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 Cock and the Jewel the Cock, Lydgate presents it as a noble beast and a notable example of diligence. On discovering a jacinth 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. Some three centuries later, the periodical writer John Hawkesworth adapted the story to a similar moral in an extended poem, "The