Reynard the Fox

A Burlesque Poem, from the Low-German Original of the Fifteenth Century. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra, & Co.

THE mocking legends of the Wolf and the Fox were wielded without mercy by many mediæval satirists, against the human animals of those species, then prevailing in courts and cloisters. Bilt the jokes took their most permanent form in the fable of “ Reyncke de Vos,” first published in the year 1498. Written in Low-German by Nicholas Bauman, under the pseudonym of Hinrek van Alkmer, the satire did a similar work to that done by Rabelais, and Boccaccio, and Piers Plowman. It has since been translated into many languages, and as Goethe at last thought it worth putting into German hexameters, one may still find it worth reading in English Hudibrastic rhymes. The present attractive edition is a reprint of the paraphrase of Von Soltau, published at Hamburg in 1826,— though, for some reason, this fact is not stated in the present issue. New or old, the version is executed with much spirit, 'and is, to say the least, easier reading than Goethe’s hexameters.