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 saidë Nay, it was on the blowing,
(Then was I feared, for that was mine office,)
‘Straw!’ quoth the third, ‘ye be lewëd and nice[ignorant and foolish
It was not tempered as it ought to be.’
‘Nay,’ quoth the fourthë, ‘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 sleepë 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 noddë 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 thorpë’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, “Cokkës 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 gestë “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 gracë, wit me send
To shewë you the way, in this voyage,
Of thilkë 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.