Chanticleer and the Fox

The story became well known in Europe because of its connection with several popular literary works and was eventually recorded in collections of Aesop's Fables from the time of Heinrich Steinhowel and William Caxton onwards.

He is forewarned in a dream of his capture by a predator but is inclined to disregard it, against the persuasion of his favourite, Pinte, who has already caught sight of Renart lurking in the cabbage patch.

Eventually the two creatures meet and Renart overcomes the cock's initial fear by describing the great admiration he had for the singing of Chanticleer's father.

They include the story of Renart and the Tomtit, in which the frustrated fox tries to persuade his 'cousin' to greet him with a kiss and eventually has to flee at the approach of dogs.

The scene takes place in a poor woman's garden-close where Chauntecleer the cock presides over a harem of seven hens, among whom Pertolete is his favourite.

The rest of the story is much as in the other versions except that at the end the fox tries to charm down the escaped cock a second time before the two creatures condemn their own credulous foolishness.

In the meantime the Scottish poet Robert Henryson had produced his freer version of Chaucer's tale, The Taill of Schir Chanticleir and the Foxe, written in the 1480s.

In place of the extended debate on dreams, this poem's rhetorical episode is reserved until after the capture of Chanticleir by the fox and so adds to the suspense.

There have been several musical settings of Chaucer's story, of which the first was Gordon Jacob's The Nun's Priest's Tale for chorus and orchestra, which had its premiere in 1951 and is still performed.

[15] However, the original cover illustration for that (based on a costume design by Coquelin)[16] and the words[17] make it clear that its inspiration was Edmond Rostand's drama Chantecler about a cock that believed the sun would not rise unless it crowed first.

Several other works claim to be inspired by Chaucer's tale but, like Rostand's play and the 1990 cartoon feature film Rock-a-Doodle based on it, have little connection with the original Renart Cycle version beyond using the name Chanticleer, or variants of it.