The Taill of The Cok and The Jasp - Opening Lines

Opening Lines

It is worth noting that the opening of Henryson's Prolog to the Morall Fabillis echoes the opening lines of John Barbour's Brus. It is therefore a variation on the theme of the relation between truth and report in literature. For comparison, the first ten lines, of The Brus, composed in the 1370s, run:

Storyss to rede ar delitibill

Suppos that thai be nocht but fabill,

Than suld storys that suthfast wer

And thai war said on gud maner

Have doubill plesance in heryng.

the first plesance is the carpyng,

And the tother the suthfastnes

That shawys the thing rycht as it wes,

And suth thyngis that ar likand

Till mannys heryng ar plesand.

(Barbour, The Brus, lines 1-10)

Henryson's first stanza, written just over a century later, uses a number of the same (or similar) terms, but, in shorter space, generates a slightly less sanguine impression of the relation between narrative, audience and subject. The differences are subtle, but distinct:

Thocht feinyit fabillis of ald poetre

Be not al grunded upon truth, yit than

Thair polite termes of sweit rhetore

Richt plesand ar unto the eir of man;

And als the caus that thay first began

Wes to repreif the haill misleving

Off man be figure of ane uther thing.

(Henryson, Morall Fabillis, lines 1-7)