Chanticleer and the Fox the question of its origin. It has also been asserted that the tale has developed out of the basic situation in Aesop's fable of The Fox and the Crow. Early examples of the story are pithily fabular but towards the middle of the 12th century it appears as an extended episode of the "Reynard cycle" under the title "How Renart captured Chanticleer the cock" ("Si comme Renart prist Chanticler le Coq"). The work of which it was part was immensely popular and spread widely in translation. The basic situation concerns the cock Chanticleer, who lives with his three wives in
The Taill of Schir Chanticleir and the Foxe might also be argued that Henryson was acquainted with the earlier extended telling of the story in the Reynard cycle. Chanticleir, for example, has three wives, as in the earlier French romance, where Chaucer gives seven to his Chauntecleer. Henryson's version was probably composed sometime around the 1480s. Schir Lowrence, a fox "full sair hungrie," creeps one morning early into the farmyard which neighbours the "thornie schaw of grit defence" which is "his residence." He stalks Chanticleir, a cockerel owned by a poor wedow highly dependant on her small flock of hens. Pretending he has come to serve Chanticleir, Lowrence