One of the many interesting stories current in the Middle Ages is that of a young man who puts his marriage ring on the finger of a statue of Venus and is surprised to find that the image, taking the matter au sérieux, jealously forbids him the embraces of his earthly bride. Its relation to a large group of miracles of the Virgin has been frequently noticed (for example, by Mussafia and by Ward and Herbert ); it has received some attention from students of Mérimée as the source of his Vénus d'Ille; and Massmann, in his edition of the Kaiserchronik (1849-1854) collected a large number of variants (together with an almost equal number of faulty references). But Graf is the only scholar who has studied it in any detail, and his treatment is far from complete. I propose here to bring together the scattered materials of previous students, both of the story of the ring-betrothal to the Venus statue and of the Virgin miracle. I shall add no new versions of either story, but I shall discuss the former from a point of view radically different from Graf's, and shall endeavour to follow the tale from its obscure beginnings before William of Malmesbury, through its adaptation as a miracle of the Virgin, down to some of its present literary forms.

autem ad presidium Herodis fugiens mortis periculiim evasit. Herodes et ipse turbatus egit quemadmodum ille ab amicis interfecti pacem obtineret, ne re unius mali in aliud maius periculum declinaret. Accepto igitur consilio Herodes uxorem interfecti lude copulavit, ipso et omnibus ignorantibus quod mater eiusdem csset. Die vero quadam accidit ut ludas coram matre et uxore nudus appareret et videns ilia stigmata plagarum in tibiis, suspicata est filium suum esse, quem olim inter frutecta proiectum dimiserat. Unde querit ab eo, quis pater eius exstiterat, vel que mater eius, qui parentes, et unde vel ex qua provintia ortus vel a quibus fuerit nutritus. * Cosquin (op. cit.) gives other Javanese and Indian legends re

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Forty years ago Tatlock published a short paper on “Puns in Chaucer,” but since then very little has been said on the subject, until just recently appeared Helge Kokeritz' article on “Rhetorical Word Play in Chaucer.” Tatlock pointed out a dozen puns, together with a few “coarse” ones not directly specified. In 1892 Lounsbury had said that Chaucer was “free from these verbal quibbles”; he saw only one, Calkas-calculynge. Before Tatlock, also, Skeat had noted a few, and apropos of style (F 105 f.) commented: “such puns are not common in Chaucer.” Similarly Robinson, apropos of philosophre (A 297) said: “Puns are unusual in Chaucer and it is not always easy to determine whether they are intentional”; but he added as “more or less clear” six of Tatlock's and one of his own, the Latin play on eructavit (D 1934). Preston mentioned six or seven in passing (Chaucer, 1952). Kokeritz conceded that real “double entendres” (significatio, or pun in the modern sense) appear in Chaucer, “though not very often.” He instanced a baker's dozen, along with a few more already noted by others, which he found unacceptable.