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The Fox in Period
Colyne Stewart
(mka
Todd Fischer, © 2004)
Though the fox is almost universally regarded as a wily trickster, it has meant many other different things to many different people over the years. Here follows a short trip through period, briefly studying examples of the fox as it has been seen throughout the years.
The Fox in Ancient Celtic Human Sacrifice
Jones believes that the Lindow Man was a victim of human sacrifice, and that the fox fur armband he wore marked him as such. The Celts regarded the fox as an outlaw, an animal on the periphery of human society, not fully wild, but not domesticated. By farmers it was despised because of its attacks on their livestock, but it was also admired for its wiliness. Jones goes on to explain how animals were often 'exchanged' (either literally or figuratively) for human sacrificial victims in several accounts (such as the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac). She believes that by marking the Lindow Man with the fox fur he had been exchanged for an animal, which helped assuage any guilt felt by his society for taking his life. To fully understand her theory it is necessary to read her article in full (see Sources).
The Fox as a Name
In the Norse epic Landnámabók, three bynames appear incorporating the fox: rauðrefr (red fox), refr (fox), and refskegg (fox-beard). About the year 1333 the Shanachs in Ireland anglicized their name to Fox.
Bestiaries were medieval manuscripts that acted both as a zoological record of animal life and as a religious text. Bestiary authors would collect tales of animals (some of whom we now know never existed, such as the phoenix) and would compare each animal’s attributes (real or imagined) with those of God, Jesus, the saints and the devil. Bestiaries as we know them began to appear in the 12th century, though they were based on earlier writings, especially the 4th century Greek work by Physiologus.
To the authors of the bestiaries, the fox represented deceit for many reasons. They said it would not run in a straight line, but took a winding course. It took its name “vulpis” from the word “volupes” (meaning ‘twisty-footed’) from this supposed habit. To get food, it would play dead, sometimes rolling in red mud to make it look as if they were covered in mud.
The Fox in Heraldry
Though the religious symbolism associated with the fox was negative, it was still not an uncommon choice for heraldry.
One of the characters from Arthurian legend, Mélian de Lis (son of the King of Denmark) was said to have a fox on his arms: Gules a fox or armed and langued azure. Crest: fox's head or. Supporters: Two foxes salient or. The 13th c. versions are different: either argent a lion issuant gules or Argent a maunch gules.
According to one source, a fox on your arms was representative of “symbol of wisdom and noticed minister, and also of an astute commander.”
The fox appears in heraldry as a charge, a supporter or a crest.
One interesting example of the fox in heraldry was cited in Woodward's Treatise of Heraldry regarding the coat of arms of the Pomeranian family of Pirch, which also appears in Rietstap and is illustrated in Rolland. Impaling the coat of Pirch (Azure a perch per pale argent, canting arms) is the following: Gules on a terrasse vert a woman nude, between her legs a fox running from dexter to sinister, holding hay in its mouth, the woman holding the tail of the fox and rubbing her body with it.
Reynard the Fox
Reynard the Fox was the celebrated hero of the medieval beast epics, a trickster who continually outsmarts and tricks his adversaries. These works were predominantly written in verse which became increasingly popular after c.1150. They are found chiefly in Latin, French, Low German, Dutch, High German, and English. The type probably originated in a German-speaking section of what is now Alsace-Lorraine, whence it passed into France, the Low Countries, and Germany. The French, who contributed most to the original story, produced Le Roman de Renart (c.1175–1250) which was written by clerics as a parody of the chansons de geste. Caxton translated from a Flemish version his Historie of Reynart the Foxe (1481).
The Fox in Medieval Japan
In medieval Japanese folklore the fox appears as the fox-maiden, a shape-shifting seductress who is a master of arson and illusion. A black fox symbolized good luck, a white one calamity, and three represented disaster.
The Fox in Chaucer
A fox makes an appearance in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, in a tale that has now been called Chanticleer and the Fox. Chanitcleer is a rooster who must outsmart the trickiest of medieval animals to keep himself from becoming dinner. This story is also collected in the Reynard stories and is still retold to this day in children’s books.
The Fox in Games
The medieval game Fox and Geese, which is believed to be a descendent of tafl. The first likely mention of it is in the Icelandic Saga ‘Grettis’, written after AD 1300. In ‘Grettis’ a game called Hala-Tafl (fox game) is mentioned.
“Fox Fables”
A Jewish scribe named Berakhia ben Natronai ha-Nakdan (also known as Benedictus le Punctuer or Blessed the Punctuator) who lived in France at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries drew upon the tales of Marie de France and the Latin Romulus collection (both based on the tales of Aesop), as well as from the Persian Kalila and Dimna fables to write wrote his own Jewish versions. His fables, known as Mishlei Shualim (or “Fox Fables”), are recounted in biblical Hebrew and draw traditional moral lessons for the reader’s instruction.
The Fox in Popular Sayings
Some medieval sayings concerning the fox include:
To be foxed: to be drunk. This comes from an old association between foxes and vines, dating back to Greek times (where Dionysos/Bacchus had to protect his vines from the fox).
Attention, le renard va sortir: This cry was given by a reaper who cut the last sheaf of corn, as the fox was said to lurk there.
Il a le renard: Said when a harvester was ill.
Renard: Name for the harvest-home feast.
To strike the fox: To flail corn.
The Aberdeen Bestiary Project,
This is your number one stop on the web for researching or reading bestiaries. It contains a complete, scanned manuscript with typed transcription (in the original Latin) and an English translation. It also has many close-up scans of the individual illuminations.
Cooper, J. C., Dictionary of Symbolic & Mythological Animals, Thorsins: London, 1992.
Dickenson, David, REYNARD THE FOX - A MEDIEVAL TALE RETOLD
Here there Be Dragons: A Medieval Bestiary
Jones, Leslie Ellen, "Hi, My Name is Fox"?: An Alternative Explanation of "Lindow Man's" Fox Fur Armband and Its Relevance to the Question of Human Sacrifice among the Celts, 2000.
Monsters and Fabulous Beasts from Ancient and Medieval Cultures
Two Medieval Fox Fables About Envy
Uckelman, Sara L. (SCA: Aryanhwy merch Catmael), Viking Bynames found in the Landnámabók, 1999, 2004.
Varty, Kenneth. Reynard, Renart, Reinaert and Other Foxes in Medieval England: The Iconographic Evidence. Distributed for the Amsterdam University Press. 334 p., richly illustrated. 6-3/4 x 9-1/2 1999
Velde François R., Arthurian Heraldry
White, T. H., trans. and ed. The Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1984.
This is T. H. White’s translation of the same source manuscript as the Aberdeen Bestiary. Unfortunately it does not have reproductions of the original illuminations, but rather has White’s drawings based on those illuminations.
Zumbült, Beatrix, Approaching the Medieval Illustration Cycles of the Fox-Epic as an Art Historian: Problems and Perspectives.
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