Canicula
The Weeping Dog
A husband and wife pledge absolute faithfulness to each other in the other's absence. The husband departs on a long trip, and his wife mourns and stays indoors, barely showing her face outside. However, one day a bridal procession passes her house, and hearing the music, she puts her head out the window. A young man passing by sees her beauty, and is instantly sick with love and lust. He sends her gifts and messages, and takes to his bed when she rejects him. Hearing of his distress, an old woman visits him, and promises to cure him in return for ten silver pieces. She buys a dog from the market and goes to the house where the woman lives, and begs for refreshment. When the woman goes to get her water, the old woman feeds the dog a cake of fat and spices so that tears spring to the creature's eyes, and when the wife returns, the old woman too pretends to weep. The wife asks why they both are crying, and the old woman tells her that the dog is her daughter, who had once been as beautiful as the wife, but was transformed into a bitch because she cruelly spurned a would-be lover. Fearing the same fate will be visited on her, the wife begs the old woman to visit the young man she had rejected and to tell him she would agree to sleep with him. However, when the old woman returns to the young man's home, he is not there - and thus cannot pay her fee. She decides instead to instead find any man who will pay her, and settles on the first traveller she finds disembarking from a ship. She takes the man by the arm, and offers (for a price) to lead him to a willing woman. Unbeknownst to her, it is the wife's husband, returned from travelling, and he turns her down. When the old woman insists, however, he agrees, hoping to discover what woman in his town has such loose morals. She leads him to his own house, where he finds his wife dressing and annointing herself. When his wife sees him, she thinks fast and turns on him, claiming that this had been a test, which he had failed. He agreed to follow a procuress to a house of ill repute, so, she cries, he must have been unfaithful when he was travelling too! He insists that isn't the case, and after much pleading she relents and the two are reconciled.
From Mishle Sendebar
[Added by Jane Bonsall]
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Note: Nishimura titles this story 'Canicula', while Epstein calls it 'Catula'. The narrative of the weeping dog is also found in Disciplina Clericalis, Gesta Romanorum, and the Sanscrit Kathasaritsagara. |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Epstein (1967) |
| Canicula appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| Canicula appears in the following manuscripts |
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