"CANTERBURY TALES"--THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS
"... quasi peregrin, che si ricrea
Nel tempio del suo voto riguardando,
E spera gia ridir com' ello stea."
"Paradiso," xxxi., 43
On the morning of the third day we find the Physician speaking; he tells
the tragedy of Virginia, not straight from Livy, whom Chaucer had probably
never had a chance of reading, but from its feebler echo in the "Roman de
la Rose." Even so, however, the pity of it comes home to his hearers.
Our Hoste gan to swear as he were wood; [mad
'Harrow!' quoth he, 'by nailes and by blood!
This was a false churl and a false justice! ...
By _Corpus_ bones! but I have triacle [medicinal syrup
Or else a draught of moist and corny ale,
Or but I hear anon a merry tale,
Mine heart is lost, for pity of this maid.
Thou _bel ami_, thou Pardoner,' he said
'Tell us some mirth, or japes, right anon!'
'It shall be done,' quoth he, 'by saint Ronyon!
But first' (quoth he) 'here at this ale stake
I will both drink and eaten of a cake.'
And right anon the gentles gan to cry
'Nay! let him tell us of no ribaldry....'
'I grant, ywis,' quoth he; 'but I must think
Upon some honest thing, the while I drink.'
The suspicion of the "gentles" might seem premature; but they evidently
suspected this pardon-monger of too copious morning-draughts already, and
the tenor of his whole prologue must have confirmed their fears. With the
cake in his mouth, and the froth of the pot on his lips, he takes as his
text, _Radix malorum est cupiditas_, "Covetousness is the root of all
evil," and exposes with cynical frankness the tricks of his trade. By a
judicious use of "my longe crystal stones, y-crammed full of cloutes and
of bones," I make (says he) my round 100 marks a year;[162] and, when the
people have offered, then I mount the pulpit, nod east and west upon the
congregation like a dove on a barn-gable, and preach such tales as
this.... Hereupon follows his tale of the three thieves who all murdered
each other for the same treasure. It is told with admirable spirit; and
now the Pardoner, carried away by sheer force of habit, calls upon the
company to kiss his relics, make their offerings, and earn his indulgences
piping-hot from Rome. Might not a horse stumble here, at this very moment,
and break the neck of some unlucky pilgrim, who would then bitterly regret
his lost opportunities in hell or purgatory? Strike, then, while the iron
is hot--
I counsel that our Host here shall begin,
For he is most enveloped in sin!
... Come forth, sir Host, and offer first anon,
And thou shalt kiss my relics every one ...
Yea, for a groat! unbuckle anon thy purse.
'Nay, nay,' quoth he, 'then have I Christe's curse ...
The Host, as his opening words may suggest, answers to the purpose, easy
words to understand, but not so easy to print here in the broad nakedness
of their scorn for the Pardoner and all his works--
This Pardoner answered not a word;
So wroth he was, no worde would he say.
'Now,' quoth our Host, 'I will no longer play
With thee, nor with none other angry man.'
But right anon the worthy Knight began
(When that he saw that all the people lough) [laughed
'No more of this, for it is right enough! [quite
Sir Pardoner, be glad and merry of cheer;
And ye, sir Host, that be to me so dear,
I pray now that ye kiss the Pardoner;
And, Pardoner, I pray thee draw thee near,
And, as we diden, let us laugh and play.'
Anon they kist, and riden forth their way.
[Illustration:
Upon an ambler easily she sat,
Y-wimpled well, and on her head an hat
As broad as is a buckler or a targe;
A foot-mantle about her hippes large,
And on her feet a pair of spurres sharp.
THE WIFE OF BATH
(From the Ellesmere MS.)]
The thread of the tales here breaks off; and then suddenly we find the
Wife of Bath talking, talking, talking, almost without end as she was
without beginning. Her prologue is half a dozen tales in itself, longer
almost, and certainly wittier, than all the other prologues put together.
The theme is marriage, and her mouth speaks from the abundance of her
heart. Here, indeed, we have God's plenty: fish, flesh, and fowl are set
before us in one dish, not to speak of creeping things: it is in truth a
strong mess, savoury to those that have the stomach for it, but reeking of
garlic, crammed with oaths like the Shipman's talk; a sample of the
Eternal Feminine undisguised and unrefined, in its most glaring contrast
with the only other two women of the party, the Prioress and her
fellow-nun--
Men may divine, and glosen up and down,
But well I wot, express, withouten lie,
God bade us for to wax and multiply;
That gentle text can I well understand.
Eke, well I wot, he said that mine husband
Should leave father and mother, and take me;
But of no number mention made he
Of bigamy or of octogamy,
Why shoulde men speak of it villainy?
The good wife tells how she has outlived five husbands, and proclaims her
readiness for a sixth. The five martyrs are sketched with a master-touch,
and are divided into categories according to their obedience or
disobedience. But, with all their variety of disposition, time and
matrimony had tamed even the most stubborn of them; even that clerk of
Oxford whose earlier wont had been to read aloud nightly by the fire from
a Book of Bad Women--
... And when I saw he woulde never fine [finish
To readen on this cursed book all night,
All suddenly three leaves have I plight [plucked
Out of his book, right as he read; and eke
I with my fist so took him on the cheek
That in our fire he fell backward adown;
And up he start as doth a wood lioun [mad
And with his fist he smote me on the head,
That in the floor I lay as I were dead ...
But the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love; and when the husband
had been brought, half by violence and half by cajolery, to give his wife
her own way in everything, then--
After that day we never had debate.
God help me so, I was to him as kind
As any wife from Denmark unto Ind.
For all social purposes, as we have said, this was the only woman of the
company; and where there is one woman there are always two men as ready to
quarrel over her as if she were Helen of Troy. Moreover, in this case,
professional jealousies were also at work. Already in the middle of her
prologue the Summoner had fallen into familiar dialogue with this merry
wife; and now, at the end--
The Friar laughed when he had heard all this;
'Now, dame,' quoth he, 'so have I joy or bliss,
This is a long preamble of a tale!'
And when the Summoner heard the Friar gale [cry out
'Lo,' quoth the Summoner, 'Goddes armes two!
A friar will intermit him ever-mo. [interfere
Lo, goode men, a fly, and eke a frere
Will fall in every dishe and matere.
What speak'st thou of a "preambulation"?
What? amble, or trot, or peace, or go sit down!
Thou lettest our disport in this manere.'
'Yea, wilt thou so, sir Summoner?' quoth the Frere;
'Now, by my faith, I shall, ere that I go,
Tell of a Summoner such a tale or two
That all the folk shall laughen in this place.'
'Now elles, Friar, I beshrew thy face,' [curse
Quoth this Summoner, 'and I beshrewe me,
But if I telle tales, two or three,
Of friars, ere I come to Sittingbourne,
That I shall make thine hearte for to mourn,
For well I wot thy patience is gone.'
Our Hoste cried 'Peace! and that anon;'
And saide: 'Let the woman tell her tale;
Ye fare as folk that drunken be of ale.
Do, dame, tell forth your tale, and that is best.'
'All ready, sir,' quoth she, 'right as you list,
If I have licence of this worthy Frere.'
'Yes, dame,' quoth he, 'tell forth, and I will hear.'
The lady, having thus definitely notified her choice between the rivals
(on quite other grounds, as the next few lines show, than those of
religion or morality), proceeds to tell her tale on the theme that nothing
is so dear to the female heart as "sovereignty" or "mastery." Then the
quarrel blazes up afresh, and the Friar (after an insulting prologue for
which the Host calls him to order) tells a story which is, from first to
last, a bitter satire on the whole tribe of Summoners. Then the Summoner,
"quaking like an aspen leaf for ire," stands up in his stirrups and claims
to be heard in turn. His prologue, which by itself might suffice to turn
the tables on his enemy, is a broad parody of those revelations to devout
Religious which announced how the blessed souls of their particular Order
(for the Friars were not alone in this egotism) enjoyed for their
exclusive use some choice and peculiar mansion in heaven--under the skirts
of the Virgin's mantle, for instance, or even within the wound of their
Saviour's side. Then begins the tale itself of a Franciscan Stiggins on
his daily rounds, and of the "olde churl, with lockes hoar," who at one
stroke blasphemed the whole convent, and took ample change out of Friar
John for many a good penny or fat meal given in the past, and for much
friction in his conjugal relations. The whole is told with inimitable
humour, and it is to be regretted that we hear nothing of the comments
with which it was received. At this point comes another gap in Chaucer's
plan.
[Illustration:
His eyen twinkled in his head aright
As do the starres in a frosty night.
THE FRIAR
(From the Ellesmere MS.)]
Then suddenly our Host calls upon the Clerk of Oxford--
Ye ride as still and coy as doth a maid,
Were newly spoused, sitting at the board;
This day ne heard I of your tongue a word ...
For Goddes sake, as be of better cheer!
It is no time for to study here.
The Clerk, thus rudely shaken from his meditations, tells the story of
Patient Griselda, which he had "learned at Padua, of a worthy clerk ...
Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet." The good Clerk softens down much of
that which most shocks the modern mind in this truly medieval conception
of wifely obedience; and, as a confirmed bachelor, he adds an ironical
postscript which is as clever as anything Chaucer ever wrote.[163] We must
revere the heroine, but despair of finding her peer--
Griseld' is dead, and eke her patience,
And both at once buried in Itayle.
So begins this satirical ballad, and goes on to bid the wife of the
present day to enjoy herself at her husband's expense--
Be aye of cheer as light as leaf on lind, [lime-tree
And let him care and weep, and wring and wail!
The last line rouses a sad echo in one heart at least, for the Merchant
had been wedded but two months--
'Weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow,
I know enough, on even and a-morrow'
Quoth the Merchant, 'and so do other more
That wedded be ...'
His tale turns accordingly on the misadventures of an old knight who had
been foolish enough to marry a girl in her teens. Upon this the Host
congratulates himself that _his_ wife, with all her shrewishness and
other vices more, is "as true as any steel." Here ends the third day; the
travellers probably slept at the Pilgrim's House at Ospringe, parts of
which stand still as Chaucer saw it.
Next morning the Squire is first called upon to
... say somewhat of love; for certes ye
Do ken thereon as much as any man.
He modestly disclaims the compliment, and tells (or rather leaves half
told) the story of Cambuscan, with the magic ring and mirror and horse of
brass. Chaucer had evidently intended to finish the story; for the
Franklin is loud in praise of the young man's eloquence, and sighs to mark
the contrast with his own son, who, in spite of constant paternal
"snybbings," haunts dice and low company, and shows no ambition to learn
of "gentillesse." "Straw for your 'gentillesse,' quoth our Host," and
forthwith demands a tale from the Franklin, who, with many apologies for
his want of rhetoric, tells admirably a Breton legend of chivalry and
magic.
Another gap brings us to the Second Nun, who tells the tale of St. Cecilia
from the Golden Legend, with a prefatory invocation to the Virgin
translated from Dante. By the time this is ended the pilgrims are five
miles further on, at Boughton-under-Blee. Here, at the foot of the hilly
forest of Blean, with only eight more miles before them to Canterbury,
they are startled by the clattering of horse-hoofs behind them. It was a
Canon Regular with a Yeoman at his heels.[164] The man had seen the
pilgrims at daybreak, and warned his master; and the two had ridden hard
to overtake so merry a company. While the Canon greeted the pilgrims, our
Host questioned his Yeoman, who first obscurely hinted, and then began
openly to relate, such things as made the Canon set spurs to his horse
and "flee away for very sorrow and shame." The Yeoman is now only too glad
to make a clean breast of it. He has been seven years with this monastic
alchemist, who has fallen meanwhile from one degree of poverty to another;
half-cheat, half-dupe, with a thousand tricks for cozening folk of their
money, but always wasting his own on the search for the philosopher's
stone. Meanwhile, after ruinous expenses and painful care, every
experiment ends in the same way: "the pot to-breaketh, and farewell, all
is go!" The experimenters pick themselves up, look round on the mass of
splinters and the dinted walls, and begin to quarrel over the cause--
Some said it was along on the fire making,
Some saide Nay, it was on the blowing,
(Then was I feared, for that was mine office,)
'Straw!' quoth the third, 'ye be lewed and nice [ignorant and foolish
It was not tempered as it ought to be.'
'Nay,' quoth the fourthe, 'stint and hearken me;
Because our fire ne was not made of beech,
That is the cause, and other none, so I theech!' [so may I thrive!
At last the mess is swept up, the few recognizable fragments of metal are
put aside for further use, another furnace is built, and the indefatigable
Canon concocts a fresh hell-broth, sweeping away all past failures with
the incurable optimism of a monomaniac, "There was defect in somewhat,
well I wot." Many of the fraternity, however, are arrant knaves, without
the least redeeming leaven of folly; and the Yeoman goes on to tell the
tricks by which such an one beguiled a "sotted priest" who had set his
heart on this unlawful gain.
By this time the company was come to "Bob Up and Down," which was probably
the pilgrims' nickname for Upper Harbledown. Here our Host found the Cook
straggling behind, asleep on his nag in broad daylight--
'Awake, thou Cook,' quoth he, 'God give thee sorrow!
What aileth thee to sleepe by the morrow?
Hast thou had fleas all night, or art thou drunk?'
The Cook opens his mouth, and at once compels his neighbours to adopt the
latter and less charitable theory. He is evidently in no state for
story-telling; so the Manciple offers himself instead, not without a few
broad jests at his fellow's infirmity--
And with this speech the Cook was wroth and wraw, [indignant
And on the manciple he 'gan nodde fast
For lack of speech; and down the horse him cast,
Where as he lay till that men up him took!
The Manciple, fearing lest the Cook's resentment should prompt some future
revenge in the way of business, pulled out a gourd of wine, coaxed another
draught into the drunken man, and earned his half-articulate gratitude.
Then he told the fable of the crow from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The tale was ended, and the sun began to sink, for it was four
o'clock.[165] The cavalcade began to "enter at a thorpe's end"--no doubt
the village of Harbledown, the last before Canterbury, famous for the
Black Prince's Well and for the relics of St. Thomas at its leper
hospital. Here at last the pilgrims remember the real object of their
journey. The Host lays aside his oaths (all but one, "Cokkes bones!" which
slips out unawares) and looks round now for the hitherto neglected Parson,
upon whom he calls for a "fable."
This Parson answered all at once
'Thou gettest fable none y-told for me,
For Paul, that writeth unto Timothee,
Reproveth them that weyven soothfastness [depart from
And tellen fables and such wretchedness ...
I cannot geste "_rum, ram, ruf_" by letter,[166]
Nor, God wot, rhyme hold I but little better;
And therefore if you list--I will not glose--
I will you tell a merry tale in prose
To knit up all this feast, and make an end;
And Jesu, for His grace, wit me send
To shewe you the way, in this voyage,
Of thilke perfect, glorious pilgrimage
That hight Jerusalem celestial ...'
Upon this word we have assented soon,
For as us seemed, it was for to doon [right to do
To enden in some virtuous sentence,
And for to give him space and audience.
The Host voices the common consent, reinforcing his speech for once with a
prayer instead of an oath. The Parson then launches out into a treatise on
the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies, translated from the French of a
13th-century friar. The treatise (like Chaucer's other prose writings)
lacks the style of his verse; but it contains one lively and amusing
chapter of his own insertion, satirizing the extravagance of costume in
his day (lines 407 ff.).
[Illustration:CANTERBVRY FROM W. SMITH'S DRAWING OF 1588. (SLOANE MS.
2596). THE PILGRIMS ENTERED BY THE WEST GATE (NO. 6)]
Long before the Parson had ended, the city must have been in full view
below--white-walled, red-roofed amid its orchards and green meadows, but
lacking that perfect bell-tower which, from far and near, is now the
fairest sight of all. At this point an anonymous and far inferior poet has
continued Chaucer's narrative in the "Tale of Beryn." The prologue to that
tale shows us the pilgrims putting up at the Chequers Inn, "that many a
man doth know," fragments of which may still be seen close to the
Cathedral at the corner of Mercery Lane.[167] Travelling as they did in
force--and especially with such redoubtable champions among their
party--they would no doubt have been able to choose this desirable hostel
without too great molestation; but in favour of less able-bodied pilgrims
the city authorities were obliged to pass a law that no hosteler should
"disturb no manner of strange man coming to the city for to take his inn;
but it shall be lawful to take his inn at his own lust without disturbance
of any hosteler."[168] In the Cathedral itself--
The Pardoner and the Miller, and other lewd sots,
Sought themselves in the church right as lewd goats,
Peered fast and pored high upon the glass,
Counterfeiting gentlemen, the armes for to blase, [blazon
till the Host bade them show better manners, and go offer at the shrine.
"Then passed they forth boisterously, goggling with their heads," kissed
the relics dutifully, saw the different holy places, and presently sat
down to dinner. How the Miller (being accustomed to such sleight of hand)
stole afterwards a bosom-full of "Canterbury brooches"; how uproarious was
the merriment after supper, and how the Pardoner became the hero of a
scandalous adventure--this and much more may be read at length in the
prologue to the "Tale of Beryn." It will already have been noted, however,
that the anonymous poet entirely agrees with Chaucer in laying stress on
what may be called the bank-holiday side of the pilgrimage. That side does
indeed come out with rather more than its due prominence when we thus skip
the separate tales and run straight through the plot of the pilgrims'
journey; but, when all allowances have been made, Chaucer enables us to
understand why orthodox preachers spoke on this subject almost as strongly
as the heresiarch Wycliffe; and, on the other hand, how great a gap was
made in the life of the common folk by the abolition of pilgrimages.
The very fidelity with which the poet paints his own time shows us the
Reformation in embryo. We have in fact here, within the six hundred pages
of the "Canterbury Tales," one of the most vivid and significant of all
scenes in the great Legend of the Ages; and his pilgrims, so intent upon
the present, so exactly mirrored by Chaucer as they moved and spoke in
their own time, tell us nevertheless both of another age that was almost
past and of a future time which was not yet ripe for reality. The Knight
is still of course the most respected figure in such a company; and he
brings into the book a pale afterglow of the real crusades; but the Host
now treads close upon his heels, big with the importance of a prosperous
citizen who has twice sat in Parliament side by side with knights of the
shire. The good Prioress recalls faintly the heroic age of monasticism;
yet St. Benedict and St. Francis would have recognized their truest son in
the poor Parson, upon whom the pilgrims called only in the last resort.
The Monk and the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner, do indeed remind us
how large a share the Church claimed in every department of daily life;
but they make us ask at the same time "how long can it last?" Extremes
meet; and the "lewd sots" who went "goggling with their heads," gaping and
disputing at the painted windows on their way to the shrine, were lineal
ancestors to the notorious "Blue Dick" of 250 years later, who made a
merit of having mounted on a lofty ladder, pike in hand, to "rattle down
proud Becket's glassie bones."
[Illustration: EDWARD III. FROM HIS TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY]