Reynard the Fox, or Why the Best Robin Hood is a Fox

When we discuss Medieval literature, Robin Hood and King Arthur get a lot of attention.

But they weren’t alone. There were many popular figures that people liked to riff on. Alexander the Great got his own cycle, as well as Charlemagne. But there were other wholly invented characters, and one of the most beloved of these was Reynard.

The Gist

The copy of the poem I got from Archive.org goes like this:

Reynard the Fox avoids a summons to the court of the lion. He has a good reason to do this; he stands accused of doing all of the crimes.

Once the wolf, Isegrym, accuses the fox of insulting his wife, the dog, Courtoys, steps forward to accuse Reynard of stealing his food. This complaint gets interrupted by the cat, Tybert, who points out that the dog stole from the cat first. (And the cat ‘fairly won’ the contested sausage from a farmer. Neither of these folks are looking good, frankly.)

While the cat and dog square off about who stole the sausage first, Isegrym and others say Reynard committed a whole bunch of mayhem and taunted his victims when he tricked them.

Reynard’s nephew defends him, claiming the fox is now a peaceful, pious hermit living to say his prayers.

It really starts to look dark for Reynard, however, when Chanticleer the rooster shows up with the dead body of one of his daughters and a story of how Reynard conned his family into coming out of a protected garden by pretending to be a saintly hermit, reformed in his ways. He then ate half of Chanticleer’s family.

The lion is horrified, and they hold an elaborate funeral for the hen where the lion declares a sentence of death upon the fox. He sends Sir Bruin to catch Reynard.

Bruin shows up at Reynard’s castle and the fox promptly cons him into sticking his head in a trap so the humans will beat him to death. The bear only escapes when the priest’s wife falls in the river and the bear takes advantage of the distraction to swim away. Reynard pulls a similar trick when the king sends the cat to fetch him.

He is only brought to court when his nephew tells Reynard that the king is threatening his wife and kids. Reynard spins a tale of hidden treasure to bribe the king into letting him go and claims that he is going on pilgrimage.

As he is leaving the court, he cons Couwert the hare into coming into his castle- where he murders the rabbit and feeds him to his family. Once they have finished their feast, he tricks a ram into taking the hare’s bloody head back to court.

Well, the king doesn’t like this, realizes that the treasure is imaginary, and announces that he will lay siege to Malperdy, Reynard’s home castle. Reynard’s nephew warns Reynard of this, and the fox returns to the court to claim that he has a relative who will bribe the pope into getting him into his good graces.

The king almost doesn’t buy it, but an ape defends Reynard with the stunning logic that the other guys are worse. When the lion wavers, she offers that Reynard had decided a tricky court case for him once, and he has a lot of relatives who speak well of him.

So, Reynard gets to try bribing the king with imaginary jewels again, but the wolf calls shenanigans and challenges him to a duel. This duel ends when Reynard bites Isegrym’s tongue. This leads to everyone deciding that Reynard is just the best, and the king lets him off with full honors.

This poem is bookended by the suggestion that this will teach you lessons; namely, that the court is full of cheats and that gold will get you everything. Really, though, you should be good.

Republishing

This was famously brought to England by Caxton and his printing press in 1481.

He was translating and not inventing, though. The first version was written in the 1200’s and has seen plenty of rewrites since.

This story was so popular among French speakers and the Flemish that ‘Reynard’ became the default word for ‘fox’ in French.

Completely Unfit For Disney

Walt desperately wanted to adapt this story for Disney. They got as far as drawing the characters.

But there was no way in hell that Reynard the Fox could be acceptable family entertainment in the 1960’s.

I mean, he killed the bunny. You can’t be a Disney hero and kill the bunny.

So, Reynard became Robin Hood. If you ever wondered why there was a random rooster narrating the Disney animated Robin Hood movie, that’s why: they had the design for Chanticleer but couldn’t use him in his original role.

Conclusion

We sometimes act as though the 20th Century invented grimdark, but this story proves this false. Reynard is an antihero, saved only by the fact that everyone else sucks too.

Well, there is one thing you can say for him: he is a family man who loves his wife and kids, and he didn’t eat his nephew.

This antihero status perhaps comes from the weird relationship people had with foxes; they made good hunting because they were sneaky and determined, but they were pests because they ate your poultry. They made nice fur linings for rich people, but poor people would use all the parts for clothing and medicine too.

What is interesting is that foxes were strongly associated with the devil, but Reynard feigns piety constantly in order to get out of trouble. He goes through the motions of being shriven both times before he goes to plead with the king.

But he is just using pretty words as talismans on the off-chance he might get in trouble. I think our medieval forbears were on to that trick and were not impressed. Reynard lays bare how selfish and meaningless such actions are.

And of course, his popularity proves that we have always loved a trickster.

Sources:

‘The History of Reynard the Fox, his friends and his enemies, his crimes, hair-breadth escapes and final triumph’ translation by Frederick Ellis, 1897, retrieved from Archive.org

‘Introducing The Medieval Fox’ The 5 Minute Medievalist podcast