Getting a Falcon
“William and the Falcon” revolves around a literal iteration of the titular bird. But one must remember that these stories are French in origin and the French word for falcon is “faucon” which dismisses the “l” sound. As a result, it is a word that sounds more like another word in English than it does “falcon.” And that particular pronunciation facilitates the symbolic status of the falcon. William succeeds in his quest to get a faucon from a fair lady.
Partridges
“The Partridges” is another story in which birds are sexual symbols. Or, at least, they can potentially be viewed that way. Literally speaking, the partridges are just birds, but the manner in which the wife in the story lustfully attacks the cooked fowl and feasts upon them in an almost orgasmic frenzy indicates that they likely have a life well beyond the literal. Chasing away the priest and playing her lover against her husband all come together to invest the partridges with a masturbatory symbolic status.
The Butcher
Common men are often the humiliating butt of conniving women and priests in these stories. “The Butcher of Abbeville” differs substantially, however, by getting the better of a priest, his serving wench and his mistress. He may be viewed as a kind of Tricker archetype in one way, but in another more important way he is a symbolic of the common man who finally gets the better of the priestly class.
Priests
These stories tend toward the ribald and sometimes veer perilously close to the pornographic. An interesting aspect of them is that more often than not the poor dumb sap that is cuckolded by his wife is cuckolded at the hand—well, another body part, actually—of a priest. The priestly class in these stories are the ultimate symbol of moral hypocrisy.
Women
It is not merely that the women in these stories are sexually unfaithful. Their sexual appetite typically goes beyond simply nymphomania. The desire to constantly feed upon the sexual desires of men acting at their most stupidly predictable is grounded within a symbolic foundation of economics. Sexual desire is connected directly to greed or social mobility. The cheating wives rarely come away from their encounters simply having enjoyed an affair; they usually wind up enriched.
