Renard the Fox

Abstract

A very nice oversized book with lively colored and black-and-white illustrations. I do not know this tradition well. Much here is new to me. After the fall, God pitied Adam and Eve and gave them a stick. When Adam struck the sea with the stick, gentle beasts came forth from the water; when Eve struck, wild beasts like the wolf and the fox came out. The book's first incident involves a church harvest festival; the wolf gets drunk and caught and beaten in a server's cassock and surplice. He feels betrayed by the fox. The crow's cheese drops from his claws through inattention caused by trying to sing well. The wolf ties the bucket to his tail so that fish can swim into it. He loses his tail when the lord of the manor hacks at him with his sword and hits near his tail. There is little focus here on Reynard's wife or children. The fish swipe story involves a string of eels which Reynard makes into a necklace, not fish tossed one by one onto the road. Pertelotte becomes Pauline in Renard and the Rooster (50). The wolf sees a rival wolf in the well in which Reynard is stuck (61). Reynard tells the wolf I am dead now. The only way into paradise is by bucket. Come down!