E del mal de vos otros amj mucho me pesa, otrosi de lo mjo e del mal de teresa, pero dexare atalauera e yr me aoropesa ante quela partyr de toda la mj mesa. Ca nunca fue tan leal blanca flor a flores njn es agora tristan con todos sus amores; que fase muchas veses rrematar los ardores, e sy de mi la parto nunca me dexaran dolores. How did the Archpriest come to hear the tale of Tristan, not yet widely diffused in Spain? Was it through _Le Chèvrefeuille_, one of Marie de France’s lais? His previous reference to ‘Ysopete’ might almost tempt some to think so:— esta fabla conpuesta, de ysopete sacada. However this may be, there is no doubt as to where the Archpriest found his _exemplo_ of the youth who wished to marry three wives, and thought better of it: this, as already stated, is a variant on the _fableau_ known as _Le Valet aux douze femmes_. Sr. Puyol y Alonso hints at a Spanish origin for the story of the two sluggards who, when they went a-courting, tried to make a merit of their sloth; but Wolf notes the recurrence of something very similar in other literatures, and it most likely reached Ruiz from France in some collection of supposititious Æsopic fables. The _Exemplo de lo que conteció á don Payas, pintor de Bretaña_—an indecent anecdote which follows immediately on the tale of the rival sluggards—betrays its provenance in its diction. Note the Gallicisms in such lines as:— Yo volo yr afrandes, portare muyta dona ... Yo volo faser en vos vna bona fygura ... Ella dis: monseñer, faset vuestra mesura ... dis la muger: monseñer, vos mesmo la catat ... en dos anos petid corder non se faser carner.... Can we doubt that these are free translations from a French original not yet identified? It is significant that, as the story of the Greek and the _ribaldo_ reappears long afterwards in Rabelais, so the story of Don Payas reappears in Béroalde de Verville’s _Le Moyen de parvenir_ and in La Fontaine’s salacious fable _Le Bât_:— Un peintre étoit, qui, jaloux de sa femme Allant aux champs, lui peignit un baudet Sur le nombril, en guise de cachet. Again, compare the Archpriest’s stanzas (already quoted) on the power of money with our English _Song in praise of Sir Penny_:— Go bet, Peny, go bet [go], For thee makyn bothe frynd and fo. Peny is a hardy knyght, Peny is mekyl of myght, Peny of wrong, he makyt ryght In every cuntré qwer he goo. [Go bet, etc.] Ritson quotes a companion poem from ‘a MS. of the 13th or 14th century, in the library of Berne’:— Denier fait cortois de vilain, Denier fait de malade sain, Denier sorprent le monde a plain, Tot est en son commandement.