THE ANIMAL IN ALLEGORY33which Barry Lopez argues we also see in the animal stories of aborigi-
nal cultures, is that the carefully observed behavior of animals contains
its own natural wisdom of survival, adaptation, and even community.^14
Bruce Thomas Boehrer reminds us that by presenting animals as char-
acters, early modern fables “openly create a space for the interaction of
human and nonhuman species,” allowing for animal and human wis-
dom to overlap.^15
R
My first example of an animal allegory poem is a work by the Scottish
medieval poet Robert Henryson, who based his Morall Fabillis of Esope
on the concise Latin versions of the fables that were ubiquitous in medi-
eval schools. His “The Taill of the Wolf and the Lamb” is worth exam-
ining because it presents a standard Aesopic tale, featuring animals that
have complex cultural meaning that the allegory expands upon. In this
161-line poem (twenty-two stanzas, composed of seven pentameter lines
each), Henryson elaborates the fable, lengthening it and making it more
complex. (William Caxton’s contemporaneous prose version is a para-
graph of about 240 words.) The translation of the Aesopic story to poetry
allows for the introduction of details that add symbolic resonance and
complexity. The narrative of the fable is simple and direct, about an
encounter between a wolf and a lamb who have both come to a river for
a drink of water. Seeing the lamb, the wolf immediately intends to kill
and eat it. Before doing so, he attempts to justify his desire to kill, accus-
ing the lamb of fouling the water. The lamb, replying in oddly legalistic
language, disputes the wolf ’s claim, since the wolf is upstream of the
lamb and so could not be drinking water in any way affected by the lamb.
The wolf then says he will kill the lamb because the lamb is like his father,
who injured him through his legalisms, and the wolf had earlier vowed
revenge on the father. The lamb replies that holy law requires each per-
son should be punished for his own sin, and that in any case justice
demands a court should hear the case the wolf has against him. The
story ends with the wolf denouncing the lamb’s arguments as treason-
ous (since the lamb’s contestations are an affront to the wolf ’s higher