The original sources of the various Tragedies are sufficiently indicated in the Notes.
The metre employed is of some interest. It exhibits the simplest form of stanza employed by Chaucer, with the rimes arranged in the order a b a b b c b c, and was probably the first French metre which he ever used. It occurs in his A B C, though the original of that poem is in short lines. A good example of it, in French, will be found in a ballad by Eustache Deschamps, written on the death of Machault in 1377; see Tarbe's edition, p. 30. Hence Spenser probably derived his famous stanza, by appending to it an Alexandrine line.
In this Tale, there are two clear examples of lines in which the first foot consists of a single syllable. These are:—
Al | forbrúsëd, bóth-e bákk' and syd-e (3804):
Wheth | er só he wóok or éllës slépt-e (3809).
And probably l. 3535 is of the same character (see note).
§ 49. The Prologue of the Nonne Prestes Tale. This excellent Prologue, which links the Monkes Tale with that of the Nonne Preest, needs no comment. It is in Chaucer's best manner, like the Tale itself; both clearly belong to the period of the formation of the Tales into a series. It shews, moreover, that Chaucer's later taste had taught him to reprobate a style of writing which he, doubtless, at one time admired. See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, iii. 334.
§ 50. The Nonne Preestes Tale. This is the best specimen of our author's humour. An early version of the Tale occurs in a short fable by Marie de France, afterwards amplified in the old French Roman du Renart. The fable by Marie de France consists of thirty-eight short lines, and is printed in Dr. Furnivall's Originals and Analogues (Chaucer Society), p. 116, from MS. Harl. 978, leaf 56 (formerly 76). The corresponding portion of Le Roman de Rénart, as edited by Méon in 1826, vol. i. p. 49, is also printed in the same, p. 117; it comprises 454 lines (ll. 1267-1720), and contains the account of the cock's dream about a strange beast, and other particulars of which Chaucer makes some use. Professor Ten Brink shews that Marie's fable closely resembles one found in a Latin collection of Æsopian fables in a MS. at Göttingen, which he quotes in full (id. p. 114), and refers us for it to Oesterley, 'Romulus,' Berlin, 1870, p. 108.
A translation of Marie's fable, by myself, was printed in 'The Academy,' July 23, 1887 (p. 56); and is here reprinted for the purpose of comparison with Chaucer's story.
The Cock and the Fox.