Origins and setting
“Mr Fox” is an English wonder tale from the Bluebeard/Robber Bridegroom story family (often grouped under ATU 955). It keeps the grim kernel of those tales—an elegant suitor with a hidden house and a murderous secret—but is remembered above all for two ringing formulas: the carved warning “Be bold, be bold… but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold,” and the feast-day refrain “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so.” Its dramatis personae are spare and sharp: Lady Mary, quick-witted and self-possessed; Mr Fox, smooth as silk and cold as winter water; and a hall full of witnesses who must be made to believe by proof.
The tale
There was once a great lord whose daughter, Lady Mary, was courted by many, yet none pleased her father so much as a certain handsome gentleman called Mr Fox. He had a good seat on a horse and a better one at table, and his speech flowed like wine. Lady Mary gave him her favour; he, for his part, pressed her to visit his house in the forest.
“Where is your house?” she asked.
“Not far, my lady,” said Mr Fox, smiling. “A day’s ride into the green. You will know it by its marble gate and the carvings above.”
But whenever she asked again he put her off with kisses and courtesies. At last Lady Mary’s curiosity waxed strong. In secret, she took her horse at dawn and rode into the forest. After long miles she came upon a great house standing solitary, ivy crawling its pale face, the gate ajar, no dog to bark, no groom to hail.
Over the arch she read, in letters cut deep:
Be bold.
She laughed to herself and passed in. In the shadow of the porch, upon the inner door, she read again:
Be bold, be bold.
Her heart beat quicker, but she lifted the latch and entered a wide, cold hall. The hearth was dead; the rushes unswept; yet all was set in perfect order, as if for guests who had not come.
At the stair-head a third carving waited, the letters darker for much reading:
Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,
Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.
A draught crept along the corridor like a whisper. Lady Mary went soft as a cat, opening doors with careful fingers. Behind some she found locked chests and wedding garments never worn; behind one, a gallery hung with blood-rusted chains. Down a side stair she came to a door secured by an iron bolt. When she slid it back, a smell rose like a struck blow.
Within lay a stone chamber, and there—oh Christ deliver us—were women’s bodies, some newly stilled, some bone-white, each with a ring yet on her hand, or a ribbon at her throat. Lady Mary caught her breath and would have fled, but feet and voices sounded in the court below. She snatched shut the door, ran light along the passage, and seeing a narrow window-slit that looked on the steps, she crouched within it, hidden by the arras.
Mr Fox came in, dragging a lady by the hair. She was not dead, for she moaned; but blood trailed after them along the stone. “Hush,” he crooned, “hush, my sweeting; you shall not feel it long.” He cast her down upon the stair and drew his sword. “Only a ring to take, and we’ll have done.”
The lady’s hand was small and the diamond ring close. Mr Fox set the blade beneath the finger, but the woman gave a cry and wrenched away. In that wrench the hand came off and sprang—as a cut thing will—up through the window-slit. It fell into Lady Mary’s lap.
Mr Fox started, looked up, and stared into the gloom. The window showed nothing but stone and shadow. He shrugged, caught up the limp body, and bore it down to that dreadful chamber. After a while he went out again, humming.
Lady Mary did not faint; she did not even tremble. She wrapped the hand with its ring in her kerchief, slipped from her hiding, and found her way like a deer through thicket and ride until she saw her father’s towers again.
The feast and the “dream”
Soon after, Lady Mary’s kin held a great feast, to which Mr Fox, as her betrothed, was bidden with all honour. He came gallant in velvet, bowing low, all smiles and civil phrases. They ate and drank; they talked of roads and weather and the small accidents that make a table pleasant. Then Lady Mary stood with a cup in her hand and said sweetly:
“My lords and ladies, I had a dream last night, a strange dream; and dreams, you know, are naught—as dream it was, as dream it may be. I dreamed I went into the forest and came to a fair house with a marble gate, and over it were graven these words: ‘Be bold.’”
Mr Fox laughed lightly. “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so.”
“I dreamed,” said Lady Mary, steady as a bell, “that within the porch, upon the inner door, I read again: ‘Be bold, be bold.’”
“It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so,” said Mr Fox, still smiling.
“I dreamed I mounted the stair, and at the head I read: ‘Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.’”
“It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so,” he said again, but the colour had left his lips.
“I dreamed,” said Lady Mary, her eyes upon him, “that I opened a door to a stone chamber, and there I saw—hacked bodies of many women.”
A murmur ran about the board. Mr Fox’s hands had gone quite still upon his knife.
“And I dreamed,” Lady Mary continued, “that you, good sir, came in dragging a lady by the hair; that you set your sword beneath her finger to take a ring; that the hand leapt and fell, in my dream, into my lap. As dream it was, as dream it may be.”
Mr Fox tried to laugh; it grated. “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so.”
Then Lady Mary lifted her kerchief, laid upon the board the pale hand with the diamond ring, and said, clear and low:
“But it is so, and it was so;
And here the hand and ring I have to show.”
Steel rang like hail. Her brothers and the lords about them drew their swords. Mr Fox sprang up, but there was no door quick enough and no lie strong enough. They took him, there and then, and—as some tell it—cut him into a thousand pieces; as others, had him hanged at the gate where his own false motto was carved. In any wise, Mr Fox troubled no more maidens.
As for Lady Mary, she wore her green dress again and went hawking with a light heart. The letters on the lintels of her father’s hall were plain to read if anyone cared to look:
Be bold—but not too bold.
Iconic lines and moments
- The carved warnings:
“Be bold.” / “Be bold, be bold.” / “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, / Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.” - The feast-day refrain and denial:
“It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so.” - The proof that ends the pretence:
“But it is so, and it was so; / And here the hand and ring I have to show.”
Thus ends “Mr Fox”: a tale that teaches courage with caution, and the simple power of evidence set against a smiling lie.
Leave a Reply