_The burgeis hadde a pie in his halle,_ _That couthe telle tales alle_ _Apertlich_ (openly), _in French langage,_ _And heng in a faire cage_. In the other English version, edited by the author of this work for the Percy Society, the bird is said to have been, not a pie, but a “popynjay,” or parrot, and there are other variations in it which show that it had been taken more directly from the Oriental original, in which, as might be expected, the bird is a parrot. [Illustration: _No. 173. Lady and Dog._] Among the animals mentioned as pets we sometimes find monkeys. One of the Latin stories in the collection printed by the Percy Society, tells how a rustic, entering the hall of a certain nobleman, seeing a monkey dressed in the same suit as the nobleman’s family, and supposing, as its back was turned, that it was one of his sons, began to address it with all suitable reverence; but when he saw that it was only a monkey chattering at him, he exclaimed, “A curse upon you! I thought you had been Jenkin, my lord’s son.”[26] The favourite quadruped, however, has always been the dog, of which several kinds are mentioned as lady’s pets. Chaucer tells us of his prioress,-- _Of smale houndes hadde sche, that sche fedde_ _With rostud fleissh and mylk and wastel breed._ --Cant. Tales, l. 147. Our cut No. 173, from a manuscript of the St. Graal, in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 31), written in the thirteenth century, represents a queen seated in conversation, with her dog in her lap. The next cut (No. 174), from an illumination in the interesting manuscript of the Roman de Meliadus in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228, fol. 310), belonging to the latter half of the fourteenth century (the reign of our Edward III.), represents the interior of a chamber, with two little dogs gamboling about. In the singular work on domestic economy, entitled the “Ménagier de Paris,” written about the year 1393, the lady of the household is particularly recommended to think of the “chamber beasts,” such as little dogs, the “chamber birds,” &c., inasmuch as these creatures, not having the gift of speech, could not ask for themselves.[27] I have printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ” a curious Anglo-Norman poem, of the beginning of the fourteenth century, written as a satire on the ladies of the time, who were too fond of their dogs, and fed them delicately, while the servants were left to short commons (Reliq. Antiq. vol. i. p. 155). Cats are seldom mentioned as pets, except of ill-famed old women. There was a prejudice against them in the middle ages, and they were joined in people’s imagination with witchcraft, and with other diabolical agencies. The accompanying group of an old lady and her cats (cut No. 175) is taken from a carving on one of the _misereres_ in the church of Minster, in the Isle of Thanet. Curiously enough, the English