PIRAMUS. Pyramus was the most beautiful youth in the East and lived in Babylon. He fell in love with his neighbor Thisbe, but their parents refused consent to their marriage. They planned to escape together; first, they would meet at King Ninus's tomb, near which grew a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first but, frightened by a lioness, she fled into the tomb, leaving her cloak behind. The lioness tore the cloak with her bloody jaws, then went off. When Pyramus arrived and saw the bloody cloak, he presumed that Thisbe had been slain. He drew his sword and killed himself, and as his blood spurted upwards, it changed the white fruit of the mulberry tree to deep purple. Arriving soon afterwards, Thisbe found Pyramus dead and slew herself with his sword (Met IV.55-166; OM IV.229-1169). The story is also told in an Anglo-Norman poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Pyrame et Tisbé, in an Old French poem, Piramus et Tisbé (c. 1170), and in Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Navarre, 3171-3212.

The Merchant remarks that love will find a way as in the story of Piramus and Tesbee, MerchT 2125-2128. Piramus is among love's martyrs in Venus's temple, PF 289. Chaucer tells the story, omitting the mulberry tree, LGW 706-923. [Nynus: Semyrame: Tesbee]

Piramus, the ME and OF variant, occurs eight times medially, MerchT 2128; LGW 777, 794, 823, 868, 880, 907, 916; and five times in final rhyming position, PF 289; LGW 724, 855, 880, 918.