The Taill of The Cok and The Jasp - Prologue

Prologue

There is little doubt that the succinct prolog which leads into the Cok and the Jasp is intended to introduce a general collection of Fabillis, not solely the Fabill of the Cok and the Jasp. It opens with a defense of poetry (expanded from the verse Romulus), presents an apologia for making the translatioun, establishes the first person narrator, summarises Aesop's work and provides a bridging passage into the First Fabill.

The first four stanzas develop a general argument that fiction, even though it may be feinyeit by nature, can have a sound moral purpose at heart, and that stories which are pleisand (line 4) or merie (line 20) are better suited to convey wisdom than dry scholastic writing. Henryson develops his meaning using three images; cereal cultivation (stanza 2), the nuttis schell (stanza 3) and the bowstring (stanza 4).

In stanza 5 (the middle stanza of the prolog) the narrator identifies and directly addresses his audience for the first time as my maisteris, or in other words, his own university educated peers. The writer, in effect, is figuring himself in the role of student before his teachers (his readers). The stanza also makes cryptic reference to an unnamed commissioning patron for the poem who may or may not have existed.

The humility topos continues into the next stanza where the narrator pretends to have no understanding of eloquence and an ability only to write in rude and hamelie language, a self-deferential reference to his choice to create poetry in Scots rather than Latin. He concludes by inviting his readers to correct any mistakes they may find.

A brief precis of Aesop's fable literature then follows in the next three stanzas with a stark view of its purposes and some comments on how animal behaviour and human nature compare. The ninth stanza ends with a swift bridging passage into the first Fabill.