Versus de unibove

The Versus de unibove, also known as Unibos, Einochs or One-Ox, is a Latin poem in 864 lines that recounts the comic story of a poor farmer known as Unibos, or 'One-Ox', who stumbles across a buried treasure.[1]

The poem survives only in one eleventh-century manuscript, now held in the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, with the shelfmark MS 10078-95. This manuscript, which also contains astronomical and other educational texts, was written in the monastery of Gembloux.[2]

The Latin poem is generally thought to be the written version of an older oral story.[3] Later versions of the same story were collected by the Brothers Grimm, and folklorists have categorised it as an example of 'The Little Peasant' tale.[2]

The poem has been analysed in different ways: as a peasant folktale,[4] as an early example of a fabliau,[1] and as evidence for commercialisation.[5]

Editions

La beffa di Unibos, ed. Ferruccio Bertini and Francesco Mosetti Casaretto (2000)

English translations

Marc Wolterbeek, 'Unibos: the earliest full-length fabliau (text and translation)', Comitatus, 16, (1985), 46-76

Jan Ziolkowski, Fairy Tales From Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2012)

Further references

Archives de litterature du Moyen Age, https://www.arlima.net/uz/unibos.html

  1. ^ a b Wolterbeek, Marc (1985). "Unibos: The Earliest Full-Length Fabliau (Text and Translation)". Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 16 (1): 46–76.
  2. ^ a b Mosetti Casaretto, Francesco (January 2021). "The Theatricality of Versus de Unibove". European Medieval Drama. 25: 11–32. doi:10.1484/J.EMD.5.125676. ISSN 1378-2274.
  3. ^ Künzel, Rudi (2017). The Plow, the Pen and the Sword. pp. 101–124. ISBN 9781315600895.
  4. ^ West, Charles (2024), The village imagined: social complexity in the Versus de Unibove, Igor Santos Salazar, Universidad del Pais Vasco, doi:10.17613/frqw4-8r869, retrieved 2025-11-06
  5. ^ Ciocca, Roberta (2012). "Commercio e denaro nei Versus de Unibove". Studi medievali. 53: 667–698.
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