Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/262

 242 Hijiory of Domejlic Majiners ladder, mounted on the roof, and difcovered the whole myftery. If, fays the ftory, he had not been fo hafty, the life of his bird would have been faved. In the Englilh verlion of this feries of tales, printed by Weber, the pie's cage is made to hang in the hall : — The burgeh hadde a pie in bis hallc, That couthe telle tales alle Apertlich (openly), in French langage^ And heng in a f aire cage. In the other Englifh verfion, edited by the author of this work for the Percy Society, the bird is faid to have been, not a pie, but a "popynjay," or parrot, and there are other variations in it which fhow that it had been taken more direftly from the Oriental original, in which, as might be expected, the bird is a parrot. Among the animals mentioned as pets we fometimes find monkeys. One of the Latin fiories in the collection printed by the Percy Society, tells how a ruftic, entering the hall of a certain nobleman, feeing a monkey drelTed in the fame fuit as the nobleman's family, and fuppofing, as its back was turned, that it was one of his fons, began to addrefs it with all fuitable reverence ; but when he faw that it was only a monkey chattering at him, he exclaimed, "A curfe upon you ! I thought you had been Jenkin, my ^, , lord's fon."* The favourite quadruped, however, Ao. 173. Lady and D:g. if' has always been the dog, of which feveral kinds are mentioned as lady's pets. Chaucer tells us of his priorefs, — Of f male houndes hadde fche, that Jche fedde With rojlud fieijjh and mylk and ivaftel breed. — Cant. Tales, !. 147. Our cut No. 173, from a manufcript of the St. Graal, in the Britifli ipliffimis -verbis. " De ruftico et finiia. Quidam aiilam cujusdam nobilis intrans, vidensque simiam de secta filioriim vestitum, quia dorsum ad eum habebat, filium credidit esse domini, cui cum reverentia qua debuit loqueretur. Invenit esse simiam super eum cachinnantem, cui ille, ' Maiedicaris !' inquit, ' credidi quod fuisses Jankyn fiiius domini mei.'' " — Latin Stories, p. 122. Mufeum
 * The Latin original of this story is so quaint that it deserves to be given