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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
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 as ‘Appendix Perottina’ 16 Perry / 14 Postgage 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.
1. For convenience I give a version, following the text of Perry, B.E., Babrius and Phaedrus (Loeb 1965) 394ff.Google Scholar with one exception: in v.12 I prefer referre (Jannelli) to deferre (Cassitto: ferre is given by Perotti's MS); cf. Heubner, H., ‘Zu römischen Dichtern’, Hermes 93 (1965) 351 n.1.Google Scholar ‘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 Postgate, J.P., Phaedri fabulae Aesopiae (OCT 1919)Google Scholar.
2. Pp.419-610.
3. Cf. Perry, B.E., ‘Aesopica’ 1 (1952) viiiff.Google Scholar for the rationale of his repertory of fables.
4. Bloomington 1955-82 (= FFC 106-9 Helsinki 1932-6) 1-6.
5. Cf. Clarke, K. & Clarke, M., Introducing folklore (N.Y. 1963) 18Google Scholar: ‘Stith Thompson.. has long been unofficially known as Mr. Folklore’.
6. Études de littérature populaire et d'histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge (Paris 1964 6) (=1894 2)Google Scholar.
7. Thompson, S., ‘Narrative motif-analysis as a folklore method’, FFC 161 (Helsinki 1955) 6Google Scholar.
8. Cf. Propp, V., Morphology of the folktale, tr. Scott, L. (Texas 1968)Google Scholar (= IJAL 24.4, pt.3) lOf.
9. Thompson, ibid. 6f.
10. Dundes, A., Analytic essays in folklore (The Hague 1975) 73Google Scholar.
11. Dundes 61; cf. Edmonson, M.S., Lore. An introduction to the science of folklore and literature (N.Y. 1971) 42ff.Google Scholar
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 Nykrog, P., ‘Les fabliaux’, Publ. romanes et français 123 (Geneva 1973 z) xxixff.Google Scholar 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. Thompson, S., The folktale (N.Y. 1941) 375f.Google Scholar, von Sydow, C.W., ‘Selected papers on folklore’, ed. Bødker, L. (Copenhagen 1948)Google Scholar in Dundes, A., The study of folklore (N.J. 1965) 225f.Google Scholar, 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 polygenèse 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. Krohn, K., Folklore methodology (Texas 1971) 122, 139f.Google Scholar
22. Propp 13, Dundes 66.
23. Von Sydow 219ff.
24. Cf. n. 16.
25. Méon, M., Fabliaux et contes des poètes français des XI, XII, XIII, XIV et XVe siècles publiés par E. Barbazan I (Paris 1808) 164ff.Google Scholar
26. de Montaiglon, A. et Raynaud, G., Recueil des fabliaux 1 (Paris 1872) 24ff.Google Scholar
27. Montaiglon et Raynaud II 278 refer to an imitation by ‘Imbert’; Thiele, G., ‘Phaedrusstudien 2’, Hermes 43 (1908) 371Google Scholar notes Hertz, W., Spielmannsbuch2 201ff.Google Scholar, ‘Der bunte Zelter’; Weinreich, O., ‘Fabel, Aretalogie, Novelle. Beiträge zu Phädrus, Petron, Martial und Apuleius’, SHAW 21 (1930–1931) 7, 12n.Google Scholar refers to the translation by Hausrath, A. & Marx, A., Griechische Mäarchen2 3Google Scholar, and ibid. 31f. examines Grosse, Julius, ‘Graue Zelter’ (Enstanden 1858)Google Scholar, cf. Ausgew.Werke 1.2, 124–83Google Scholar; Vossler, K., ‘Zu den Anfängen der französischen Novelle, Stud.f.vergleich.Litt.-gesch. 2 (1902) 15f.Google Scholar notes Widmann, V., ‘Der Zeiter’, in Jung und Alt (Leipzig 1894)Google Scholar.
28. Aucassin and Nicolette and other tales (Penguin Classics 1971)Google Scholar.
29. Langlois, E., ‘Nouvelles françaises inèdites du quinzième siècle’, Bibl.de 15ème siècle 6 (Paris 1908) 71ff.Google Scholar, 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, Ben-Amos, D., Folklore genres (Texas 1976) xvff.Google Scholar
31. E.g. Langlois, Vossler, the modern editor of the fabliau Långfors, A., Les classiques françaises du Moyen Age VIII (Paris 1912)Google Scholar, and among classical scholars Thiele, Weinreich and Trenkner, S., The Greek Novella in the classical period (Cambridge 1958) 81f.Google Scholar (cf. the criticisms of Perry, B.E. in AJPh 81 (1960) 446f.Google Scholar).
32. The science of folklore (London 1974 3)Google Scholar (= 1930): cf. Dundes 13.
33. For this trait cf. Dundes 156, referring to Farnsworth, W.O., Uncle and nephew in the Old French Chansons de Geste (N.Y. 1913)Google Scholar.
34. See Simrock, K., Rheinsagen aus dem Munde des Volks und deutscher Dichter (Bonn 1841) 215f.Google Scholar (no.98): the song is attributed to A. von Stolterfoth, whether as composer 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 Oliver, R.P., ‘Perotti's Cornucopiae’, TAPhA 78 (1947) 376ff.Google Scholar, esp. 386f.
38. Cf. Robert, U., Les fables de Phèdre. Edition paléographique publiée d'après le MS. Rosanbo (Paris 1893) 23fGoogle Scholar; 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. Omont, H. in CRAIBL 1912, 11Google Scholar; Gude's, published in Burman's edition of 1698, cf. Hervieux, L., Les fabulistes latins I (Paris 1883) 74f.Google Scholar; Roche's, published by Chatélain, E., ‘Unnouveau document sur le codex Remensis de Phèdre’, RPh 11 (1887) 81ff.Google Scholar; the notes made by Dom. Vincent, librarian at Rheims, five years before the fire, cf. von Premerstein, P., ‘Eine neue Facsimile der Reimser Hdschr. des Phaedrus und Querolus’, WS 19 (1897) 258ff.Google Scholar, 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., Moroncini, G., ‘Sull' autenticità delle favole di Fedro’, RFIC 23 (1895) 23ff.Google Scholar
The only scholarly edition of the paraphrases, Thiele's, G. massive Der lateinische Äsop des Romulus und die Prosa-Fassungen des Phaedrus, (Heidelberg 1910)Google Scholar, is unfortunately based on a misbegotten theory: for their status cf. Zander, C., ‘De generibus et libris paraphrasium Phaedrianarum’, Acta Univ. Lund. 33 (1897)Google Scholar and ‘Phaedrus solutus vel Phaedri fabulae novae XXX’, Skr.utgiv.av humanist. Vetenskappsamfund.i.Lund 3 (1921)Google Scholar.
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 l.101f., Guaglianone, A., Phaedri Augusti liberti liber fabularum (sic) (Turin 1969) Praef. xixff.Google Scholar, referring to his article in Att. Acc.Pont. n.s.7 (1957) 231ff.Google Scholar
45. Jul. Phaedri fabularum liber novus e M.S. cod. Perottino regiae bibliothecae nunc primum edidit J.A.Cassittus (Naples 1808)Google Scholar.
46. Codex Perottinus ms. regiae bibliothecae Neapolitanae.. digestus et editus a Cataldo Jannellio eiusdem regiae bibliothecae scriptore (Naples 1811)Google Scholar.
47. Classicorum auctorum e Vaticanis codicibus editorum tomus III, curante Angelo Mai (Rome 1831) 285f.Google Scholar, cf. Hervieux 1.133ff., Guaglianone, A. in GIF 2 (1948) 131ff.Google Scholar
48. Fab.Praef. Cf. the explicit of the Remensis (teste Vincent): ‘Phaedri Aug. liberti Liber Quintus explicit feliciter’.
49. Phaedri Aug. liberti fabularum aesopiarum libri V, nunc primum in lucem editi (Troyes 1596)Google Scholar, 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 Jacobs, J., Caxton's Aesop, the fables of Aesop as first published by William Caxton in 1484 (London 1889) 1–2Google Scholar, Holbek, B., Aesops levned og fabler; Christien Pedersens oversnettelse af Stainhoewels Aesop (Copenhagen 1961) 1–2Google Scholar.
52. E.g. Ellis, R., The fables of Phaedrus. An inaugural lecture (Oxford 1895) 10Google Scholar; such lists of testimonia as that of Guaglianone, p. 117f., should be scrutinized carefully. Herrmann, L., ‘Les fables antiques de la broderie de Bayeux’, Collection Latomus 59 (Brussels 1964) no.15Google Scholar curiously suggests that he can identify our theme beneath the word ‘Haroldus’.
53. Cf. Hervieux 1.84ff., Rand, E.K., ‘Note on the Vossianus Q86 and the Reginenses 333 and 1616’, AJPh 44 (1923) 171f.Google Scholar, Carey, F.M., ‘The Vatican fragment of Phaedrus’, TAPhA 57 (1926) 96ff.Google Scholar
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 Griffin, J. in JRS 66 (1976) 105Google Scholar) 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 Colson, F.R. in CR 33 (1919) 59Google Scholar, J.P. Postgate, ibid. 23, 108, Perry, , Babrius and Phaedrus 1 f.Google Scholar
61. Cf. the arguments of Perry, B.E., ‘Fable’, StudGen 12 (1959) 19ff.Google Scholar Taxonomic exercises under the influence of the ‘historical-geographical’ method such as that of Wienert, W., ‘Die Typen der griechisch-roemischen Fabel’ FFC 56 (Helsinki 1925)Google Scholar 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.Google Scholar 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. Schilling, R., ‘La réligion romaine de Vénus depuis les origines jusqu'au temps d'Auguste’, BEFAR 178 (Paris 1954) 47Google Scholar, Perdrizet, P., ‘La vierge de misericorde’, BEFAR 101 (Paris 1908)Google Scholar, Deonna, W. in RHR 73 (1916) 190f.Google Scholar
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’, oreokomos, on foot (Hyperid. Pro Lycophr. 5, Lorimer, H.L., ‘The country cart of ancient Greece’, JHS 23 (1903) 132ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Paoli, U.E., Donna Greca nell'antichità (Florence 1953) 51)Google Scholar. But this pattern was not universal, if paradigmatic: cf. Pollux, Onom. 3.40Google Scholar: 
, Fedeli, P., ‘II carme 61 di Catullo’, Seges 16 (Freib./S. 1972) 74Google Scholar. 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. Meletinsky, E., ‘Structural-typological study of the folktale’, tr. Dietrich, R., Genre 4 (1971) 267f.Google Scholar
68. Dundes 68ff., Petto, P.J., Anthropological research. The structure of enquiry (N.Y. 1970) 68ff.Google Scholar, ‘The emic or “New Ethnography” approach’.
69. Dundes, A., ‘The making and breaking of friendship as a structural frame in African folktales’, in Maranda, P. and Maranda, E. Köngäs, Structural analysis of oral tradition (Pennsylvania 1971) 182f.Google Scholar
70. Cf. Ben-Amos, D. and Goldstein, K.S., ‘Folklore. Performance and communication’, Approaches to semiotics 40 (The Hague 1975) 1ff.Google Scholar, 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 217Google Scholar on Rose's, H.J. discussion of the ‘Märchen in Greece and Italy’ in A handbook of Greek mythology including its extension to Rome (London 1964 b (1928)) 286ff.Google Scholar
71. Taylor, A., ‘Folklore and the student of literature’, in Dundes, , The study of folklore, 34ff.Google Scholar, gives a modest review of the complex relationship between folklore and literature; Dundes' introductory note gives a useful bibliography, ibid. Studies such as Obiechina, E., Culture, tradition and society in the West African novel (Cambridge 1975)Google Scholar, and Lohof, B.A., ‘A morphology of the modern fable’, Journal of popular culture 8 (Summer 1974) 15ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (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 elswhere.
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 Griffith, J.G. in G&R n.s.16 (1969) 149 n.1Google Scholar, Gaius Inst. 2.68, Ulp. Dig. 10.2.8.1, Berger, A., ‘Encyclopedic dictionary of Roman law’, TAPhS 43.2 (1953) 362–3Google Scholar, 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); Lang, A., The brown fairybook (London 1904) 202Google Scholar (a modern ‘Anatolian’ tale), ‘Fortune and the woodcutter’ (a neighbour borrows mules and loads on his secret treasuretrove; surprised by soldiers, he flees and ‘the mules, left to themselves, took the path that led them to their master's stable..’); Johnston, R.C. and Owen, D.D.R., Two Old French Gawain romances (Edinburgh 1972) 61ff.Google Scholar, ‘La mule sans frein’, by ‘Paiens de Maisières’ (a mysterious lady's mule leads Gauvains to her mysterious sister's castle); Hellman, R. and O'Gorman, R., Fabliaux (London 1965) 27ff.Google Scholar, ‘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); Brown, A.F., The book of Saints and friendly beasts (London 1901) 42ff.Google Scholar, ‘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).