FOX FOXES STORIES & FOLKLORE; MR. FOX IN THE CLASSROOM
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) Mr. Fox in the Classroom by Richard Martin. Those who use stories in school with teenagers might like to take a look at this article, which includes a skeleton (was ever that more appropriate than in this story?)
"Discussing Mr Fox"
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/jul02/sart6.htm

2) Here's a site for the classic Mr. Fox - enjoy.
http://members.aol.com/rocketrder/frytales/blubeard/other.htm

3) Note from Richard Martin:
Mr Fox and I have travelled for a LONG time together - in fact the last time was last Saturday in the dark vaulted room of a German castle. If you click on this link, that room was just behind the tall tower
http://www.burgkronberg.de/

Angela Carter has a US variant "Old Forster" of this in her Virago collection.

Shakespeare refers to this tale in Much Ado About Nothing:

BENEDICK Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor 'twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.'
A great tale to tell.

I wanted to send you the version Allan Davies used to have on his website. Rather different to the way I tell it, but incredibly powerful. Unfortunately Allan's site is no long up and running
(Response from Jackie: According to the last information I had from Allan, his e-mail address is:
allan@silburygroup.org.uk
He is a member of the Silbury Group.
Here's the latest contact info that I have:
01908 322277 email
Directors
Allan Davies & Philippa Tipper
The Town Hall
Creed Street
Wolverton
Milton Keynes
MK12 5LY

4) Dan Keding tells a wonderful version of Mr. Fox -- and when the CD skips or can't be found for my classes, I do all right, too -- in fact, it grosses them out so much more when their very own sweet teacher curdles their blood with a tale. There is a poem in the world lit. book, "The Bridegroom" which is very obviously based on the Mr. Fox legend.

5) The old rhyme which I know in the tale has Mr Fox saying:
It is not so
Nor it was not so
And God forbid
That it should be so.
To which Lady Mary answers:
But it is so,
And it was so -
Here's hand and ring
I have to show.
I then say that she pointed the severed hand, still dripping bright red blood onto her white wedding clothes ... Ah, a great tale!

6) I guess we all have our turning point. I find that the empowering moment is in the English version where Mary takes the bloody hand and points it at her accuser. It's one of the first steps, for me, that women have to take to get out of abusive relationships.

I also tell this story to 7th and 8th graders as a cautionary tale. I ususally start off with something akin to...Many of the folktales that I tell are fictional, but I think this English story of Mr. Fox is alive today. All you have to do is pick up a paper and read about Ted Bundy (or whoever the mass murder du jour is) to know that he exists. He changes his name and he changes his face, but he is and always will be Mr. Fox....

I think there are so many lessons in this story about trusting one's inner instincts, about not falling for a person because they have money or looks, about women's empowerment, about good versus evil. Sometimes I just want to shout it out. But I let the story do its own work. Yes, it's an intense story, and many tellers won't tell it. But I think the stark reality lessons far outweigh the gruesome pictures. Without them the power of the story would be lost.

7) To me, the neatest thing about Allan Davies' version is that he has lady Mary strike the first blow, empowering her. She hides the knife under the hand, and then, opening the box as she speaks, she takes out the knife and stabs Mr. Fox in his black heart, THEN her brothers come along and cut Mr. Fox to bits until there was not enough left of him to fit under one gold farthing. Also in his version, Lady Mary marries him and does all the above at the wedding dinner. Does it sound like I pretty much tell his version? Guilty as charged! (with permission.) I wish I know what happened to his site and to him; I have seen nor heard nothing from Allan's direction in several years.

8) I recently discovered another reference I didn't know before. Spenser's The Faerie Queene contains the motto "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold." This motto also appears in Mr. Fox as we have it in the 19th-century collections, and in both cases it's over a door or entrance. However, The Faerie Queene was published long before the first appearance of Mr. Fox in print. And the oldest versions of Mr. Fox that I know show signs of being cleaned up and prettified. I suspect it's possible that Spenser wrote the line first, and storytellers who knew The Faerie Queene picked it up and inserted it into Mr. Fox. "Be bold" is consonant with the other riff from the story "But it was not so, and it is not so," which we do know is older than The Faerie Queen. So I can't be sure in which direction the borrowing occurred.

9) Yet again I am tracking a story fox, and as usual the lovely creature is slipping between sunlight and shadow. Not long ago I was skimming through the footnotes in Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica (a wealth of stories there), and stumbled upon one I hadn't noted before. It is was a background tale to a strange snippet, entitled, "The King of Sionn." The source cited by Campbell was J. Gregorson Campbell's Second Sight and Witchcraft in the Scottish Highlands. I was able to track a reprint of the book down and found that in that book the story was called, "The King of Enchantments," and had no reference to "Knight of the Hunt" or foxes. But the rest of the details and the verse are pretty much the same. So it looks like Alexander Campbell came upon two very similiar stories, which used the same verse but varied in minor details. I'm interested in knowing if anyone has heard of either version, or any tradition concerning the King of Sionn. The tale goes that the King of Sionn was king of a race of crafty enchanters, who were of the same stock as the foxes themselves. Yet neither the tale, nor the snippet, are actually about the King - but his daughter. The Big Young Son of the King (who was the Knight of the Hunt) was hunting in the furthest mountains, and came upon a russet-haired maid sleeping amongst the thistles. He took her home as his wife, but she was not welcome by his parents, particularly his mother, the Lady of the Hunt. However, despite that, the russet-haired maiden bore a son. And at the baptismal feast her mother-in-law insists the girl stand before the people, with a wick-candle in her hand. The girl is not pleased, and speaks for the first time, saying:
The candle hard and round
Which I am now to hold
In the smoke of the wick:
Once that was not my custom;

I'll paraphrase some (since holding the book and typing isn't easy). She goes onto say that she has hunted hinds and grown stags with her father and grandfather.
It ends with
It is note a smoky bonfire
To which I at first was used
But a house without ashes or dust,
The blithe castle of my father and mother.

In "The King of Enchantments" version the woman reveals whose daughter she is.

10) The tale goes that the King of Sionn was king of a race of crafty enchanters, who were of the same stock as the foxes themselves. "Sionnach" is the Irish -- and presumably Scottish Gaelic -- word for "fox".
Response: It seems to have also been Gaelic for "fox," since Carmichael seemed fascinated by the tie-in. He noted it in the footnotes - somewhere after the comment that the people of King of Sionn were of the same stock as the foxes.

11) Many of you may already be familiar with this tale but I discovered it this weekend and told it for the first time today. It is called, The Theft of Honey. You can find it in Cajun Folktales, a collection by the beloved J.J. Reneaux. I learned it specifically for our third graders who take French and were learning about the Mardi Gras this week. The story is a fun trickster tale with a subtle message about greed and sharing with your friends. It was very well received by the students and the French teacher and I played off of each other effortless, without any prior knowledge on her part of what story I would share. She is the kind of teacher who should be cloned and placed in every school in America; kind, respectful, thoughtful, gentle, caring and fun. The children obviously adore her and with good reason. So if you are in the mood or have the need for a fun trickster tale, spend some time with Lapin (rabbit) and his friend the fox.

12) In my Dictionary of Quotations it's not so exact:
"Be bold, be bold, and everywhere Be bold ...
At last she spied at that room's upper end
Another iron door, on which was writ
Be not too bold."
There's a similarity with Horace's "sapere aude", translated as "be bold, be sensible" or perhaps, "dare to be wise", the kind of pithy oxymoron the Romans were fond of.>However, The Faerie Queene was published long before the first appearance of Mr. Fox in print. And the oldest versions of Mr. Fox that I know show signs of being cleaned up and prettified. I suspect it's possible that Spenser wrote the line first, and storytellers who knew The Faerie Queene picked it up and inserted it into Mr. Fox.

["Be bold" is consonant with the other riff from the story "But it was not so, and it is not so," which we do know is older than The Faerie Queen. So I can't be sure in which direction the borrowing occurred.]

Probably older, but not demonstrably so; it's quoted in _Much Ado About Nothing_ (about 10 years later than the Fairy Queen) as from "the old tale"; Mr Fox was given as an explanation of this. Of course we can't be sure that the tale Shakespeare had in mind was this one.

13) After listening to "Bohola's" rendition of, "All on the Mountains High," I became intrigued with searching out a bit more about Reynardine. I dug out my copy of Kenneth Varty,'s Reynard, Renart, and Reinaert, and Other Foxes of the Medieval England. But the book added more to my mystery than it solved, since the main reference is to Reynard's son, Reynardine, in the Reynard cycle of beast stories. What intrigued me about the song is it dealing with human protagionists (or maybe "human" isn't quite right for Reynardine). I was particularly caught by these lyrics: "And modestly she asked me, "Ah, sir, what is you name?" "If you go in yonder forest, my castle there you'll find. 'Tis writ in ancient history, they call me Reynardine." The last made me wonder at what type of spirit might be referred to. Does anyone have knowledge of this ballad?

14) I'm not sure where the name Reynardine comes from, but this is a very familiar type of ballad--the "demon lover." In the folklore of Japan there are several stories of foxes taking the form of human beings to seduce, and sometimes marry, human beings, but this is very unusual in European literature. There are a lot of stories about werewolves, of which this could be a variant. But is Reynardine actually identified as a fox in the story?
Response: Only by the name, which is does have vulpine connotations, and for the demon lover ballads it is unusual for the villian to be named. However, there are several versions of the English folktale, "Mr. Fox," which is a Bluebeard type story. In that the villian is clearly identified as human. And when I first heard the "Reynardine" ballad I thought of the "Mr. Fox" stories, but that one line, "'Tis writ in ancient history, they call me Reynardine," made me wonder a little. Particularly since there are some hints of fox helpers/spirits in an occasional European tale.

15) Don't know if this is what is exactly being asked, but my Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend has an entry for Reynard who is defined as "The Trickster heo of the great medieval beast epic Roman de Renart. Reynard is the fox, the clever unmoral rebel against authority, a hero of the antithesis of the ideals of the chanson de geste. There is nothing chivalric about him; he is a coward, a seducer, a liar, a traitor. The epic of Reynard does not exist as one work. Developing throughout the Middle Ages from the beast fables of the classical period, the poems of beasts who acted and thought like human beings grew into the Latin Isengrimus of the 12th century written by a Fleming, and the various branches of the Roman de Renart (c. 1175 - c. 1205). The braches, telling the story of the fox, were separate compositions making use of fable material from the Isopets, imitations of AEsop's fables, and of popular folktale material. The mass of the mate rial is French in origin, but the version of the story translated into English by Caxton in 1481 was a Flemish text, now lost. Surrounding Reynard in Caxton's translation are King Noble the lion, Isegrym the wrolf, Bruin the bear, Grymbert the badger, Coart the hare, Bellyn the ram, Courtoys the hound, Tybert the cat, Chanticleer the cock, Partlet the hen, and other such animal-people."---

(This web page updated 8/29/04; 11/16/06)