According to the early twelfth-century Training Manual for Clergy {Disciplina clericalis}, a rustic had a garden in which water flowed and fresh grass grew. Birds would sing in this garden. One day the rustic, resting in his garden, heard a little bird singing delightfully. He captured the little bird in a net. When the bird asked why it had been captured, the rustic said that he wanted to listen to its song. But he was already listening to its song. He actually wanted to possess the singing bird. The bird insisted that it would not sing as a captive.[1]
After the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BGC, the Jews were taken to Babylon as captives. There they were ordered to sing:
By the rivers of Babylon
we sat and wept
as we remembered Zion.
There on the willows
we hung up our harps
when our captors required
of us a song,
when our tormentors
demanded joy, saying
“Sing for us a song of Zion!”
But how shall we sing
a song of the Lord
in a foreign land?[2]{ על נהרות בבל שם ישבנו גם־בכינו בזכרנו את־ציון׃
על־ערבים בתוכה תלינו כנרותינו׃
כי שם שאלונו שובינו דברי־שיר ותוללינו שמחה שירו לנו משיר ציון׃
איך נשיר את־שיר־יהוה על אדמת נכר׃ }
In 523 GC, the public figure Boethius, who knew life as a captive, wrote of a caged bird:
This bird was happy once in the high trees.
You cage it in your cellar, bring it seed,
honey to sip, all that its heart can need
or human love can think of: till it sees,
leaping too high within its narrow room,
the old familiar shadow of the leaves,
and spurns the seed with tiny desperate claws.
Naught but the woods despairing pleads,
the woods, the woods again, it grieves, it grieves.{ Quae canit altis garrula ramis
Ales caveae clauditur antro;
Huic licet inlita pocula melle
Largasque dapes dulci studio
Ludens hominum cura ministret,
Si tamen arto saliens texto
Nemorum gratas viderit umbras,
Sparsas pedibus proterit escas,
Silvas tantum maesta requirit,
Silvas dulci voce susurrat. }[3]
A captive bird refusing to sing lives in a rich literary history of captives refusing to sing.
The rustic threatened to eat the captive bird if it didn’t sing. The bird said it was small, had tough meat, and wasn’t worth eating. Moreover, the bird offered a ransom for its freedom:
I will give you three wise sayings that you will esteem more than the meat of three calves.
{ Ostendam tibi tres sapientiae manerias quas maioris facies quam trium vitulorum carnes. }[4]
The rustic agreed, and so he set the bird free. The bird then gave him the three wise sayings:
Here is the first of the promised saying: don’t believe everything said. Second: what is yours, you will always have. Third: don’t grieve for the lost.
{ Est unum de promissis: ne credas omnibus dictis. Secundum: quod tuum est, semper habebis. Tertium: ne doleas de amissis. }
The bird subsequently began to sing sweetly a psalm of praise:
Blessed be God, who covered the line of your sight and took away your wisdom, for if you had bent and searched within my stomach, you would have found one jacinth weighing an ounce.
{ Benedictus Deus qui tuorum oculorum aciem clausit et sapientiam tibi abstulit, quoniam si intestinorum plicas meorum perquisisses, unius ponderis unciae iacinctum invenisse. }
The rustic began to beat his breast and lament that he had believed what the little bird had said. The bird then lectured the rustic for being a poor learner and a faulty thinker:
How quickly forgotten is the wisdom that I told you. Didn’t I tell you: don’t believe everything that is said to you? And how can you believe that in me is a jacinth weighing one once, when I don’t weigh an ounce in total? Didn’t I tell you: what is yours, you will always have? And so how can you want to have a gem from me? Didn’t I tell you: don’t grieve for things lost? And why do you grieve for a jacinth that is in me?
{ Cito oblitus es sensus quem tibi dixi! Nonne dixi tibi: non crede quicquid tibi dicetur? Et quomodo credis quod in me sit iacinctus qui sit unius unciae ponderis, cum ego tota non sim tanti ponderis? Et nonne dixi tibi: Quod tuum est, semper habebis? Et quomodo potes lapidem habere de me volante? Et nonne dixi tibi: Ne doleas de rebus amissis? Et quare pro iacincto qui in me est doles? }
The little bird enacted an application of the three sayings. After shaming the rustic, the bird flew into the woods.
As the captive bird demonstrated, the simple wisdom “don’t believe everything” is often difficult to apply usefully in ordinary life. Immediately following the story of the captive bird in Disciplina clericalis is a brief dialogue headed “about books not to be believed {de libris non credendis}”:
A philosopher reprimanded his son, saying: “Whatever you find, read, but don’t believe whatever you have read.” The student replied to him: “I believe this to be so. Not everything in books is true. So I have already similarly read in the books and proverbs of philosophers: ‘there are many trees, but not all bear fruit. Many have fruits, but not all the fruits are edible.’”
{ Philosophus castigavit filium suum dicens: Quicquid inveneris, legas, sed non credas quicquid legeris. Ad haec discipulus: Credo hoc esse: non est verum quicquid est in libris. Nam simile huic iam legi in libris et proverbiis philosophorum: Multae sunt arbores, sed non omnes faciunt fructum; multi fructus, sed non omnes comestibiles. }[5]
Should one believe what one reads in Disciplina clericalis? One intent of the apologues in Disciplina clericalis is to promote thinking and evaluation of experience. That’s essential to learning. The captive bird didn’t merely have wisdom. It knew how to use that wisdom well.
Men today tend to be as simplistic as the rustic who captured the bird. Men must strive to overcoming their inferiority to women in guile. They must be constantly adapting and changing in response to their particular gender circumstances.
* * * * *
Read more:
- even perfect friend cannot help honey-eating man hanging in pit
- how Homer and Hesiod used gender in hawk-dove metaphors
- bird-brains engage in scholarly debate: The Owl and the Nightingale
Notes:
[1] This story is from Petrus Alphonsi, Training Manual for Clergy {Disciplina Clericalis}, section 22, “Exemplum of the rustic and the little bird {Exemplum de rustico et avicula}.” Disciplina Clericalis collected and adapted stories from Barlaam and Josaphat (Ioasaph), which was composed perhaps in the seventh century. “Exemplum de rustico et avicula” corresponds to apologue 3 in Barlaam and Josaphat. See Woodward & Mattingly (1914) pp. 134-9. In medieval Europe, Disciplina Clericalis was translated into English, French, Occitan, and Italian. The thirteenth-century Old French translation is known as Correcting of a father to his son {Chastoiement d’un pere a son fils}.
Early in the thirteenth century, a version of this story was written in Old French and is known as The Lai of the Little Bird {Le lay de l’oiselet}. For an Old French text and English translation, along with a detailed introduction, Burgess & Brook (2010). Burgess & Brook (2016) includes just an English translation. Wolfgang (1990) provides a critical edition and detailed analysis of sources and analogues. For a freely available English translation, Mason (1910).
This story became widely disseminated. It’s known as “The Three Teachings of the Bird” (K604) in Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. It’s Aarne-Thompson type 150.
[2] Psalms 137:1-4, English translation adapted from widely available translations, Hebrew text of the Westminster Leningrad Codex via Blue Letter Bible.
[3] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy {De consolatione philosophiae} 3.M2, vv. 17-26, Latin text of Stewart, Rand & Tester (1973) via Perseus, English translation of Waddell & Corrigan (1976). Freely available online are annoted Latin text via James O’Donnell and English translations of H.R. James (1897), Walter John Sedgefield (1900), W.V. Cooper (1902), and H. F. Stewart (LCL, 1918). Here are study notes for De consolatione philosophiae.
[4] Petrus Alphonsi, Training Manual for Clergy {Disciplina Clericalis}, section 22, “Exemplum of the rustic and the little bird {Exemplum de rustico et avicula},” Latin text from Hilka (1911), my English translation, benefiting from that of Hermes & Quarrie (1977) and Wolfgang (1991) pp. 77-8. The subsequent quotes above are similarly from “Exemplum de rustico et avicula.”
[5] On trees and fruit, cf. Matthew 7:16-9.
[image] Video presentation of “Rivers of Babylon,” by the Jamaican trio The Melodians. Recorded on Trojan Records in 1970. Via YouTube.
References:
Burgess, Glyn S., and Leslie C. Brook, ed. and trans. 2010. The Old French Lays of Ignaure, Oiselet and Armours. Gallica 18. Cambridge: Brewer.
Burgess, Glyn S., and Leslie C. Brook, trans. 2016. Twenty-Four Lays from the French Middle Ages. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Hermes, Eberhard and P. R. Quarrie, ed. and trans. 1977. Petrus Alfonsi. The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hilka, Alfons. 1911. Die Disciplina clericalis des Petrus Alfonsi (das älteste Novellenbuch des Mittelalters). Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Alternate presentation.
Mason, Eugene, trans. 1910. Aucassin & Nicollete, and Other Mediaeval Romances and Legends. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
Stewart, H. F., E. K. Rand, S. J. Tester, ed. and trans. 1973. Boethius. Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy. Loeb Classical Library 74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waddell Helen, trans. and Felicitas Corrigan, ed. 1976. More Latin Lyrics from Virgil to Milton. London: Gollancz.
Woodward, G.R. & H. Mattingly, eds. and trans. 1914. Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John Damascene. Loeb Classical Library, 34. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate presentation.
Wolfgang, Lenora D. 1990. “Le lai de l’oiselet: an Old French poem of the thirteenth century. Edition and critical study.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 80 (5): 1-129.
Wolfgang, Lenora D. 1991. “Caxton’s Aesop: The Origin and Evolution of a Fable: Or, Do Not Believe Everything You Hear.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 135 (1); 73-83.