Reynard the Fox

“ There is little bark left in a fox when the quacking of ducks disconcerts him and makes his brake a welcome refuge.
I sat down under the furze, brushed the bloody feather from my muzzle and licked my paws, which had been cut by the sharp-edged ice in my mad struggles to get out of the water. Though dawn was some two hours off, I had no heart for any more hunting; so I made for my lair, which I reached by way of the brambly thicket above the quarry, and, after shaking my coat again, crept to where my snug kennel lay under its double roof of gorse and snow. ”

“ Bruin and Reynard
WHY THE BEAR HAS A STUMPY TAIL
One very cold winter, when the ground was covered with snow and the ponds and rivers were frozen hard, Reynard the Fox and all the other animals went out to enjoy themselves by sliding and skating on the ice. After a time Reynard began to feel hungry, so he wandered off by himself in search of something to eat. He nosed about here, and he nosed about there; he lay in wait behind bushes in the hope of being able to catch a bird ”

“ Whilst we lay there huddled together and crying out for the vixen she returned, darkening the tunnel as she came towards us. Scarcely had she joined us when an evil-smelling fog rolled in, causing us to keep our muzzles close to the ground. Then the fire swept past the earth, lighting it up to the end where we lay. Panic-stricken though I was, I remember noticing how the smooth floor gleamed, and how curiously the light glowed on the vixen's fur. Suddenly the heat became less intense, and a current of fresh air entering the earth revived us as we lay panting at the point of suffocation. ”

“ Left to myself, I was as happy as a fox can be, and, forgetting the hardships I had passed through, looked forward with pleasurable anticipation—as, indeed, every wilding does—to the golden days of summer, when troubles are few and delights many. Yet the tamarisks had hardly begun to feather before there was brought into the countryside a hound which proved the most terrible enemy that ever shadowed my life. ”

“ By this my mother had shaken off her drowsiness, the glow had come back into her green eyes, and, rising to her feet, she would leave the earth. If she detected no danger, she would call us to her. What a moment that was! the pent-up energy of hours of restraint breaking out in such rompings and runnings after our own brushes as I have never seen in any other young creatures. Wearying at last of these antics and of jumping over the back of the vixen, who watched us with loving eyes, we settled down to the game of lurk and pounce amongst the boulders. ”

“ The fox, as you very well know, is a beast that can never do anything without a manoeuvre; and as, from his cunning, he was generally very lucky in anything he undertook, he did not doubt for a moment that he should put the dog’s nose out of joint. Reynard was aware that in love one should always, if possible, be the first in the field; and he therefore resolved to get the start of the dog and arrive before him at the cat’s residence. ”

“ The wind came keen with a tang of frost,
The brook was troubled for new things lost,
The copse was happy for old things found,
The fox came home and he went to ground.
And the hunt came home and the hounds were fed,
They climbed to their bench and went to bed;
The horses in stable loved their straw.
"Good-night, my beauties," said Robin Dawe.
Then the moon came quiet and flooded full
Light and beauty on clouds like wool,
On a feasted fox at rest from hunting,
In the beech-wood grey where the brocks were grunting. ”

“ The flight of the geese alarmed the duck, which rose in a big cloud from the mere, with a noise that would, I am sure, have bewildered any animal except a fox, or perhaps an otter. But I ignored it, and amidst their silly clamor and the loud whirr of their wings that momentarily drowned the gale, fixed my eyes on the three swans—for such they were—who did not take flight like the others, but swam up and down the rough water in a manner which, if not expressive of contempt, was at least aggressive and provocative. ”

“ A fox's life is so short that he cannot forget even the groundless scares his fears make him the [Pg 31] victim of, so it is not to be wondered at that the events of the night I am about to describe are almost as vivid to me still as at the time they happened.
My sisters had returned once more from the dried-up basin to which they had been some five or six times since sunset, and joined me where I lay near the mouth of the earth, waiting for the dew to fall and listening for the footsteps of the vixen who had gone to get ready the new lair. ”

“ Imagine me, then, a handsome young dog-fox, head erect, ears pricked, brush on end and well fluffed out, trotting along on the very tips of my toes with my first rabbit between my jaws, and you have a picture of me as I swaggered over the bare turf in the moonlight, before the eyes of my admiring mother and jealous sisters. ”

“ There on the bare dry ground the vixen laid us—my two sisters and me. If I was like the baby cubs I have since seen, I was born blind, my muzzle was blunt and rounded, and my coat as black as a crow, the only white about me being a few hairs in the tag of my tiny brush. Even at the time when I first remember what I was like my fur was still a very dark color and bore no resemblance to the russet hue of a full-grown fox.
This was a few weeks after my eyes were opened, when, after awaking from our first sleep, we were in the habit of sunning ourselves just [Pg 10] inside the mouth of the earth. ”

“ From inside the fringe of reeds I could hear the honking of the geese on the open water, and at times a sound that was new to me, a wild trumpeting which seemed to come from where the sea was thundering on the bar. For a fox naturally prompt in decision, I stood there long, considering whether to make a journey that offered but poor prospect of success. In the wild-fowl's feeding-ground I had come from there was at least makeshift for an ambush; on the level ice-field before me there was not cover enough to hide a mouse, and the chance of a kill was very, very small. ”

“ He was the first man I had seen, the man who was on the cairn the morning my mother was killed by the pack; he was the man who, I felt certain, had stopped the earths. I was calm now. I had gone through the agony of death, but still I did not want to die. Life was sweet, very sweet. I was not like a mangy old fox; I was in the pride of my cub-hood.
"What a beauty!" said the earth-stopper, as he continued to gaze at me. "What a grand fox, to be sure! If An'rew can save 'ee, then thee shan't die, now there." ”

“ Another moment and Desdemona had forced her way past Finn, baying hoarsely, and was inside the cave. There followed a yowling, snarling cry, a scuffling sound, and a big red fox emerged, low to the ground like a cat, his brush between his legs, fight in his bared jaws, and flight in his red rolling eyes. But fate had knocked at Reynard's door, and would not be denied. His running did not carry him far. It is probably somewhat disturbing to be rooted out of one's own particular sanctuary by a baying bloodhound. ”

“ Closer examination, however, proves that there is indeed the Fox in its particular literature with its avowed illustrations, but also that there is the Fox in mediæval art, illustrative of ideas partly found in literature, but illustrative of no particular work, and yet awaiting a key. Each is a separate and distinct thing.
Among the grotesques of our churches there are some references to the literary “Reynard the Fox,” but they are few and far between; while numerous most likely and [Pg 185] prominent incidents of Reynard’s career, as narrated in the poem, have no place among the carvings. ”

“ But [Pg 100] my nose told me a fox had been there already; so I at once made for my favorite pool, whence the cries of various wild-fowl reached my ears. I knew that they consisted of duck, widgeon, and teal; but from the noise they made, I judged them to be more numerous than usual, and so they proved.
Through a gap in the reeds I gazed once and again at the tantalizing sight. What more maddening spectacle for a hungry fox than that of game beyond reach? ”

“ Just then it vexed me to hear the vixen's call, far off though it was, as I feared she might hit my trail, follow it, and spoil my hunting. Her yapping caused all four birds to raise their heads and listen, but they showed no further sign of alarm, as every creature of the wild knows that dead silence precedes the kill and that it need have no dread of a noisy fox. ”

“ And, lest a suspicion of neglect [Pg 20] towards us should attach to her memory, I must here say what I have not yet mentioned—that by the death of the dog-fox, my father, the burden of our upbringing from the day of our birth fell wholly on my little mother. What labor and sacrifice this must have meant! After we were weaned, how often have I seen her go without her share of the prey that we greedy cubs might suffer no sint! When has cliff or moor witnessed greater devotion, greater unselfishness? And now she lay in the earth so sorely wounded as to be indifferent to our helpless plight. ”

“ Presently a cock crowed; and at last dawn peeped through the window, and found me a more pitiable object than the old goose who squinted at me every time she raised her blood-stained head. It would be day soon, but as yet the light was gray. It was the hour that had ofttimes surprised me in the midst of my hunting, and hurried me across the misty fen to my kennel in the brake; the hour when every carnivorous creature of the night steals by hidden ways to his retreat, and conceals himself from the cruel eye of day. ”

“ Here rabbits breed and sport, and hares hide, and the curious furze-chats fly to and fro; and lastly, but not leastly, my lord Reynard the Fox loves to take his ease, till he finally meets his fate in the jaws of clamouring hounds, or is assassinated with the aid of “villainous saltpetre.” He is not easily shot, and will stand a charge fired broadside at a short distance without the slightest injury or apparent notice, beyond a slight quickening of his pace. His thick fur and tough skin turn the pellets. Even when mortally wounded, life will linger for hours. ”

“ Its long tail is bushy, and ends in a white tip.
The fox is a common inhabitant of the whole of Europe, and of the northern parts of Asia, America, and Africa. It inhabits forests and woods, where it lives with its mate in caverns. In rapacity it is nearly equal to the wolf; but it can master its cupidity and wait for better opportunities if danger should threaten. No animal is the subject of so many fables. “Master Reynard” is always the cunning rogue, who outwits his adversaries. Only on behalf of their young will the male as well as the female fox risk their lives ”

“ The popularity of the story of Reynard caused it to be imitated in a variety of shapes, and this form of satire, in which animals acted the part of men, became altogether popular.
A direct imitation of “Reynard the Fox” is found in the early French romance of “Fauvel,” the hero of which is neither a fox nor an ass, but a horse. People of all ranks and classes repair to the court of Fauvel, the horse, and furnish abundant matter for satire on the moral, political, and religious hypocrisy which pervaded the whole frame of society. ”

“ Again, before the end of the fifteenth century De Worde had a series to illustrate Reynard the Fox. One cut is found on the first leaf of an edition of Lidgate’s The Horse, the sheep, and the goose, in the University Library, another on the title-page of Skelton’s Bowge of Court in the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh. In the collection of the University Librarian is a fragment of an edition of Reynard, evidently printed by W. de Worde about 1515, and this contains a third cut agreeing absolutely in size, in workmanship, and in style with the other two. ”

“ Reynard seems to have learned from the [Pg 403] weasel's manœuvres, for he, too, is wont to entice the rabbits towards him by extraordinary methods, twirling round, like a cat, in pursuit of his tail, and affording such a spectacle to any onlookers that they must needs, from sheer curiosity, find out the meaning of a woodland farce, which, alas! is often followed by a tragedy. It is not known that the fox ever succeeds in fascinating the moorhen ”

“ The delicious smell of the hot entrails which the wind brought us put the keenest edge on my appetite—already sharp set by the previous night's shortness—and with the strong craving to satisfy it came the novel thought of satisfying it with a rabbit of my own catching. The bunnies were still playing about on the edge of the warren, and whilst the vixen kept shifting her gaze from them to me, licking her blood-stained lips, the lesson she wished to teach suddenly flashed upon me, and the explanation of her conduct was complete. She was saying as plainly as could be: "There is your prey. ”

“ Knowing what sort of a creature a magpie is, I amused myself with hoaxing her,—the fashionable amusement at court, you know.”
The fox made a mighty struggle, and leaped on the ground, leaving his tail behind him. It did not grow again in a hurry.
“See,” said the griffin, as the beasts all laughed at the figure Reynard made running into the wood, “the dog beats the fox with the ladies, after all; and cunning as he is in everything else, the fox is the last creature that should ever think of making love!” ”