Chaucer and His England

by G. G. Coulton

When that our host had heard this sermoning,
He gan to speak as lordly as a King:
He saidë ‘What amounteth all this wit?
What shall we speak all day of holy writ?	[why
The devil made a Reevë for to preach,
And of a cobbler a shipman or a leech!
Say forth thy tale, and tarry not the time,
Lo, Depëford, and it is halfway prime.
Lo Greenëwich, there many a shrew is in;
It were all time thy talë to begin.’

The story records, by way of natural revenge, the domestic misfortunes of a Miller; and, for all the Reeve’s moral indignation, it is as essentially “churlish” as its predecessor, and as popular with at least one section of the party—

The Cook of London, while the Reeve spake,
For joy, him thought, he clawed him on the back,
‘Ha, ha!’ quoth he, ‘for Christës passioun,
This Miller had a sharp conclusion ...
But God forbiddë that we stinten here;
And therefore, if that ye vouchsafe to hear
A tale of me, that am a poorë man,
I will you tell as well as ever I can
A little jape that fell in our citie.’	[jest

The Host gives leave on the one condition that the tale shall be fresher and wholesomer than the Cook’s victuals sometimes are—

‘For many a pasty hast thou letten blood,
And many a Jack of Dover hast thou sold	[meat pie
That hath been twyës hot and twyës cold!
Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christës curse,
For of thy parsley yet they fare the worse
That they have eaten with thy stubble-goose;
For in thy shop is many a flyë loose!’

The Cook’s “little jape,” however, to judge by its commencement, was even more fly-blown than his stubble-goose. The Miller seemed to have let loose every riotous element, and to have started the company upon a downward slope of accelerating impropriety. But this to Chaucer would have been more than a sin, it would have been an obvious artistic blunder; and when the ribaldry begins in earnest, the best manuscripts break off with “of this Cook’s tale maked Chaucer no more.” In other MSS. the Cook himself breaks off in disgust at his own story, and tells the heroic tale of Gamelyn, which Chaucer may possibly have meant to rewrite for the series. Here end the tales of the first day; incomplete enough, as indeed the whole book is only a fragment of Chaucer’s mighty plan. The pilgrims probably slept at Dartford, fifteen miles from London.

Next morning the Host seems to have found it hard to keep his team together; it is ten o’clock when he begins to bewail the time already wasted, and prays the Man of Law to tell a tale. The lawyer assents in a speech interlarded with legal French and legal metaphors, and referring at some length to Chaucer’s other poems. He then launches into a formal prologue, and finally tells the pious Custance’s strange adventures by land and sea. This, if not so generally popular with the company as other less decorous tales before and after it, enjoyed at least a genuine succès d’estime. Thereupon followed one of the liveliest of all Chaucer’s dialogues. The Host called upon the Parish Priest for a tale, adjuring him “for Goddës bones” and “by Goddës dignitie.” “Benedicite!” replied the Parson; “what aileth the man, so sinfully to swear?” upon which the Host promptly scents “a Lollard in the wind,” and ironically bids his companions prepare for a sermon.[161] The Shipman, professionally indifferent to oaths of whatever description, and bold in conscious innocence of all puritanical taint, here interposes an emphatic veto—

‘Nay, by my father’s soul, that shall he not,’
Saidë the Shipman; ‘here he shall not preach.
He shall no gospel glosen here nor teach.	[expound
We believe all in the great God,’ quoth he,
‘He wouldë sowen some difficultee,
Or springen cockle in our cleanë corn;
And therefore, Host, I warnë thee beforn,
My jolly body shal a talë tell,
And I shall clinken you so merry a bell
That I shall waken all this companye;
But it shall not be of philosophye,
Nor physices, nor termës quaint of law,
There is but little Latin in my maw.’

The bluff skipper is as good as his word; his tale is frankly unprofessional, and its infectious jollity must almost have appealed to the Parson himself, even though it reeked with the most orthodox profanity, and showed no point of contact with puritanism except a low estimate of average monastic morals.