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Abstract

Fables. The most impressive Scottish animal fables are the 13 written by ROBERT Henryson. The recasting of Aesop’s fables was an accepted part of the medieval Christian tradition and like many other fabulists of his day Henryson wrote the poems on the lives of birds and beasts as allegories in order to provide a pattern for human behaviour set against a Christian moralitas. Thus the fables were supposed to describe a world in which animals and birds assumed human characteristics and behaved in a thoroughly human manner. Humour and witty dialogue were as important to the telling of the story as was the heavy underlining of the moral. Henryson wrote within those accepted forms but the inventiveness of his fables lay in his happy ability to mix social observation with a minute and loving description of animal life. The birds and beasts