Fable
Of all the thirteen taillis, the Cok and the Jasp most pretends to be like the static and conventional re-tellings more usual in fable genre. Henryson's innovation and development from his sources chiefly involve presenting an unusually well-rounded, imaginatively realised figure of the cok in a specific and concretely drawn setting. He establishes explicit reasons for the loss of the jasp and sets the location for its discovery as a midden. He also expands the cockerel's arguments and ultimate reasons for the rejection of the jasp as a carefully orchestrated passage of fully fleshed oration which nonetheless continues to sound as if it is being delivered in the voice of a cockerel. But since this is not so much a story — more a strongly drawn vignette — the fabill does not yet fully live up to the requirements for fully effective storytelling argued for in the prolog. This will come in the subsequent fabillis, and so, in a sense, the First Fabill partly acts to defer reader's expectations.
The cok addresses the stone directly, acknowledges its worth, recognises it has been misplaced and argues, realistically enough, that to him it is of no practical use. The jasp, he says, is an object that belongs more properly to a lord or king (line 81), while he is content simply to satisfy his humble wants in draf, corn, wormis and snaillis — his daily meit. The rhetorical climax comes in the seventh stanza of the fabill in which the cok, rising on a number of rhetorical questions, finishes with an almost fantastical exortation for the stone to levitate and transport itself back to some more royal place:
- Quhar suld thow mak thy habitatioun?
- Quhar suld thow duell bot in ane royall tour?
- Quhar suld thow sit bot on ane kingis croun,
- Exaltit in worschip and in grit honour?
- Rise gentill jasp, of all stanis the flour
- Out of this midding, and pas quhar thow suld be;
- Thow ganis not for me, nor I for the.
(M.F. lines 106-112)
And the cock, leaving the jasp, exits the poem to seek his meit (line 114).
Read more about this topic: The Taill Of The Cok And The Jasp
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