Tag: Alexander Neckam

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The Ambiguous Medieval Bat: Fables on Treachery and Survival

In the Middle Ages, the bat was understood to occupy an unusual position amongst animals. Ancient and medieval authors were well aware that while bats have wings and fly, like birds do, they also have teeth, give birth to live young, and produce milk—none of which are avian traits. Premodern taxonomies (systems of classification for living things) differed significantly from modern ones;1 the bat in the medieval period was often spoken of as a bird with some “quadruped” characteristics.2 For example, some twelfth-century bestiaries, drawing directly from Ambrose’s Hexameron (Book 5, 24.87), say:

The bat [vespertilio], an ignoble animal, takes its name from “evening” [vespere]. Moreover, it is both flying and a quadruped, and uses its teeth, which you may not be accustomed to finding in other birds. It gives birth like quadrupeds, not as eggs, but as living young.3

Illustration of a bat from the early 13th c. Ashmole Bestiary (Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1511), fol. 63r.

The bat’s liminal nature was fodder for medieval fables as well. The most popular medieval bat fable (or at least, the one extant in the greatest number of versions)4 was The Bat and the Birds (Perry Index 566). In this fable, a bat attempts to play both sides in a conflict between quadrupeds and birds, and is ultimately punished for his duplicity.

Ambiguity as Deceptive

A Latin verse version by medieval English author Alexander Neckam, who lived in the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, goes as follows:

De vespertilione et avibus
Quadrupedes et aves gererent dum bella furentes
et modo quadrupedes, nunc fugerent volucres,
versutus vespertilio se iunxit utrisque
ut, quicquid fieret, tutus untrinque foret.
Auribus et mammis se quadrupedem simulabat,
credi par alis alitibus poterat.
Hac se fraude tegens inter fera prelia tutus
fallebat stolidum cautus utrumque genus.
Ut fraus nota fuit, genus hunc abiecit utrumque
et merito placuit ut neutrum neutri.
Hac re quadrupedes et aves dum vespere pausant,
antique fraudis conscius ipse fugit.
Sic qui se fallax nunc his nunc ingerit illis,
omnibus ingratus, iure repulsus erit.5

My translation:

The Bat and the Birds
While the quadrupeds and birds were waging a furious war, and at times the quadrupeds were fleeing, at other times the birds, the cunning bat united himself to both, so that, whatever happened, he would be safe from both sides. He resembled the quadrupeds in his ears and teats, and could be taken for a bird because of his wings. So, deceptively hiding himself, safe amongst the fighting beasts, the cautious one tricked the foolish ones of both kinds. When the deceit was known, both kinds cast him out, and he deservedly was accepted by neither one nor the other. Because of this, when quadrupeds and birds rest in the evening, he, conscious of the earlier deception, flees. Thus, whichever deceitful one pushes himself onto first some, then onto others, will justly be rejected, unacceptable to all.

The bat in the fable of The Bat and the Birds values self-protection above “loyalty” to one party or another, and sits uneasily between categories. Neckam’s version construes his strategy as clever, but deceptive, and judges his ultimate status as an exile as well-deserved, and perhaps inevitable.

Illustration of the War of the Birds and the Beasts, in an 1863 edition of Croxall’s Fables of Aesop, p. 228.

While Neckam’s moral is pretty general, moralizing the conflicting groups as “some” and “others” whom one shouldn’t act fickle towards, other medieval (and modern) moralists were more direct in casting the fable in political terms. William Caxton’s Aesop (1484) proclaims:

And therfore he that wylle serue two lordes contrary one to other may not be good ne trewe/ And they whiche relynquen and leue theyr owne lordes for to seruve another straunger/ whiche is enemy to theyr lord/ ben wel worthy to be punysshed/6

(And therefore, he that will serve two lords opposed to one another cannot be good or faithful. And those who abandon and leave their own lords to serve another foreigner who is enemy to their lord are well worthy to be punished.)

Eighteenth-century churchman Samuel Croxall, meanwhile, waxed fervent about deserters and traitors to one’s country:

For any one to desert the interest of his country, and turn renegado, either out of fear, or any prospect of advantage, is so notoriously vile and low, that it is no wonder if the man, who is determined in it, is for ever ashamed to see the sun, and to show himself in the eyes of those whose cause he has betrayed.7

Illustration of a bat from a bestiary, British Library, Harley MS 3244, folio 55v.

The bat’s ambiguous nature does not jibe well with Caxton’s and Croxall’s denouncements, which compare him to someone who deserts their lord or betrays their country. Indeed, perhaps his nature, as the fables have it, does not jibe well with the genre’s broader tendency to naturalize and essentialize social categories, by using animals as metaphors for humans, as I have discussed in previous posts. Fables map species differences to human social differences, and in so doing, often portray these social differences as inherent and immutable—stark as the differences between a donkey and a lion, or a wolf and a sheep.

But, after all, which group should the bat try to belong to, in this fable? If he were to side only with the quadrupeds, the birds might deem him a traitor, and vice versa. His characteristics align him with both sides. In a sense, by allying with both sides at different points in time, he is being true to his own nature, which is ambiguous. This ambiguity can render him safer, but it can also render him more vulnerable.

Ambiguity as Adaptive

Another bat fable depicts the bat’s ambiguous characteristics as potentially adaptive in the face of danger, and indeed as something for humans to emulate. In the fable of The Bat and the Weasel (Perry Index 172), a bat is captured by a weasel and pleads for his life. The weasel insists that she cannot spare the bat, since she is the enemy of all winged creatures. Declaring that he is not a bird, but a mouse, the bat is freed.8 Then, he is caught by a second weasel, who claims to hate all mice. The bat now insists he is not a mouse, but a bat, and he is once again released. The conclusion: “The fable demonstrates that we too must not persist in the same devices, reckoning that those who adapt themselves to circumstances often escape dangers.”9

Image of a bat from Bibliothèque d’Amiens Métropole, MS. 399 folio 149r.

Together, these bat fables speak not only to the perceived ambiguity of the bat as a creature, but the perceived ambiguity of being ambiguous. Those who don’t fit into a single category can face mistrust and disapprobation, but that same liminality can also be a source of strength.

Linnet Heald
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

  1. See Susan Crane, “A Taxonomy of Creatures in the Second-Family Bestiary,” in New Medieval Literatures vol. 10, issue 1 (2008), pp. 1-48, for an insightful analysis of medieval bestiary taxonomy, for instance. ↩︎
  2. Live birth and the production of milk are of course mammal traits, not quadruped traits per se. The taxonomic category of “mammals” was introduced by Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, however, and would be anachronistic here. Interestingly, Linnaeus categorized both bats and humans as primates. ↩︎
  3. Vespertilio, animal ignobile, a vespere nomen accepit. Est autem volatile idemque quadrupes, et dentibus utitur, quos in aliis avibus reperire non soleas. Parit ut quadrupedia, non ova sed pullos viventes. Latin text from Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary (The Boydell Press, 2006), p. 182. Translations in this post are mine (unless otherwise stated). My own translation above differs little from Clark’s, but Clark notably translates ut quadrupedia as “like mammals.” ↩︎
  4. See Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, History of the Graeco-Latin Fable, vol.3 (Brill, 2003), p. 727. ↩︎
  5. Giovanni Garbugino, ed., Alessandro Neckam, Novus Aesopus, Favolisti latini medievali, vol. 2. (Università di Genova Facoltà di Lettere, 1987), p. 56. ↩︎
  6. R. T. Lenaghan, ed., Caxton’s Aesop, Edited with an Introduction and Notes (Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 107. ↩︎
  7. Samuel Croxall, Fables of Aesop and Others, Translated into English, with Instructive Applications, and One Hundred and Ninety-Eight Illustrations (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 229. ↩︎
  8. There is some slippage in terminology here—the bat didn’t deny he was winged, he denied he was a bird! However, this assertion satisfies the first captor. ↩︎
  9. I have epitomized L. Radif’s Italian translation, from Greek, of the fable’s narrative; the moral is, as Radif renders it, “La favola mostra che bisogna che anche noi non persistiamo negli stessi accorgimenti, calcolando che coloro che si adeguano alle circostanze spesso sfuggono ai pericoli.” L. Radif, “Il vespertilio protagonista di una favola di Alessandro Neckam,” Favolisti latini medievali e umanistici, vol. 7 (Università di Genova Facoltà di Lettere, 1998), p. 79. ↩︎

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The Stag and the Dogs: A Medieval Fable

Fables—short moralized narratives, often with animal subjects, associated with the legendary figure of Aesop—have been transmitted and adapted from antiquity down to the present. In the Middle Ages, fables were used to teach Latin to children. One particular fable collection, sometimes called the “elegiac Romulus” for its verse form and supposed dedicatee, seems to have been especially popular in this regard. This collection of approximately 60 fables (many manuscripts have 58 but others may have several more) is extant in almost 200 manuscripts from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Some of these manuscripts show signs of use in the classroom (i.e., they have features such as glosses, words numbered to aid in parsing, etc. An edition by Aaron E. Wright reproduces one such manuscript).[1] There is a critical text of the elegiac Romulus edited by Paola Busdraghi, with a translation into Italian.[2] I offer below my own English translation of one fable from the elegiac Romulus, along with brief commentary.

The fable of The Stag and the Dogs (De cervo et canibus), 74 in the Perry Index, is also known as The Stag at the Spring (Cervus ad fontem)[3] or The Stag and His Antlers (De cervo et cornibus eius).[4] Other medieval versions of this fable are found in prose and verse Latin fable collections in the Romulus tradition;[5] the Parabolae of Odo of Cheriton;[6] the Novus Aesopus of Alexander Neckam;[7] and the Fables of Marie de France.[8]

In this fable, a stag views his own reflection in the spring he drinks at, proud of his many-tined antlers, but critical of his legs, which seem to him too slender. The stag flees as hunting dogs approach, now appreciating the swiftness of his legs, but his antlers become entangled as he passes through dense vegetation, and he is caught and killed. The moral typically advises that we should value or disdain things according to whether they help us or harm us.

Hunters with dogs pursuing a deer, Getty Museum MS 27, f.67v.

Here is the version of the fable found in the elegiac Romulus, from Busdraghi’s edition:[9]

De cervo et canibus

Fons nitet argento similis, sitis arida cervum
huc rapit, haurit aquas, se speculatur aquis.
Hunc beat, hunc mulcet ramose gloria frontis,
hunc premit, hunc ledit tibia macra pedum.
Ecce canes, tonat ira canum. Timet ille, timenti
fit fuga, culpati cruris adorat opem.
Silve claustra subit, cornu retinente moratur:
crure neci raptum cornua longa necant.
Spernere quod prosit et amare quod obsit ineptum est:
prodest quod fugimus et quod amamus obest.

The following is my translation:

The stag and the dogs

A spring shines like silver, dry thirst draws a stag
to the place; he drinks the waters, watches himself in the waters.
The glory of his branching brow gladdens and delights him,
his thin shins and feet depress him, annoy him.
Here come the dogs, the rage of dogs resounds. He is afraid, and, fearing, 
takes flight, admires the aid of his once-blamed legs.

He comes into a narrow grove, is delayed by horns holding him back:
snatched from death by his legs, but killed by his long antlers.
It is absurd to despise what benefits you and love what hurts you:
what we flee helps us, and what we love hinders us.

Medieval literature often gives an impression of hunting as a pastime of the aristocracy. And indeed, it was—or at least the practice of pursuing and killing red deer (Cervus elaphus) using a pack of hunting dogs, as this fable depicts, was the “noblest” (at least according to aristocratic hunters!) and most highly ritualized form of hunting in the Middle Ages. Hunting was, however, “central to the lives of all classes,”[10] and involved, as it still does today, killing a wide range of species using a variety of methods, such as stalking, snaring, and netting—quite effective, but nevertheless disdained by some elite medieval authors as unsporting. Another way of hunting deer was the “bow and stable” method, in which deer (red or fallow) were driven towards a line of archers.[11] This is the type of deer hunting depicted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (previously discussed on the MSRB). Unlike the hunt par force de chiens—the hunt of a single animal with a pack of dogs—this method could result in numerous kills.

Bow and stable hunting, Getty Museum MS 27, f.109.

There is a ring of truth to the stag’s fate in The Stag and the Dogs: in a sense, the stag’s glorious antlers doom him. While a substantial rack of antlers is both a means of competing against other males for mates and an effective defense from many non-human predators, it was precisely the antlers which marked a stag, or hart, as legitimate quarry. The Master of Game, an early-fifteenth-century English translation of Gaston Phoebus’s hunting treatise, the Livre de la chasse, provides precise terminology for male deer in each year of their life. A stag in his sixth year, having at least ten tines on his antlers, was a “hart of ten”; at this point the animal could be pursued. But scouts for a hunting party would attempt to find not just any hart who could be pursued; ideally the party would seek “the finest hart available in the area.”[12] In modern times, as well, some hunters of deer may go for the most impressive “trophy” specimens—males in their prime with sizeable racks—rather than targeting more vulnerable animals, as predators such as wolves are inclined to do. This may have deleterious effects on deer populations.[13]

The fable of The Stag and the Dogs does not function as an indictment of hunting. This narrative fits within a larger context of interspecies violence throughout the fable genre, in which characters die as a consequence for their vices or errors. Nonetheless, rather than focusing attention on humans’ pleasure in hunting deer, as many other medieval works on the topic do, the fable invites readers to briefly consider the predicament of the frightened victim, while at the same time making a lesson out of his misjudgment.

Linnet Heald
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

[1] Aaron E. Wright, ed., The Fables of ‘Walter of England’ Edited from Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Codex Guelferbytanus 185 Helmstadienis (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997).

[2] Paola Busdraghi, ed., L’Esopus attribuito a Gualtiero Anglico, Favolisti latini medievali e umanistici, 10 (Genova: Università di Genova, 2005).

[3] Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, History of the Graeco‐Latin Fable, trans. Leslie A. Ray, vol. 3: Inventory and Documentation of the Graeco-Latin Fable (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 625.

[4] Giovanni Garbugino, ed., Alessandro Neckam: Novus Aesopus, Favolisti latini medievali, 2 (Genova: Università di Genova, 1987), p. 124.

[5] Léopold Hervieux, ed., Les fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen âge, vol. 2: Phèdre et ses anciens imitateurs directs et indirects (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1884).

[6] Léopold Hervieux, ed., Les fabulistes latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen âge, vol. 4: Eudes de Cheriton et ses dérivés (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1896).

[7] Garbugino, ed., Novus Aesopus, p. 124.

[8] Charles Brucker, ed., Les Fables: édition critique accompagnée d’une introduction, d’une traduction, des notes et d’un glossaire, 2nd ed. (Paris: Peeters, 1998), pp. 130-1.

[9] Busdraghi, ed., L’Esopus, p. 148.

[10] Tony Pollard, “Foreword,” in Medieval Hunting, by Richard Almond (Stroud: The History Press, 2011).

[11] John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), pp. 47-67.

[12] Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, pp. 32-4.[13] Jos M. Milner, Erlend B. Nilsen, and Harry P. Andreassen, “Demographic Side Effects of Selective Hunting in Ungulates and Carnivores,” Conservation Biology 21, no. 1 (2007), pp. 36-47.