User:Portia1780/trot

This is a list of Old French fabliaux with their summaries.

Baillet
English title: Baillet, or the priest in the tub of lard

Author: unknown

Plot summary: Baillet begins to suspect his wife of adultery when their three year-old daughter tells him that her mother “is unhappy when Baillet is at home because the priest is afraid.” One day, Baillet returns home while the priest is there and sees the priest jump into a tub of lard. Baillet decides to sell the tub of lard and calls all of his friends over for the sale. The priest’s brother is in the room, and the priest cries out, “Frater, pro Deo, delibera me!” Baillet then raises the price of the tub of lard, since it speaks Latin. The brother is forced to buy the tub of lard at the higher price to free the priest.

De Boivin de Provins
English title: Boivin from Provins

Author: Boivin

Plot summary: Boivin goes to the fair with a brilliant scheme. He dresses up in his best clothes and stands outside a brothel counting his money in a loud voice. Although he has but 12 deniers in his sack, he loudly proclaims that he has 100 derniers and is looking for his long-lost niece and heir. The prostitutes in the brothel overhear this and plan to trick him out of his money. Mabile, the Madam, comes out to seduce Boivin. Boivin tells Mabile she looks just like his niece and introduces himself as Fouchier de la Brousse. Mabile, who cannot believe her good fortune in resembling this niece, pretends to be she and welcomes "Fouchier" into her home. She feeds him and offers him one of her prostitutes, telling her to be sure to steal the money sack while they are in bed. While the prostitute isn't looking, Boivin cuts the laces of his sack and hides it on his body. During sex, the prostitute searches for the sack to no avail. Afterwards, Boivin accuses the prostitute of having stolen his sack, showing where the laces have been cut as evidence. Believing that the prostitute has just done what she has asked, Mabile throws "Fouchier" out of the brothel. When the prostitute cannot produce the money, Mabile beats her. Boivin escapes having paid nothing for his meal or services, with the 12 deniers still in his sack.

Du bouchier d’Abbeville
English title: The butcher of Abbeville

Author: unknown

Plot summary: A butcher goes to market where he is unable to buy any sheep. At night on his way home, he seeks shelter at the home of a priest who turns him away. Along his path, he sees the priests’ flock, steals a sheep, and returns to the priests’ home. In the dark, he tells the priest that he has come from market with a sheep that is too heavy for him to carry much farther; and he offers it to the priest in exchange for lodging. The priest agrees. They kill and eat the sheep. Over night, the butcher sleeps with one of the maids in exchange for the fleece of the sheep. In the morning, the butcher sleeps with the mistress of the priest in exchange for the same fleece. The butcher then goes to the church, sells the fleece to the priest, and leaves town. When the priest returns home, he sees the servant and his mistress fighting over the fleece that he supposedly bought. At the end, he realizes that this was his own sheep to begin with.

De Brunain la vache au prestre
English title: Brunain, the priest’s cow

Author: Jean Bodel

Plot summary: At mass, the priest tells his parishioners that what they give to God will be returned two-fold. Two peasants decide to give the priest their cow, Blérain, in hopes of receiving this blessing. The priest thanks them and ties Blérain to his own cow, Brunain. Later, Blérain escapes from his barn and returns home with Brunain in tow. The peasants’ gift is thus returned two-fold, as promised.

Le dit des Perdriz
English title: The Pigeons

Author: unknown

Plot summary: A peasant catches two pigeons and asks his wife to cook them while he invites the priest over for dinner. As the pigeons roast, however, the wife cannot resist tasting them little by little to the point where she eventually has eaten them both entirely. When the husband returns and asks about the pigeons, the woman lies that the cat ate them. Her husband begins to beat her, so she lies again saying that they are in the pot with the lid on. She asks him to go sharpen the knife, so she can think of another plan. Meanwhile the priest arrives. The clever woman acts like she has no idea why he is there. When the priest answers that he is there to eat the pigeons, she truthfully replies that there are no pigeons and that her husband is sharpening his knife, but she also suggests that the husband is sharpening his knife in order to attack the priest. The priest hears this and flees for his wife. The wife tells her husband that the priest ran off with the pigeons, and the husband chooses to believe his wife.

D'Estormi
English title: Estormi

Author: Huon Piaucele

Estula
English title: Estula

Author: unknown

Plot summary: Two poor orphans go into a rich man's garden at night to steal some food. The man hears something and tells his son to call the dog, whose name is Estula. When the son calls "Estula," one of the orphans answers, "Yes, I'm here," mistaking the dog's name Estula for the French Es-tu là, or "Are you there?" The son rushes back to the house to tell his father that the dog was speaking to him from the garden. The man calls the priest to cast out the demons in the dog. The priest does not want to come but agrees if the son will carry him on his back. The priest and the son come across one of the orphans in the dark. The orphan is waiting for his brother to return with a sheep for them to kill. The orphan mistakes the son for his brother and the priest in his white robe for the sheep. The orphan says, "Quick, throw him down and I'll cut his throat," meaning the sheep. The priest and the son flee for their lives, and the two orphans manage to steal a sheep and several cabbages.

De Gombert et les deus clers
English title: Gombert and the two clerks

Author: Jean Bodel

Plot summary: Gombert, a peasant, welcomes two clerks into his home. One clerk falls in love with his daughter, and the other clerk falls in love with his wife. In order to seduce the daughter, one clerk steals the iron ring from a pan in the fire. When it is night, he goes to the bed of the daughter and offers her a “gold” ring in return for physical pleasure. The girl feels the weight of the ring, assumes it to be worth a lot of money, and sleeps with him. Meanwhile, Gombert gets up to go to the bathroom. The clerk who is in love with his wife moves the cradle next to Gombert’s bed over next to the clerks’ bed. He crawls into bed with the wife and makes love to her, as if he is her husband. When Gombert comes back, he searches for the cradle in the dark to find his way to bed and ends up in the clerks’ bed. The first clerk returns from his encounter with Gombert’s daughter and tells his bedmate everything that has happened, not knowing that this is Gombert himself. Gombert then chases both clerks from his home.

Du Haimet et Barat
English title: Haimet and Barat

Author: Jean Bodel

Plot summary: There are three thieves: Haimet, Barat, and Travers. Travers decides to leave the group and return to an honest living. Haimet and Barat then decide to steal Travers’ ham hanging in his home. Travers suspects that they will do such a thing, so he hides the ham in the bedroom and keeps watch. Meanwhile, Barat sneaks into the house and pretends to be Travers, asking his wife where they hid the ham. She mistakes Barat for her husband and tells him the ham’s whereabouts. Barat then steals the ham. Next, Travers follows Barat and pretends to be Haimet, asking to carry the ham for a while. Barat mistakes Travers for Haimet and gives him the ham. Later, when Haimet arrives, the two realize that they have been duped. Barat sneaks back to the house before Travers and pretends to be Travers’ wife. Travers mistakes Barat for his wife and gives him the ham. When he realizes the error, he follows Barat and climbs into a tree where he pretends to be the ghost of Haimet’s father. Barat and Haimet flee, dropping the ham, which Travers takes back to his house. When Barat and Haimet show up the final time, Travers finally offers to share the ham with them.

Du prestre et du leu
English title: The priest and the wolf

Author: unknown

Plot summary: A man's wife is having an affair with the priest. The peasant digs a trap along the path that the priest uses to come to their home. First a wolf falls in, and then the priest falls in. The wife sends her servant girl to look for the priest who has not yet arrived, and the servant girl falls in. The next morning, the peasant kills the wolf, blackmails the priest, and chases the servant away.

Del prestre taint
English title: The painted priest

Author: unknown

Plot summary: A priest tries to seduce a married woman, only to be beaten from her door. He goes to an elderly woman to have her intervene on his behalf. After speaking with the married woman on behalf of the priest, the elderly woman is also beaten away. The priest then threatens to excommunicate both the married woman and her husband, and the husband promises to do anything the priest requests. When his wife tells him the truth, the husband plots his revenge. The next time the priest comes to the married woman, she is to invite him over, so that the husband can catch him redhanded. This comes to pass, and when the husband returns to catch the priest with his wife, the woman tells the priest to hide in a vat of dye. The priest has to hide there for so long, his skin is completely dyed.

Du Segretain moine
English title: The Sacristan Monk

Author: unknown

Plot summary: Guillaume and Idoine are a happily married couple with a lot of money, until misfortune falls on Guillaume and he loses everything. Everyone knows he was in a lot of debt, including a Sacristan monk, who is in love with Idoine. The monk decides to offer Idoine money to sleep with him, but Idoine will not accept unless her husband agrees. When she tells Guillaume about the monk, the two plot to get the monk's money without caving to his sexual demands. Idoine invites the monk over for dinner, and Guillaume hides in a corner. The monk enters and takes Idoine into his arms, and Guillaume attacks and accidentally kills him. To hide the murder, Guillaume takes the body back to the monestary and hides it in a toilet. In the middle of the night, the monk is found by a priest who had argued with him the previous day. Fearing that others in the monestary will think that he was the murderer, the priest takes the body to the house of the most beautiful woman in town (Idoine) so that people will think the monk was involved in some kind of affair, not knowing that this was really the cause of his death. When Guillaume and Idoine see the monk back on their doorstep, they think that they have been cursed. They decide to bury the body, and when they do, they accidentally discover a large ham that had been hidden there by some theives. They take the ham and place the body in the hole. Later, when the theives come back in search of their ham, they pull out the body of the monk in a sack, which they mistake for the ham and carry all the way back to their hideout. When they open the sack and see the priest, the theives fear that the ham was demon-possessed and take the body back to the farmers house where they stole the ham originally. Later, the farmer sends his boy out to the shed to cut some meat off the ham. When the child finds the priest, he runs back to the house in fear. The farmer and the boy decide to strap the corpse to a horse, force the horse to run, and then act like the priest had stolen the horse. The horse runs through the kitchen of the monestary and off of a precipice where it dies. Everyone thinks that the monk was killed in this "accident."

Du vilain de Bailleul
English title: The Peasant of Bailleul

Author: Jean Bodel

Plot summary: A peasant’s wife is in love with a chaplain. One day, her husband comes home from the fields, dying from hunger. The wife convinces him that he is truly dying and has him lay down. She closes his eyes and his mouth, pulls the sheet up over his body, and begins to mourn him. The chaplain arrives, and he makes love to the wife with the husband in the bed, as if dead. The husband sits up in bed and accuses the wife of sleeping with the chaplain, but the chaplain reminds him that he is “dead.” After all, he never would have come over to visit his wife in such a manner if her husband were still living. The husband agrees that he must be dead and lies back down.