English Cleric: The French are godless, arrogant lazy dogs and they're rapists, cowards and

[cali]

heretics too.


Lazy, arrogant cowards: how English saw French in 12th century
A twelfth-century poem newly translated into English casts fresh light on the origin of today's Francophobic stereotypes.


By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Published: 7:30AM GMT 17 Jan 2010


Although it is meant to be an 'entente cordiale', the relationship between the English and the French has been anything but neighbourly.

When the two nations have not been clashing on the battlefield or the sporting pitch they have been trading insults from 'frogs' to 'rosbifs'.


Now the translation of the poem has shown just how deep-rooted in history the rivalry and name-calling really is.

Written between 1180 and 1194, a century after the Norman Conquest united England and Normandy against a common enemy in France, the 396-line poem was part of a propaganda war between London and Paris.

Poet Andrew de Coutances, an Anglo-Norman cleric, describes the French as godless, arrogant and lazy dogs. Even more stingingly, he accuses French people of being cowardly, and calls them heretics and rapists.

It has taken David Crouch, a professor of medieval history at Hull University, months to complete the translation of what is one of the earliest examples of anti-French diatribe.

<snip>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7004448/Lazy-arrogant-cowards-how-English-saw-French-in-12th-century.html

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. Now go away!

Or I shall taunt you a second time!

[cali]

2. from the poem:

A man who dines with the French

Should grab whatever he may

As either he will end up with nuts

Or will just carry off the shallots

A Frenchman would need to own the world

To live as well as he would like.

Because that is something that cannot happen

The French know to hold what provisions they have.

That’s the way they are in their own land

But when they’re abroad they’re even more greedy

And shamefully gorge themselves at every table

Whenever they get near one.

And whenever hosts have them in their homes

They realise the French are such men

So greedy and so avaricious

That he ought to drive them off with kicks.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. So... basically nothing has changed in 800 years. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

4. It's a bit more complicated than that.

At that time the Normans in England where probably still regarded as being French and would still have been subjugating the Saxons. So - the reference could've been an internal one.

At least he didn't refer to them as frogs. :rofl: