Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/150



The monkish hit at the wife is amusing, and might have been supposed to have originated with those determined misogynists, as the gallant Welsh-men lay all the blame on the man. But the good compilers of the “Gesta” wrote little of their own, except moral applications of the tales they relate, and the story of Folliculus and his dog, like many others in their collection, is drawn from a foreign source.

It occurs in the Seven Wise Masters, and in the “Calumnia Novercalis” as well, so that it must have been popular throughout Mediæval Europe. Now the tales of the Seven Wise Masters are translations from a Hebrew work, the Kalilah and Dimnah of Rabbi Joel, composed about A.D. 1250, or from Simeon Seth’s Greek Kylile and Dimne, written in 1080. These Greek and Hebrew works were derived from kindred sources. That of Rabbi Joel was a translation from an Arabic version made by Nasr-Allah in the twelfth century, whilst Simeon Seth’s was a translation of the Persian Kalilah and Dimnah. But the Persian Kalilah and Dimnah was not either an original work, it was in turn a translation from the Sanskrit Pantschatantra, made about A.D. 540.

In this ancient Indian book the story runs as follows:—