less edifying nature.

Stop before the house of this anchoress, secluded from the world, and
absorbed in pious meditations, a holy and quiet place. An old woman sits
under the window; the anchoress appears and a conversation begins. Let
us listen; it is a long time since both women have been listened to.
What is the subject of their talk? The old woman brings news of the
outer world, relates stories, curious incidents of married and unmarried
life, tales of wicked wives and wronged husbands. The recluse laughs:
"os in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur"; in a word, the old woman amuses
the anchoress with fabliaux in an embryonic state. This is a most
remarkable though little known example, for we can here observe fabliaux
in a rudimentary stage, and going about in one more, and that a rather
unexpected way. Is the case of this anchoress a unique one? Not at all;
there was scarcely any recluse at that day, "vix aliquam inclusarum
hujus temporis," without a friendly old woman to sit before her window
and tell her such tales: of which testifies, in the twelfth century,
Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx.[214]

From the thirteenth century, another medium of diffusion, a conspicuous
and well-known one, is added to the others: not only minstrels, but
wandering friars now carry tales to all countries; it is one of the ways
they count on for securing a welcome. Their sermons raise a laugh, the
success of their fables encourages their rivals to imitate them; the
Councils vainly interfere, and reiterate, until after the Renaissance,
the prohibition "to provoke shouts of laughter, after the fashion of
shameless buffoons, by ridiculous stories and old wives' tales."[215]
Dante had also protested, and Wyclif likewise, without more success than
the Councils. "Thus," said Dante, "the ignorant sheep come home from
pasture, wind-fed.... Jests and buffooneries are preached.... St.
Anthony's swine fattens by these means, and others, worse than swine,
fatten too."[216] But collections succeeded to collections, and room was
found in them for many a scandalous tale, for that of the Weeping Bitch,
for example, one of the most travelled of all, as it came from India,
and is found everywhere, in Italy, France, and England, among fabliaux,
in sermons, and even on the stage.[217]

The French who were now living in England in large numbers, introduced
there the taste for merry tales of trickery and funny adventures,
stories of curious mishaps of all kinds;