Marriages seem to have taken place in those days at a very early age. The wife of Bath married at twelve, and the knight's notion of an "old wife" it appears, five lines further on, was a woman of twenty. He insists that he will marry nobody that is above sixteen:
She shall not passe sixteene year certain.
Old fish, and young flesh, that would I have full fain.
Bet is, quoth he, a pike than a pikerel,
And bet than old beef is the tender veal.
"Bet" is for "better."
[12] Chaucer's knight assigns it as a motive to wedlock that he may have
Children to thonour of God above,
And not only for paramour, and for love.
But a little before he had given a more worldly reason for his desire to have a son and heir, and said that he would rather be eaten by dogs than that his inheritance should go to a stranger.
[13] The flippancy of this couplet, which departs from the original, is at variance with the tone of the knight, whose speech commenced with the words,
Friendes I am hoar and old,
And almost, God wot, at my pittes brink
Upon my soule somewhat must I think.
I have my body folily dispended
Blessed be God that it shall be amended.
In the passage, for which Pope's lines are the substitute, the knight is enumerating the causes why men should marry, and one reason, he says, is that each person ought to
Helpen other
In meschief, as a sister shall the brother,
And live in chastity full holily.
But, sires, by your leave that am not I,
For, God be thankèd, I dare make avaunt,
I feel my limbes stark and suffisaunt.