In Europe the earliest written evidence of bells used for livestock dates to the late 14th to early 15th century. Grimm's "Deutsches Wörterbuch" s.v. "Kuhschelle" points to a 1410 mention in a Frankfurt archive; the OED lists 1440 as the earliest attestation of a "bell-wether". The OED also attributes the phrase "to bear the bell" in the sense "to take the first place" as originally referring to the leading cow or sheep of a drove or flock to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde", 1374. In 15th-century Germany, a cow bell was worn only by the best and leading piece of livestock. The wider distribution of the bell worn by livestock was a gradual process of the Early Modern period. In France in the mid-16th century, Francois Rabelais makes this practice explicit in his "Gargantua and Pantagruel", stating that