The Cock and the Jewel
Encyclopedia
The Cock and the Jewel is a fable attributed to Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...

. It is one of a number that feature only a single animal. As a trope
Trope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

 in literature, the fable is reminiscent of stories used in zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...

 such as the kōan. It presents, in effect, a riddle
Riddle
A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...

 on relative value
Relative value
Relative value is the attractiveness measured in terms of risk, liquidity, and return of one instrument relative to another, or for a given instrument, of one maturity relative to another...

s and is capable of many interpretations, depending on the point of view from which it is regarded.

The Fable

In its most cogent, unelaborated form, the fable is very short. A cockerel seeking food finds instead a precious gemstone
Gemstone
A gemstone or gem is a piece of mineral, which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments...

, recognises the worth it has for others, but rejects it as being of no practical use to himself. The rejection is generally shown in the form of a direct address
Public speaking
Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners...

 by the cockerel to the gemstone, as in this modern English translation:


Literary tradition

The Cock and the Jewel was given prominence in medieval Europe by virtue of the fact that it opens what was then a standard text for the teaching of grammar
Latin grammar
The grammar of Latin, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected; consequently, it allows for a large degree of flexibility in choosing word order...

, the so-called elegaic Romulus, a Latin fable collection by Phaedrus. This was generally committed to memory in early school years. Literary translations of the fable, using the Latin Romulus as their source, include those by Marie de France
Marie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...

, John Lydgate
John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...

 and Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities...

, and translators tended to retain its first-place position.

The fable in the Romulus is typically short and given in eight lines of elegaic metre with a further two providing a moral judgement. It portrays the cock as startled to discover such a beautiful object in the dirt (in sorde manens) and recognising that he is not the right creature to have found it. The writer's emphatic moral conclusion provided the standard medieval interpretation of the fable. It runs (in Latin):

Tu Gallo stolidum, tu iaspide pulcra sophye
Dona notes; stolido nil sapit ista seges.



Translation: Cockerel, you represent a fool (stolidum); jewel, you stand for the fine gift of wisdom (sophye); for the fool, this corn (seges) has no taste.

The explicit judgement of the cock's action as foolish, on the grounds that the jewel represents wisdom rather than mere allure
Attractiveness
Attractiveness or attraction refers to a quality that causes an interest or desire in something or someone. The term attraction may also refer to the object of the attraction itself, as in tourist attraction.-Visual attractiveness:...

 or material wealth, may represent the standard medieval "answer" to Aesop's "riddle", but variants in the tradition did exist. The story stands at the head of Marie de France
Marie de France
Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II of England...

's 12th century fable collection, the Ysopet
Ysopet
Ysopet refers to a medieval collection of fables in French literature, specifically to versions of Aesop's Fables. Alternatively the term Isopet-Avionnet indicates that the fables are drawn from both Aesop and Avianus....

. There she adds from Phaedrus a detail common in later retellings, that the cock is scratching on a dunghill, so emphasising the contrast between the find and its location. The cock makes the observation that a rich man would have known how to make proper use of the gem it has uncovered, whereas 'since I can't embelish you as I would like, I'll not adorn you at all.' At odds with this reasonable conclusion, Marie comments that the cock is like those who, 'if everything does not go as they wish, they do not value good and honor at all but instead take the worst and scorn the best.'
John Lydgate
John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...

's version, written c.1410, is longer and more nuanced. He begins the Prologue to his Isopes Fabules with the statement that 'Wisdom is more in price than gold in coffers' but turns that to mean that beneath the 'boysterous and rurall' fable hide valuable lessons for life, so anticipating the Cock's eventual find. In his description of the Cock, Lydgate presents it as a noble beast and a notable example of diligence. On discovering a jacinth
Jacinth
Jacinth is a red transparent variety of zircon used as a gemstone. Jacinth is also a flower of a reddish blue or deep purple , and hence a precious stone of that colour ....

 in the dunghill, the Cock rejects keeping it as being contrary to his natural station in life. All the wisdom it might symbolise, from his practical point of view, is no better than speculation on 'how the man came first into the moon'. Lydgate then comments that the Cock has made the wisest choice in rejecting worldliness and preferring virtue.

Samuel Croxall
Samuel Croxall
Samuel Croxall was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables.-Early career:...

's prose retelling, originally published in 1722 and many times reprinted, also draws Lydgate's conclusion. Noting the fable's ambiguity, he comments that 'the most probable intention of the author was to hold forth an example of industry and good sense. The lesson inculcated is the wisdom of estimating things by their intrinsic worth, and of refusing to be led away by doubtful fascinations from the known path of duty.' But the Cock's abstention from the trappings of the governing class is also capable of the political reading given it by John Ogilby
John Ogilby
John Ogilby was a Scottish translator, impresario and cartographer. Best known for publishing the first British road atlas, he was also a successful translator, noted for publishing his work in handsome illustrated editions.-Life:Ogilby was born in or near Killemeare in November 1600...

 in his Fables of Aesop paraphras'd in verse (1665). The lesson of maintaining the balance of social relations is emphasised further by Wenceslaus Hollar's accompanying print in which the cock astride its dunghill is wittily contrasted with the Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...

 castle on the neighbouring hilltop.

The other literary expansion to survive from the 15th century is Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities...

's The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian is a cycle of connected poems by the Scottish makar Robert Henryson. In the accepted text it consists of thirteen versions of fables, seven modelled on stories from "Aesop" expanded from the Latin elegaic Romulus manuscripts, one of the standard fable texts...

, written c.1480, with which this fable, under the title of The Taill of the Cok and the Jasp
The Taill of the Cok and the Jasp
The Taill of the Cok and the Jasp is a Middle Scots version of Aesop's Fable The Cock and the Jewel by the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson. It is the first in Henryson's collection known as the Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian...

, begins. His own moral conclusion follows the standard verse Romulus closure
Poetic closure
Poetic closure is the sense of conclusion given at the end of a poem. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's detailed study—Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End—explores various techniques for achieving closure. One of the most common techniques is setting up a regular pattern and then breaking it to mark...

, making the rejected jasper
Jasper
Jasper, a form of chalcedony, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. This mineral breaks with a smooth surface, and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone. It can be highly polished and is used for vases, seals, and at one time for...

 an unambiguous figure
Trope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

 for wisdom and condemning the consequent materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

 of the cockerel. This is in line with the Biblical simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...

 of the uselessness of casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7.6), to which Henryson alludes in the poem. For him the state of nature is limited by brute appetite; it requires wisdom to discern the way of learning and virtue. Caxton appears to agree in his contemporary publication of the fables (1484). The cock, he says, represents "the fool whiche careth not for sapyence ne for wysedome", but then draws the sting from his criticism in continuing "and by the stone is to vnderstond this fayre and playsaunt book".

Jean de la Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...

 departs from the practice of setting the story at the start in his Fables (1.20) and gives it a materialist twist by likening the cock to those who are incapable of judging the 'intrinsic worth' of anything. After a very brief telling of the cock's rejection of the pearl as being inedible, he describes a parallel situation in which a man inherits a valuable manuscript but prefers to have cash in hand for it. According to La Fontaine's reading of the fable, what the man and the cock lack is aesthetic judgement rather than wisdom. Some later interpretations are equally materialistic. Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick
Thomas Bewick was an English wood engraver and ornithologist.- Early life and apprenticeship :Bewick was born at Cherryburn House in the village of Mickley, in the parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne on 12 August 1753...

 applies the fable to the choice of sexual partner in his Select Fables of Aesop (1784), while the Canadian author Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...

 converts it to a playlet satirising devotees of the Readers Digest in his A Masque of Aesop (1955).

External links

15th-20th century illustrations from books
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