1 64 THE FOX 



and hard-working, he cannot altogether repress a 

 certain envy of the luxury and success won by wrong- 

 doing. Mr. Tulliver, though honest himself, would 

 yet prefer to have a ' raskill ' for a lawyer, as being 

 better able to cope with the Wakems, by whom he 

 himself was badgered and outwitted. The very 

 coarseness of some of the fox fables, and the rough 

 nature of the practical jokes which are invented for 

 ' Reynard the Fox,' are a mark of the origin of the 

 stories. When Reynard persuades the wolf to fish 

 in the hole in the ice, using his tail as a bait, and the 

 luckless wolf is frozen fast and eventually, attacked 

 by peasants, loses his tail by a blow from the priest's 

 wife, we can imagine how inextinguishable laughter 

 would arise round the fireside of the farmhouses when 

 the story was told. 



The fables have their roots deep down in the 

 minds of the peasantry and reflect their virtues and 

 failings. These stories have the simplicity and 

 universality of interest and application which ensure 

 to them popularity and immortality. 



No doubt the fables were adopted and adapted 

 by later writers. Phaedrus and La Fontaine gave 

 them the polish of literary genius and used them as 

 vehicles of satire or moralising. In later times, and 

 especially in the French versions, there was more 



