but Chaucer’s religion would appear to consist less in the denunciation of the Church’s enemies, than in affection for her saints. Dramatic justice is meted out to the murderers, but the poet takes no delight in dwelling on their dying agonies, or heaping abuse upon their memory. The point of the tale lies, not in the wickedness of the Jews, but in the simple, childish innocence and piety of Hugh, and the manner in which “Cristes moder” deigns to honour the service of this
... litel clergeon[172] of seven yeer of age.
The opening invocation is one of the most beautiful of all Chaucer’s addresses to the Virgin:—
Lady! thy bountee, thy magnificence,
Thy vertu, and thy grete humilitee
Ther may no tonge expresse in no science;
For som-tyme, lady, er men praye to thee,
Thou goost biforn, of thy benignitee,
And getest us the light, thurgh thy preyers,
To gyden us un-to thy sone so dere.
From beginning to end the limpid simplicity of the poem is marred by no unnecessary word. The picture of the little boy doing his diligence to learn the Alma redemptoris, although
Noght wiste he what this Latin was to seye
For he so yong and tendre was of age,
and going to his school-fellow to have it explained, is absolutely natural. So is the school-fellow’s hasty summary of the hymn, ending with
“I can no more expounde in this matere;
I lerne song, I can[173] but smal grammere.”
Chaucer does not, like so many hagiographers, forget the child in the saint. The prevailing note throughout is one of happy childhood. The tragedy is kept in the background. We catch a glimpse of the cruel steel as the Jews cut the boy’s throat: we see the white-faced mother hastening from place to place in search of him; but our thoughts are with St. Hugh and the gracious Queen of Heaven who comes to aid him:—
And in a tombe of marbul-stones clere
Enclosen they his litel body swete;
Ther he is now, god leve us for to mete.[174]