INTRODUCTION xlil

chief languages of Western Europe. There
is the German feznhart, dated by modern
scholarship czvca 1180. There is the French
Roman de Renard, with its twenty-six or seven
‘branches,’ to the nucleus of which a provisional
date of 1230 may be assigned, though many
of the ‘branches’ are earlier and some later.
There is the Flemish ezuaert, the earliest
part of which was composed by a certain
Willem, near Ghent, about 1250. While there
is beyond these a Latin poem, Vsengrimus,
written at Ghent in 1148. Even in England a
trace has been found of a metrical version of
the Satire in the form of a thirteenth-century
poem, entitled, Of the Vox and of the Wolf.
Of the Italian Raznardo, and of the medieval
Greek version, there is no occasion to speak,
since they are out of the running in the race
for priority.

The results summed up in a few words
above are the outcome of a long series of
critical investigations by German, French, and
Dutch scholars, started by the monograph of
Jacob Grimm on Reinhart Fuchs in 1824. He
originated the theory that Reynard was the
outcome of an ancient Teutonic Beast Epic of
primitive origin. Every step in the investiga-