THE SCENE: What mysteries might be revealed if we understood the language of animals? One medieval bishop succeeded in acquiring this strange ability. Although it would appear, from the story below, that animals are not necessarily full of arcane secrets.
THE TEXT: [The Bishop of Alexandria] found the means, either through diligence or else through magik natural, so to modify his sensible power either by purging his brain by dry drinks & fumes, or else to augment the brains of his power perceptible, by other natural medicines, so that he could understand all kinds of creatures by their voices.
For being on a time sitting at dinner in a house among his friends : he harkened diligently to a Sparrow that came flying and chirping to others that were about the house, & smiled to himself to hear her. When one of the company desired to know why he smiled : he told him the sparrow’s tale. For she told them (quoth he) that in the highway not a quarter of a mile hence a sack of wheat is even now fallen off a horse’ back & broken, & all the wheat run out, and therefore biddeth them come thither to diner, and when the guests mused hereat, sent to prove the truth, they found it even as he had told them.
– Beware the Cat, William Baldwin, 16th Century AD
