[1] This story is of Oriental origin. It occurs in some versions of The Thousand and One Nights. [↑]
[2] Guillare: court minstrel, story-teller, buffoon. As these men frequented the courts of kings and nobles, they were called men of the court. [↑]
[3] A mark had the value of four-and-a-half florins. [↑]
[4] The story appears in the French poem of Lambert Le Tort and Alexander de Bernay, with a slight variation. [↑]
V
How a king committed a reply to a young son of his who had to bear it to the ambassadors of Greece
There was a king in the parts of Egypt who had a first-born son who would wear the crown after him. The father began from the son’s very earliest years to give him instruction at the hands of wise men of mature age, and never had it happened to the boy to know the games and follies of childhood.
It chanced one day that his father committed to him an answer for the ambassadors of Greece.