That he foond in a pryvë woon
The contree of Fairye,” etc.
It was scarcely possible for one who could write so irreverently as this of Elfland and its denizens to attune himself to the mood required for grave poetical treatment of Arthurian story. An Arthurian setting of a sort is indeed given to The Wife of Bath’s Tale; but the facetious tone of the opening lines only too plainly reveals Chaucer’s sense of the unreality of it all.
“In tholdë dayes of the Kyng Arthour,”
he writes,
“Al was this land fulfild of faërie.
The elf-queene with hir joly compaignye
Danced ful ofte in many a grenë mede.”
But, he adds, there are no fairies now; “lymytours and other holy freres” have effectually driven them away.
“For ther as wont to walken was an elf,