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 Fox and the Cat (fable) this?" asks the swan, before carrying him, suitably humbled, back to safety. Written records of the fable do not appear in Europe after Archilochus until Medieval times. Here the boastful animal is generally the fox, but the animal with the one trick may be the hedgehog (Greece), the crane (Russia), the squirrel (Armenia), or the cock or dove. In western Europe, it is always the cat, appearing in very similar versions, though with variation in the number of tricks the fox possesses. Some of the collections we find the fable in are the Anglo-Latin Romulus (80 tricks), in Marie de