Avis
The Bird; or, The Story of the Confectioner, His Wife, and the Parrot
A bird - a parrot, or a magpie - reveals a woman's adultery to her husband (who is, in some of the Arabic texts, specified as a confectioner). She tries to convince him that the bird is lying, mad, or confused, but his faith in the bird's reporting is unshaken. To discredit the bird, the wife tricks it into believing that there is a storm in the night (manufacturing the sound of the weather, dropping water on it from a hole in the ceiling, etc.) when in fact the weather was clear. The husband, hearing the bird's reports of rain and wind, discounts the earlier report of adultery. (In some texts, he kills the bird; in others, he eventually learns the truth and is filled with remorse.)
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Nishimura notes the extensive analogues, motifs, and reference stories for Avis: Motifs and Types: TMI B131 Bird which reveals the truth; B211.3.4 Speaking Parrot; J551.1, ATU 243A Cocks who crows about mistress’s adultery killed; K1591.1 Peacock left as spy on adulterous wife; N340 Hasty killing or condemnation (Mistake); ATU 1422 Parrot reports Wife’s Adultery. TU3147 Magpie denounce unfaithful wife. Analogues: Der persische Dekameron, 13 ‘Der Papagei‘. Galland, Les mille et une Nuits, ‘Histoire du Mari et du Perroquet‘ (Night 14); Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, in ‘The Wife of Bath’ (‘A wise wife, if she knows what is good for her, will convince her husband that the raven is mad, and will obtain a token of consent from her own servants’, which makes us infer the existence of this story in the background). Reference stories, etc. Rosen, Das Papageienbuch, Night 4: 'Vom Kaufmann und dem Papagei'. The analogous story of Pheobus and Coronis is found in Ovidius, Metamorphoses, 2.531-632; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ‘The Manciple's Tale'; Gower, Confessio Amantis, 3.2. See also Jataka, 145 ‘Rādha-j’ and 198 ‘Rādha-j’; Gesta Romanorum, 68 ‘Die drei Hähne’; Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst, 9 ‘Drei Hanen kreigten von dem Eebruch’; Espinosa, Cuentos Populares Españoles, 75, ‘What I Hear, What I See, and What I Silence’ (original story 263). In Pentamerone, 3.1, 'Cannetella', the horse tells the husband that his wife has eaten a bunch of grapes. Arabian Nights, 'The Story of Masrur the Merchant and the Dreams He Saw' (Night 852), in which he learns of his wife’s unfaithfulness because the little bird he keeps is attached to a man. Additional Bibliography: Chauvin VIII 3, 96; Landau 7. |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Marzolph and van Leeuwen (2004) |
| Avis appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| Avis appears in the following manuscripts |
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