Early Modern Revelry: That Foxe Has a Lamb on His Back

For my first of this sort of post, I want to share a passage from N. Breton, Gentleman’s Miseries of Mavillia. This, as the title suggests, is the story of “the most unfortunate lady that ever lived,” (language modernized, all citations from the 1599 edition available on Early English Books Online). But the passage I love most is not about one of Mavillia’s miseries, but instead about one of the bright spots.

The Story So Far: As a child, Mavillia is orphaned when her parents are killed by invading soldiers. Then, she’s raised by a laundress who follows the camp of those invading soldiers. AND THEN the town is counter-invaded – and the man leading those troops happens to know Mavillia’s uncle, so he’s sending her along that way. Or, at least, probably it’s her uncle. Maybe it’s actually his uncle. Either way, this guy is supposed to take care of Mavillia.

UNFORTUNATELY, everyone in the company meant to take Mavillia to her new home dies in an ambush, where the ambushers are also killed. Everyone, that is, except the page. Well, and Mavilla. She’s got a lot of misfortune still to go. So the page and Mavillia are now wandering around the countryside. Except that the page, apparently, is sort of accident-prone. Because he manages to shoot himself, or, to quote the text “his leaning on it, made it of itself discharge a bullet into his right hip.” So there you go. Guns shoot people, even in 1599.  (When, yes, that would have been deeply difficult.) And this is where we get to this really amazing passage:

In this misery, as we sat sighing to think how we should do for meat, there came by a fox with a little lamb on his back, whom first the boy espied, and cried, “Mistress, look! Yonder is a fox with a lamb on his back! For God’s sake run to him, and cry ‘now, now,’ and the fox will be afraid, and leave the lamb behind him!”

And as the boy said, it happened. The weight of the lamb was too much for the fox to run with, and so I overtook him, and, frightening him with a loud cry, he let fall the lamb, and away he went! Think how glad I was to have this lamb. Which, when I brought to the boy, “Good Mistress,” he said, “Let me help to slay him.”

And so kindly together we sat, plucking off the skin, and cutting the quarters one from another, which, with the boy’s device of powder and match, and the fire-lock of his pistol, we made a fire and roasted finely.

I’ll be honest, I think it loses a little something when modernized, but I’m pretty sure this is still amazing. Now, I get that what Breton means is that the fox had the lamb slung over his back – which I believe is a thing foxes do, though I’m having trouble seeing even a rather large fox carry a lamb that way. HOWEVER – that is neither here nor there, because that is NOT what Breton actually wrote. No – he wrote that the fox had a lamb on his back. Which I, of course, picture as a lamb just cruising around on the back of a fox – which is even better because those two animals are essentially the same size. And my imagined scenario with the live lamb is reinforced by the fact that the boy asks to be allowed to “help to slay him.”

Further, I LOVE that apparently all you have to do to get a fox to drop his prey is to yell “Now, Now!” And the boy is very specific. He doesn’t say, “Run up and yell loudly.” He says, “Run up and yell ‘now, now!'” This is clearly an important detail. And I love it. Because that’s the most ridiculous thing to yell at a wild animal. Ever.

I don’t want to ruin the ending, even if I also feel fairly confident that no one reading this is planning on reading a moderately successful text from 414 years ago. So I will just tell you that there is a Boar Goring. And a False Accusation. AND SOMEONE GETS HER NOSE BITTEN OFF BY A SPURNED SUITOR.

Just…you know…someone. No one in particular.