1 An Alphabet of Tales. An English 15th century translation of the Alphabetum narrationum, ed. Banks, Mary M. (London, 1904-1905, E.E.T.S. 126-127)Google Scholar, narratio cccxv, p. 217, hereafter cited as Alphabet, ed. Banks.

2 More's Utopia and a Dialogue of Comfort (Everyman: London, 1910), p. 186.

3 The term jest-book’ makes its initial appearance in the eighteenth century, in Walpole's letters (1750). The earliest collections were entitled 'merry tales', apparently as a translation of Poggio's term facetiae meaning 'wit, witticisms, humour', where 'merry' equals 'amusing, diverting, funny'. More uses this term in his Dialogue of Comfort (see above). Palsgrave applied 'merry' to the word 'jeste' as early as 1530, but defined the latter word as meaning 'a ryddle, somette'. The word 'jest' meaning 'a saying intended to excite laughter: a witticism, ajoke' did not appear until 1551 in Robinson's translation of the Utopia. During the later middle ages, the most common word meaning 'a merry or idle tale, a jest, joke, gibe' was the fourteenth-century noun 'jape'. However, the O.E.D. notes that 'jape' was not used by 'Spenser, Shaks., or their contemporaries'; we may therefore assume that 'jest' had taken its place. The earliest use of the term 'jest' to describe what we now call jests occurs in the fourth book of The Schoolemaster (1576), where 'mery honest Iestes' translates the expression 'honestis ludis' of the original Mensa philosophica (1480?). As it appears in the title 'The merry jests and witty shifts of Scoggin', the word appears to have the meaning 'a prank, frolic, practical joke', a meaning we continue to find throughout the Renaissance period applied to certain types of collections. It is worth noting that the epithet 'merry' appears with these early uses of the word "jest', carried over from the expression 'merry tale'. The term 'jest-book' is now too useful to be discarded, but it should be recognized that the more common term for such collections in the sixteenth century was 'merry tales'.

4 Re-ed. S.J. H. Herrtage (London, 1879, E.E.T.S.E.S. 33).

5 Basel, [1484?]. In a note on page c of his introduction to The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (London, 1890), T. F. Crane lists the following further printed editions of Bromyard's Summa: Nuremberg, 1485, 1518, 1578; Paris, 1518; Lyons, 1522; Cologne, 1553; Venice, 1586; and Antwerp, 1614.

6 Ed. H. Oesterley (London, 1866).

7 Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. in ShakespeareJest-Books (London, 1864), 1Google Scholar, hereafter cited as SJB. See also the more recent edition in P. M. Zall's A Hundred Merry Tales, etc. (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963).

8 The most complete survey of the different English jest-books appears in Ernst Schulz's Die englischen Schwankbiicher bis herab zu “Dobson's Drie Bobs” (1607) (Berlin, 1912, Palaestra cxvn), but see also F. P. Wilson, “The English Jestbooks of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries', HLQ II (1939), 121-158.

9 See the notes of H. Oesterley to A Hundred Mery Tales.

10 A. L. Stiefel, ‘Die Quellen der englischen Schwankbiicher des 16. Jahrhunderts', Anglia xxxi (1908), 453-520.

11 H. de Vocht, ‘ “Mery Tales, Wittie Questions and Quicke Answeres” and their Sources', Anglia XXXVIII (1910), 120-132.

12 Schulz, Ernst, Die englischen Schwankbücher, p. 4.Google Scholar

13 The Facetiae of Poggio and Other Medieval Story-Tellers, tr. Storer, Edward (London, [1928], Broadway Translations), p. 6.Google Scholar

14 G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England(2d ed., New York, I96i),p. 167.

15 Analysis of a literary narrative style to establish sources may seem an act of temerity when dealing with material as obviously popular as jests, where oral transmission clearly played a major part in the process of dissemination. Support for this approach has recently been offered by Gershon Legman in a discussion of his progress ‘Toward a Motif-Index of Erotic Humor’ (Jour. American Folklore LXXV, 1962, p . 230). ‘Printed joke collections are now, and have apparently always been, eagerly sought, bought, and memorized by professional and semiprofessional entertainers, and their contents have thus been continually “fed back” to the orally-transmitting audience, for at least the 500 years since the introduction of printing in Europe. The evidence also indicates that such printed (earlier manuscript) collections have not only been of seminal importance, as just described, but that their transmission partakes more particularly of the literary conventions of signed and theoretically unchanging texts, than of the anonymity and fluidity traditional to folklore.'

16 Welter, J.-Th., L'Exemplum dans la litterature religieuse et didactique du moyen age (Paris, 1927), p. 76.Google Scholar

17 Welter, pp. 66-79.

18 Welter, p. 75.

19 Welter, pp. 72-73.

20 In his review of medieval tractates dealing with rhetorical invention, Professor Harry Caplan comes to a similar conclusion. ‘One is struck by the failure of all the authors, and especially the later ones, to formulate a clearcut treatment of the exemplum’ ('Rhetorical Invention in some Medieval Tractates on Preaching', Speculum II (1927), 294).

21 Ed. Smith, Lucy T. and Meyer, P. (Paris, 1889), pp. 180–181.Google Scholar

22 See also the names of the Devil's hounds in tale no. 22 (pp. 29-37), and the three thieves Croket, Hoket, and Loket in the fahula moralis to tale no. 117 (pp. 136-138).

23 Bozon, Contes, p. 180.

24 Alphabet, ed. Banks, DCCLXV (pp. 510-511).

25 Fabula to tale no. 132 (pp. 158-159).

26 Welter, L'Exemplum, p. 81.

27 Alphabet, ed. Banks, p. 85.

28 Quicke Answeres, ed. Hazlitt, SJB, 1, 45-46. In the first and third volumes, but not the second, Hazlitt's pagination runs consecutively within each text rather than throughout each volume.

29 See Stiefel, p. 472.

30 There can be no question that both The Conceits of Old Hobson and Pasquil's Jests (both in SJB, ni) are little more than the Quicke Answeres reworked.

31 Ed. Banks, p. 303.

32 SJB, II, 325-326.

33 SJB, I, 83.

34 Bk. v, no. 34 (Opera omnia, IV, 256).

35 Stiefel, p. 486.

36 Summa prcedicantium (Venice, 1586), H8^v-Ii^r.

37 Opera omnia, iv, 256.

38 SJB, 1, 83

39 Cf. J. A. Herbert's epitomes in the Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (London, 1910), vol. ra. The recognition of this essential quality lies behind the story of the jokesters’ convention where the individual stories are told simply by reciting the joke's code number. The biggest laugh arises when a number is mentioned ‘that they hadn't heard before.'

40 The comparison of epitomes provided Bedier with one of his major points of attack on the study of folklore. Cf. Les Fabliaux (3d ed., Paris, 1911), particularly pp. 164-199 on ‘oriental’ influences. For a recent analysis of the danger inherent in classifying narrative material by motifs, the ultimate in epitomes, see Gershon Legman's discussion of the Stith Thompson Motif-Index in Jour. American Folklore LXXV (1962), 227-229.

41 Palace of Pleasure, ed. J. Haslewood (London, 1813), 1, 74, ‘The Twenty-First Nouell.

42 Painter, p. 74.

43 The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. N. Bailey (London, 1725), p. 307.

44 Erasmus, Colloquies, p. 309.

45 SJB, I, 28.

46 Erasmus, Colloquies, p. 312.

47 SJB, I, 38.

48 Printed by John Koelhoff (Cologne, 1480?). Having noted a slight tendency toward increased use of the ‘exemplum profane’ in fifteenth-century religious writing, Welter (p. 445) nevertheless concludes that ‘il faut arriver aux traites de courtoisie, de bonnes manieres et de bon maintien pour voir V'exemplum assumer un caractere profane plus accentue. Ici, en effet, il se depouille largement de son caractere religieux et moral pour devenir un conte amusant ou un trait plaisant, bref il se secularise. Le traite ou cette secularisation se manifeste nettement est la Mensa philosophica, compile par un dominicain allemand dans la seconde moitie du XVe siecle.'

49 For the extent of the borrowing from the Mensa on the continent, see Thomas F. Dunn, ‘The Facetiae of the Mensa Philosophica,’ Washington Univ. Stud, n.s., Language and Literature (1934), p. 17.

50 For English jest-books utilizing the Mensa as a source, see Dunn, pp. 20-55.

51 The Schoolemaster, or Teacher of Table Philosophic, tr. T[homas] T[wyne], S.T.C. 24412, E4r . Dunn also references this second edition (1583), which is a page-for-page reprint of the first, S.T.C. 24411 (1576). For his list of editions, see ‘The Facetiae, etc.,’ pp. 9-13. A discussion of the arguments for and against Twyne as translator appears under his name in the Dictionary of National Biography. For convenience, we may accept the traditional ascription to Twyne. English quotations throughout are from the 1583 edition of Twyne's translation.

52 Apparently Twyne felt the duplicate titles to be awkward, and in many cases added to the titles of individual chapters such words as ‘ … and their merie jests', which he took from the running-title in book four.

53 ‘Vinum vilius esset', Mensa, B4^r.

54 ‘Carum si que quisgue vellet bibat', Mensa, B4^r; Twyne, Fir.

55 Twyne, O4^V.

56 Mensa, B3^V.

57 Mensa, F1^r.

58 ‘[The tales] sont empruntes directement, soit au Communiloquium de Jean de Galles (2e partie), soit a la Compilacio singularis et aux traites d'Albert le Grand, de Thomas de Cantimpre, de Geraud de Frachet, d'Et. de Bourbon et de Humbert de Romans ainsi que parfois a Texperience personnelle du compilateur (2e et 4e parties)’ (Welter, L'Exemplum, p. 447).

59 Dunn's list of sources and analogues has been invaluable in establishing the character of these jests.

60 See, for example, the widespread tale of the usurer who was buried with a bag of gold, and was later discovered in his tomb receiving it down his throat in molten form from either toads or devils (Mensa, H7^V; Dunn, p. 54).

61 Twyne, P2^V.

62 Twyne, P2^V.

63 A failure to recognize this phenomenon has led to much of the praise for Chaucer's 'modern’ scepticism. See G. R. Owst's violent attack on this attitude, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 229-230.

64 Literature and Pulpit, pp. 210-286, particularly the introductory survey of nonsermon literature, pp. 210-236. For other anecdotes at the expense of fellow clergy, see Owst's earlier chapter on the exempla, pp. 164-165.

65 Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 235.

66 Twyne, S2^r.

67 A. Lecoy de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, legendes, et apologues, tires du recueil inedit d'Etienne de Bourbon (Paris, 1877, Soc. de l'histoire de France 185), p. 216.

68 Herbert, Catalogue, III, 422, no. 94. Herbert (p. 414) describes the work as ‘a manual of moral sentences, similitudes, and examples, arranged for the use of preachers in alphabetical order according to subjects'. This story appears under ‘Verbum Dei'.

69 Lecoy de la Marche, p. 216.

70 Lecoy de la Marche's note (p. 217) testifies to the popularity of this tale on the continent: 'On en a fait plus tard l'application aux Jesuites, en placant dans la bouche de la matrone scandalisee ce mauvais jeu de mots, qui court encore dans certains receuils: Jesuita, Jesuita | Non ibat Jesu ita.'

71 M.P., G5^v.

72 Twyne did not hesitate to include some historical anecdotes later on, however, which are not notable for their humor, and which he expands in the moral tone of a post-Reformation Anglican. See S1^r.

73 See Dunn's notes, pp. 36-37.

74 Twyne, QI^r.

75 Twyne, QI^r.

76 This tale had considerable circulation. See Dunn, p. 26.

77 Twyne, Q4^V. This tale appears as number 85 in the Quicke Answeres.

78 More's Utopia and Dialogue, p. 185.