CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
When seeking for the bright, sweet English daylight, who better could be our guide than Geoffrey Chaucer?
We have outlined briefly the story of the shrine, and of the resort to it of pilgrims high and low; but in order to paint effectively and to call up a true picture of mediæval Canterbury, let us betake ourselves back through the centuries and set out from Southwark on an April morning, adding our humble selves to that immortal band of Canterbury Pilgrims, who whiled away the tedium of the journey with jest and story. Let Chaucer limn the day for us:—
“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye,—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages,—
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seeken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were to seeke.”
They formed a company of nine-and-twenty, and in fellowship we’ll go toward Canterbury, with a right merry cheer. This is our route—
“Lo, Depeford, and it is half wey pryme.
Lo, Grenewych, ther many a shrewe is inne”;
then—
“Lo, Rouchestre stant heer faste by!”
and so along our pilgrims’ way through the pleasant country of Kent until we reach
“A litel toun,
Which that y-cleped is Bobbe-up-and-doun,
Under the Blee in Caunterbury weye”;