This may be true of some of the traditions embodied in the story; but as we have it, the date is much later.
Or of the fourteenth century; they did not much vary.
Reprinted in Chalmers' English Poets, i. 607 (1810).
The objection is made that all people 'speak in prose'; but I think Chaucer refers to something more rhetorical than ordinary conversation.
All adapted from his early work, Of the Wretched Engendering of Mankinde; see p. 407. The four stanzas are: B 421-7, 771-7, 925-31, and 1135-41.