Ingenia 4 – The Trick: The Fur Coat
A steward, whose primary responsibility is tending to his lord's expansive, exotic gardens, has a much younger, beautiful wife. His wife falls for her husband's scribe, who appears disinterested in women. When she sees a piece of the scribe's writing about the 'wiles of women', she laughs, telling him he doesn't know the first thing about women's tricks. For example, she tells him that she can easily arrange it so that her husband leaves their chamber in the middle of the night, giving her enough time to meet a lover, and that when he returns he will be none the wiser. The scribe thinks this is impossible, and agrees to do as the woman says to test her claim.
That night, the wife suddenly wakes her husband from his sleep. She tells him that she has heard noises in the gardens outside, and that he must carefully check that no harm has come to the plants, and that no fruit has been stolen. The steward complains that he will freeze, as his wife recently sent his overcoat to the tailor to be mended. She gives him her fur coat instead, and he leaves. As they had agreed, the scribe then sneaks into the bedchamber, and the two have sex. Then, bearing the wife's instructions in mind, the scribe waits by his chamber door, near the entrance to the garden. Soon the husband comes back, wrapped in the fur coat and shivering; the scribe pretends to think it is the wife returning from some liasion, and berates and beats 'her' for such dishonorable actions. The husband, upon returning to the chamber, is comforted by his wife, and has renewed faith in the loyalty and morality of his scribe.
From Murko (1890)
[Added by Jane Bonsall]
Note
This 'Wiles of Women' story is found only in the Bohemian version of the Seven Sages. This story is closely related to the other "Wiles of Women" stories, which are: to Ingenia 1, The Trick: The Wiles of Women Collection, in which a man tries (and fails) to record examples of all of women's trickery; Ingenia 2, The Trick: Hidden Under the Throne, in which a queen challenges a merchant to aids adulterous women to demonstrate his capacity for deceit, then outdoes him; Ingenia 3, The Trick: The Fish in the Field, in which a woman makes a fool of her misogynist husband by convincing him fish appeared magically in the surrounding fields;
See also Puteus for another example of a story in which a husband receives punishment for the wife's adultery.
Nishimura notes the following:
Motifs and Type: TMI K1514.4: Returning husband beaten by servants. K1514.4.1: Husband beaten by paramour. T261.1: Husband takes wife’s place and receives punishment for her adultery. T481.4: Wife seduces husband’s servant (pupil). ATU 1419: The returning Husband hoodwinked.
Analogues: See Fabliau MR8 ‘De la Borgoise d’Orliens’ and MR50 ‘Le Chevalier, sa Dame et le Clerc’, and MR100 ‘De la Dame qui fist batre son mari’. Hagen, Gesamtabenteuer, 27 ‘Frauenbeständigkeit’. Decameron, 7.7. Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Il Pecorone, 3.2. La Fontaine, Contes, 1.3 ‘Le Cocu battu et content’. D’Ouville, ‘Tale of a Man who delights in Being Laid and Struck’, in Contes aux heures perdues. Afanasjew, Russian Ridiculous Tales, 77 ‘The Merchant’s Wife and the Watchman’.
Reference stories, etc.: In Les Cent Nouvelle Nouvelle, 23, the dialogue between the wife and the scribe is very similar. Bandello, Le Novelle, 1.53 is a dialogue between a farmer and a married woman. The flirtation with the scribe is also depicted in Les Cent Nouvelle Nouvelle, 13.Critical Literature
Ingenia 4 appears in the following versions and secondary versions
| Has Language Of Version | Has Branch Of Tradition | Is Adapted From |
|---|
Ingenia 4 is narrated in the following occurrences
| Narrator | Pages |
|---|---|
| Second Master | Czech Version H: Kronika sedmi mudrců |
Ingenia 4 appears in the following manuscripts
| Has Language | Has Siglum Of The Version Of The Seven Sages | Has Language Group Within Version |
|---|