says, “a story in regard to women who eat dainty morsels in the absence of their lords. There was a lady who had a pie in a cage, which talked of everything which it saw done. Now it happened that the lord of the household preserved a large eel in a pond, and kept it very carefully, in order to give it to some of his lords or of his friends, in case they should visit him. So it happened that the lady said to her female attendant that it would be good to eat the great eel, and accordingly they eat it, and agreed that they would tell their lord that the otter had eaten it. And when the lord returned, the pie began to say to him, ‘My lord, my lady has eaten the eel.’ Then the lord went to his pond, and missed his eel; and he went into the house, and asked his wife what had become of it. She thought to excuse herself easily, but he said that he knew all about it, and that the pie had told him. The result was that there was great quarrelling and trouble in the house; but when the lord was gone away, the lady and her female attendant went to the pie, and plucked all the feathers from his head, saying, ‘You told about the eel.’ And so the poor pie was quite bald. But from that time forward, when it saw any people who were bald or had large foreheads, the pie said to them, ‘Ah! you told about the eel!’ And this is a good example how no woman ought to eat any choice morsel by gluttony without the knowledge of her lord, unless it be to give it to people of honour; for this lady was afterwards mocked and jeered for eating the eel, through the pie which complained of it.” The reader will recognise in this the origin of a much more modern story.