Not, of course, that the antiquity of the Reynard story itself[138] does not mount far higher than the thirteenth century. No two things are more remarkable as results of that comparative and simultaneous study of literature, to which this series hopes to give some little assistance, than the way in which, on the one hand, a hundred years seem to be in the Middle Ages but a day, in the growth of certain kinds, and on the other a day sometimes appears to do the work of a hundred years. We have seen how in the last two or three decades of the twelfth century the great Arthurian legend seems suddenly to fill the whole literary scene, after being previously but a meagre chronicler's record or invention. The growth of the Reynard story, though to some extent contemporaneous, was slower; but it was really the older of the two. Before the middle of this century, as we have seen, there was really no Arthurian story worthy the name; it would seem that by that time the Reynard legend had already taken not full but definite form in Latin, and there is no reasonable reason for scepticism as to its existence in vernacular tradition, though perhaps not in vernacular writing, for many years, perhaps for more than one century, earlier.
Order of texts.
It was not to be expected but that so strange, so interesting, and so universally popular a story as that of King Noble and his not always loving subjects, should have been made, as usual, the battle-ground of literary fancy and of that general tendency of mankind to ferocity, which, unluckily, the study of belles lettres does not seem very appreciably to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating MSS. in the early days of palæographic study, and by their prepossessions as Germans, some early students of the Reynard story made out much too exclusive and too early claims, as to possession by right of invention, for the country in which Reynard has no doubt, for the last four centuries or so, been much more of a really popular hero than anywhere else. Investigation and comparison, however, have had more healing effects here than in other cases; and since the acknowledgment of the fact that the very early Middle High German version of Henry the Glichezare, itself of the end of the twelfth century, is a translation from the French, there has not been much serious dispute about the order of the Reynard romances as we actually have them. That is to say, if the Latin Isengrimus—the oldest Reinardus Vulpes—of 1150 or thereabouts is actually the oldest text, the older branches of the French Renart pretty certainly come next, with the High German following a little later, and the Low German Reincke de Vos and the Flemish Reinaert a little later still. The Southern Romance nations do not seem—indeed the humour is essentially Northern—to have adopted Reynard with as much enthusiasm as they showed towards the Romances; and our English forms were undoubtedly late adaptations from foreign originals.
Place of origin.
If, however, this account of the texts may be said to be fairly settled, the same cannot of course be said as to the origin of the story. Here there are still champions of the German claim, whose number is increased by those who stickle for a definite "Low" German origin. Some French patriots, with a stronger case than they generally have, still maintain the story to be purely French in inception. I have not myself seen any reason to change the opinion I formed some fifteen years ago, to the effect that it seems likely that the original language of the epic is French, but French of a Walloon or Picard dialect, and that it was written somewhere between the Seine and the Rhine.
The character and accomplishment of the story, however, are matters of much more purely literary interest than the rather barren question of the probable—it is not likely that it will ever be the proved—date or place of origin of this famous thing. The fable in general, and the beast-fable in particular, are among the very oldest and most universal of the known forms of literature. A fresh and special development of it might have taken place in any country at any time. It did, as a matter of fact, take place somewhere about the twelfth century or earlier, and somewhere in the central part of the northern coast district of the old Frankish empire.
The French form.
As usual with mediæval work, when it once took hold on the imagination of writers and hearers, the bulk is very great, especially in the French forms, which, taking them altogether, cannot fall much short of a hundred thousand lines. This total, however, includes developments—Le Couronnement Renart, Renart le Nouvel, and, later than our present period, a huge and still not very well-known thing called Renart le Contrefait, which are distinct additions to the first conception of the story. Yet even that first conception is not a story in the single sense. Its thirty thousand lines or thereabouts are divided into a considerable number of what are called branches, attributed to authors sometimes anonymous, sometimes named, but never, except in the one case of Renart le Bestourné, known.[139] And it is always difficult and sometimes impossible to determine in what relation these branches stand to the main trunk, or which of them is the main trunk. The two editors of the Roman, Méon and Herr Martin, arrange them in different orders; and I do not think it would be in the least difficult to make out a good case for an order, or even a large number of orders, different still.[140]
By comparison, however, with the versions in other languages, it seems not very doubtful that the complaint of Isengrim the Wolf as to the outrages committed by Reynard on the complainant's personal comfort, and the honour of Hersent his wife—a complaint laid formally before King Noble the Lion—forms, so far as any single thing can be said to form it, the basis and beginning of the Reynard story. The multiplication of complaints by other beasts, the sufferings inflicted by Reynard on the messengers sent to summon him to Court, and his escapes, by mixture of fraud and force, when he is no longer able to avoid putting in an appearance, supply the natural continuation.
Its complications.