Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

Pilgrim in Hair Shirt and Cloak.

In many instances when the time of pilgrimage is mentioned, we find that it was the spring; Chaucer’s pilgrims started—

“When that April with his showerés sote
The drouth of March had perced to the root;”

and Fosbroke “apprehends that Lent was the usual time for these pilgrimages.”

It was the custom for the pilgrims to associate in companies; indeed, since they travelled the same roads, about the same time of year, and stopped at the same inns and hospitals, it was inevitable; and they seem to have taken pains to make the journey agreeable to one another. Chaucer’s “hoste of the Tabard” says to his guests:—

“Ye go to Canterbury: God you speed,
The blisful martyr quité you your mede;
And well I wot, as ye go by the way,
Ye shapen you to talken and to play;
For trewely comfort and worthe is none,
To riden by the way dumb as a stone.”

Even the poor penitential pilgrim who travelled barefoot did not travel, all the way at least, on the hard and rough highway. Special roads seem to have been made to the great shrines. Thus the “Pilgrim’s Road” may still be traced across Kent, almost from London to Canterbury; and if the Londoner wishes for a pleasant and interesting home excursion, he may put a scrip on his back, and take a bourdon in his hand, and make a summer’s pilgrimage on the track of Chaucer’s pilgrims. The pilgrim’s road to Walsingham is still known as the “Palmer’s Way” and the “Walsingham Green Way.” It may be traced along the principal part of its course for sixty miles in the diocese of Norwich. The common people used to call the Milky Way the Walsingham Way.

Dr. Rock tells us[213] that “besides its badge, each pilgrimage had also its gathering cry, which the pilgrims shouted out as, at the grey of morn, they slowly crept through the town or hamlet where they had slept that night.” By calling aloud upon God for help, and begging the intercession of that saint to whose shrine they were wending, they bade all their fellow pilgrims to come forth upon their road and begin another day’s march.[214]

After having said their prayers and told their beads, occasionally did they strive to shorten the weary length of the way by song and music. As often as a crowd of pilgrims started together from one place, they seem always to have hired a few singers and one or two musicians to go with them. Just before reaching any town, they drew themselves up into a line, and thus walked through its streets in procession, singing and ringing their little hand-bells, with a player on the bagpipes at their head. They ought in strictness, perhaps, to have been psalms which they sung, and the tales with which they were accustomed to lighten the way ought to have been saintly legends and godly discourses; but in truth they were of very varied character, according to the character of the individual pilgrims. The songs were often love-songs; and though Chaucer’s poor parson of a town preached a sermon and was listened to, yet the romances of chivalry or the loose faiblieux which were current probably formed the majority of the real “Canterbury tales.” In Foxe’s “Acts and Monuments,” we have a very graphic and amusing little sketch of a company of pilgrims passing through a town:—

W. Thorpe tells Archbishop Arundel, “When diverse men and women will go thus after their own willes, and finding out one pilgrimage, they will order with them before to have with them both men and women that can well synge wanton songs; and some other pilgrims will have with them bagge-pipes, so that every towne they come throwe, what with the noyse of their singing and with the sound of their pipyng, and with the jingling of their Canterbury belles, and with barking out of dogges after them, that they make more noise than if the kinge came there awaye with all his clarions, and many other minstrelles. And if these men and women be a moneth on their pilgrimage, many of them shall be an half year after great janglers, tale-tellers, and liars.” The archbishop defends the fashion, and gives us further information on the subject, saying “that pilgremys have with them both syngers and also pipers, that when one of them that goeth barefoote striketh his toe upon a stone, and hurteth him sore, and maketh him to blede, it is well done that he or his fellow begyn than a songe, or else take out of his bosom a bagge-pipe, for to drive away with such myrthe the hurte of his fellow; for with soche solace the travell and weriness of pylgremes is lightly and merily broughte forth.”