Praeceptum galli
The Rooster's Advice
A knight rescues a snake from a burning house while out riding one day. As he rests, the rescued snake slithers up to his face, and puts a plant into his mouth; the knight swallows the plant, and is able to understand the language of birds. (In some versions, he hears a voice warning him not to speak of this.) He returns home, and one day is dining in his orchard. He overhears sparrows fighting, and can understand their arguments. His wife, curious, demands to know what the sparrows were fighting about, but the knight will not tell her. Furious, she vows not to eat or drink until he tells her, and eventually she falls ill. Thinking about what to do, the knight overhears a cockerel who bemoans the fact that he loses 'wives' every week, but his master will lose one for no good cause, as she is making herself ill on purpose. 'But', the rooster adds, 'if my master were to beat his wife with a club, she would not perish like my wives do'. So the knight beats his wife, who sees he is serious, and gets up to eat.
Note
Nishimura (2001) notes: see T252.2: 'Cock show's browbeaten husband how to rule his wife'. Analogues include Decameron 9.4.
Critical Literature
The inset story appears in the following manuscripts
This inset story appears in no manuscripts of the database
