but if I begin at the side they will say, he ate him sideways. At last he made up his mind, and was just putting a delicate piece into his mouth, when a tree close by creaked. Stop, stop! said he to the tree, I cannot eat with such a noise, and in spite of his hunger he left the meat and climbed up to quiet the creaking, but was caught between two branches and held fast, and presently he saw a pack of wolves coming. Go that way! Go that way! he cried out, whereupon the wolves said, he must have something there, or he would not tell us to go another way. So they came on, and found the moose, and ate it to the bones while Manabozho looked wistfully on. The next heavy blast of wind opened the branches and let him out, and he went home thinking to himself, 'See the effect of meddling with frivolous things when I had certain good in my possession.'[1]
In the Old World, the moral Beast-fable was of no mean antiquity, but it did not at once supplant the animal-myths pure and simple. For ages the European mind was capable at once of receiving lessons of wisdom from the Æsopian crows and foxes, and of enjoying artistic but by no means edifying beast-stories of more primitive type. In fact the Babrius and Phædrus collections were over a thousand years old, when the genuine Beast-Epic reached its fullest growth in the incomparable 'Reynard the Fox,' traceable in Jakob Grimm's view to an original Frankish composition of the 12th century, itself containing materials of far earlier date.[2] Reynard is not a didactic poem, at least if a moral hangs on to it here and there it is oftenest a Macchiavellian one; nor is it essentially a satire, sharply as it lashes men in general and the clergy in particular. Its creatures are incarnate qualities, the Fox of cunning, the Bear of strength, the Ass of dull content, the Sheep of guilelessness. The charm of the narrative, which every class in mediæval Europe delighted in, but which we have allowed to drop out of all but scholars' knowledge, lies in great measure in
