, respectively. Not all dream-vision poems call for interpretation, therefore—for example, The Dream of the Rood or Pearl—but all of them are allegorical in the broadest sense. Purportedly describing an actual visionary experience, the dream-vision poet pretends that his narrative is the revelation of truth apprehended by the soul yet manifested in the phantasmal forms by which man knows truth—that it is, in other words, allegorical in meaning.

11. Cf. the self-characterization of Boethius, Dante, Langland, the Pearl poet, Chaucer, and Gower, all of whom, in varying degrees of understanding according to the extent that the truth contained in their dreams has been explicitly revealed to them, adopt a similar persona.

12. As MacQueen has shown (pp. 95-100), Henryson was much influenced by Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Gods, particularly Book XIV (ix), wherein the Italian humanist asserts that “if sense is revealed from under the veil of fiction (fabula), the composition of fiction is not idle nonsense.” “Sense,” or the truth presented through allegory, is paramount in Boccaccio's thinking. The Aesopic fable, though it “superficially lacks all appearance of truth,” is to Boccaccio valuable for moral instruction because it “pleases the unlearned by its external appearance, and exercises the minds of the learned with its hidden truth.” Boccaccio's traditionally defensive posture is reflected in some of the chapter titles of The Genealogy of the Gods, XIV: “It is Rather Useful than Damnable to Compose Stories” (ix); “It is a Fool's Notion That Poets Convey No Meaning Beneath the Surface of Their Fiction” (x); “Poets Are Not Liars” (xiii). See Charles G. Osgood, tr., Boccaccio on Poetry (New York, rev. ed., 1956), pp. 48 and 51.

13. See Ben Edwin Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. xx-xxxiv. Perry's definition of the fable is that of the rhetorician Theon—“a fictitious story picturing a truth”—which Perry modifies to “a metaphor in the form of a past narrative” (xx). The truth pictured allegorically, Perry argues, is not a “moral” one, strictly speaking, but one of wordly wisdom and shrewdness which may be either general or particular, relating to “the nature of things or to types of human character or behavior,” or “applying only to a particular person, thing, or situation” (xxi).

14. The distinction is not that between symbol-allegory and personification-allegory as conceived by Robert W. Frank, Jr., in “The Art of Reading Medieval Personification Allegory,” ELH, 20 (1953), 237-250; it suggests rather a difference in the basis of allegory in dream-visions and fables, as discussed above. For the same distinction applied to a different conception of allegory, see C. S. Lewis's discussion of “sacramentalism” (use of symbols) and “allegory” (use of personifications) in The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), pp. 44-48.

15. Henryson's portrayal of Aesop has caused much scholarly confusion. MacQueen (p. 169) believes that the character of Aesop, particularly his legal training in Rome, may be partly autobiographical because “poets of dream visions often project aspects of themselves on to the figures of the dream.” Though dream-vision poets do not seem to project themselves into their works apart from the creation of their personae, MacQueen is justly sensitive to the conventions of dream-vision literature. Other scholars have taken literally Aesop's presence and Henryson's references to him. David Irving, The History of Scottish Poetry, ed. J. A. Carlyle (Edinburgh, 1861), pp. 211-212, quotes Tyrwhitt's glossary to Chaucer to assert that one cannot tell what author is really meant when medieval writers refer to Aesop; and G. Gregory Smith, The Poems of Robert Henryson, l, STS o.s., 64 (1914), pp. xxix ff., concludes that Henryson's claim to have “translated” the MF is utterly untrue. David K. Crowne, pp. 583 ff., provides more relevant information by noting that Henryson patterns Aesop partly after Lydgate's description in Isopes Fabules: “Vnto purpos þe Poete laureate / Callyd Isopus dyd hym occupy / Whylom in Rome to plese þe Senate …” (ll. 9-11). For the traditional view of Aesop, see the apocryphal Life in Caxton's Aesop, ed. R. T. Lenaghan, which was Henryson's source for at least two of the MF. Henryson may have described Aesop in L& M in ignorance of the Life (see Crowne, p. 583 f.), but it is hard to imagine that he had no conception of the traditional figure apart from Caxton's translated edition, printed in 1484. (For a sketch of the historical Aesop, see Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus, pp. xxxv-xlvi.)

16. Stearns, pp. 16-17; and MacQueen, p. 170.

17. A most helpful survey of the political era and character of James III may be found in the following: P. Hume Brown, History of Scotland (Cambridge, 1909), I, 246-293; John Hill Burton, The History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1897), III, 1-34; William Croft Dickinson, Scotland from the Earliest Times to 1603 (London, 1961), pp. 224-232; Agnes Mure Mackenzie, The Rise of the Stewarts (Edinburgh, rep. ed., 1957), pp. 244-293. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, Historie and Chronicles of Scotland, 1, ed. Aeneas J. G. Mackay, STS o.s., 42 (1899), 176-177, provides a lively contemporaneous account of the fascinating “Lauder Bridge affair” of 1482, an incident that characterizes James's frivolous inepitude and that has been suggested by M. Rowlands, pp. 496 ff., to be the “occasion” immortalized in L& M.

18. Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus, p. 139.

19. Aesop Without Morals, ed. and tr. Lloyd W. Daly (New York, 1961), p. 284. (In this edition the fable and its moral are separated; the fable is translated on p. 156.) The translation is based on Perry's text in Aesopica.

20. Lenaghan, p. 86.

21. See MacQueen, p. 172.

22. In 1473, 1478, 1479, 1484, 1485, and 1487. See Dickinson, pp. 227 ff.

23. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, s.v. piety.

24. Fox, p. 338.

25. Macdonald, pp. 113 and 101.

26. Jamieson, “A Further Source for Henryson's ‘Fabillis,’” p. 405. See also Jamieson, “Henryson's ‘Fabillis’: An Essay toward a Revaluation,” Words, Wai-te-ata Stud. in Engl., 2 (Wellington, N.Z., 1966), 20-31.