Chichevache

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chichevache is a mythological European monster fabled to feed on "good women".

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this human-faced cow is perpetually starved to skin and bone due to the scarcity of obedient and faithful wises. The Bicorn or Bycorne, a counterpart to the Chichevache that fed on obedient and kind husbands, was reputedly fat and plump because of the plentiful supply of such men.

Chaucer may have borrowed the French word chichifache (thin face) to coin chichevache (thin or meagre cow)^[1]. D. Laing Purves notes that "The origin of the fable was French; but Lydgate has a ballad on the subject. 'Chichevache' literally means 'niggardly' or 'greedy cow.'"^[2]

Here is the paragraph where the word appears in The Canterbury Tales:

"O noble wives, full of high prudence,

Let no humility your tongues nail:

Nor let no clerk have cause or diligence

To write of you a story of such marvail,

As of Griselda patient and kind,

Lest Chichevache you swallow in her entrail.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://home.swipnet.se/~w-48250/mythology/c/chichevache.html
2. ^ The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems, available freely at Project Gutenberg

• http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/2383/215.html

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopaedia.