In the course of the knight’s romantic tale, Palamon, a gallant young knight, escapes from a prison in which he has been immured for seven years, by drugging the jailer:—
“Soon after the midnight, Palamon
By helping of a friend brake his prison
And fled the city, fast as he might go,
For he had given drink his gaoler so,
Of a clary made of a certain wine
With narcotise and opie of Thebes fine,
That all the night through that men would him shake,
The gaoler slept he mighte not wake”.
Clary was Hippocras wine made with spices, probably chosen in order to mask the taste of the opium and other narcotics, of which it was evident Palamon must have given the unfortunate jailer a large dose if he slept through the vigorous shaking which is said to have been administered. The opium of Thebes was much used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Prosper Alpinus, who visited Egypt in 1580-83, states that opium or meconium was in his time prepared in the Thebäid from the expressed juice of poppy-heads, and it was called Opium Thebaïcum. Later in the story a sharp encounter occurs between two bands of knights, in which:—
“All were they sorely hurt and namely one,
That with a spear was thirled his breast bone,
To other wounds and to broken arms,
Some hadden salves and some hadden charms,
And pharmacies of herbs eke sage,
They dranken, for they would their lives have.”
The carrying of salves by knights to battle probably originated with the Crusaders, who carried, prepared and blessed, unguents to dress their wounds. Other warriors scorned to encumber themselves with the healing medicines, and relied on the charm or talisman which almost every knight carried on going to war. Some would trust to the simple herb or decoction, and sage which is here mentioned was supposed to have special healing virtue.
In the Miller’s tale we are introduced to one Hendy Nicholas, a poor scholar or tutor who lived at Oxford, and
“Had learned art, but all his fantasy
Was turned for to learn astrology”.
Nicholas was a sly fellow to boot, and somewhat of a beau or a fop of his time and evidently having a turn for science, he practised it in his leisure, and was consulted by the farmers of the neighbourhood as to the state of the weather, or in prognosticating the future for their wives. He had a laboratory at his lodgings, which is described in the following words:—
“A chamber had he in that hostelry,
Alone withouten any company,
Full fetisly-y-dight with herbs swoot,
And he himself was sweet as is the root
Of liquorice or any setewale.
His almagest, and books great and small,
His astrolobe belonging to his art,
His augrim stones layed fair apart,
On shelves couched at his beddes head.
His press-y-covered with a falding red,
And above all them lay a gay psaltry,
On which he made at nightes melody
So sweetely that all the chamber rang,
And Angelus a virginem he sang;
And after that he sung the Knight’s note;
Full often blessed was his merry throat.
And thus this sweete clerk his time spent,
After his friendes finding, and his rent.”
One can easily imagine from this sketch the astrologer sitting arrayed in his laboratory, the room filled with the perfume of fragrant herbs, with a manner that vied with the sweetness of liquorice or valerian root. Prominent among the many books with which he is surrounded is the Almagest, the book of Ptolomy, which formed the canon of astrological science in the middle ages. In one corner his bed, and above on a shelf his astrolobe, with which he told the stars, and the augrim stones, probably pieces of slate marked with figures used by astrologers in their art. Then there was the press or chest covered with a red cloth, and hanging above it his psaltery gaily decked with ribbons, on which he accompanied himself when he sang, at which he was evidently an adept. Later in the story the astrologer and man of science becomes smitten by Cupid, and one fine morning goes forth at an early hour to serenade a comely maid (unfortunately for him, married) of whom he is enamoured, and we are told—