The Taill of Schir Chanticleir and The Foxe - Moralitas

Moralitas

The moralitas opens with an observation that the taill is overheillit wyth typis figurall (replete with symbolic meanings). It focusses, however, on one basic message, the sin of pride and the dangers of flattery, expressed in forceful alliterative verse:

Fy, puft-up pryde ! Thow is full poysonabill !

Quha favoris the on force man haif ane fall:

Thy strenth is nocht, thy stule standis unstabill;

Tak witnes of the feyndis infernall,

Quhilk houndit doun wes fra that hevinlie hall

To hellis hole, and to that hiddeous hous,

Because in pryde thay wer presumpteous...

(lines 593-99)

while the foxe, we are told, may weill represent flatterers

With fals mening and mynd maist toxicate...

(line 602).

Despite the forceful rhethoric, the simplicity of the message is qualified and undercut by the writer's admissions that the full range of readings is more complex. In contrast to the relatively plain statement of the moral to the previous fabill (The Twa Mice) Henryson is starting to complicate his inferences. We are not to take the narrator's moralitates as a complete picture.