A medieval
manciple was in effect the quartermaster of an Inn of Court, responsible for
buying and looking after the food supplies for the lawyers who lived and worked
there. Chaucer’s Manciple looks after the needs of more than thirty men “that
weren of lawe expert and curious”, but when it comes to doing deals over the
price of food, he “sette hir aller cappe”; in other words, he was the real
brains of the place.
The
Manciple’s Prologue and Tale form a manuscript fragment of their own, so there
is some doubt about where Chaucer intended the Tale to appear in his general
scheme of things. We know that the setting is quite close to Canterbury
The
conversation in the Prologue concerns the Cook, who has been lagging behind and
falling asleep on his horse. The Host calls on him to tell a tale, although he
has already told one (we only have a fragment of it, but within the context of
the Canterbury Tales we have to assume that the pilgrims would have heard a
full tale from him). The Manciple points out that the Cook is drunk, despite
this being early in the morning, and that his breath stinks. The Cook promptly
falls from his horse and has to be helped back on.
The host begs
the Manciple not to be so insulting to the Cook, pointing out that, when sober,
he might well repay the Manciple in like measure. The Manciple proposes to tell
a tale in the Cook’s place, and even offers him another drink!
The Tale
The
Manciple’s Tale is that of the Tell-tale Bird, a story that had appeared in
many forms, both eastern and western, although Chaucer’s version owes most to
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, considerably augmented with description, illustrative
exempla and other digressions, despite still being only about 250 lines long
and one of the shortest of the completed tales. The tone of the Tale is formal
and somewhat pedantic, which suggests that it is an early composition of
Chaucer’s, and not written originally with any of the pilgrims in mind.
Phoebus the
sun god, also the god of poetry and the arts, lives on Earth as a young man, an
expert bowman and a “lusty bachiler” given to singing and “mynstralcie”. He keeps
a crow with white plumage which he has taught to speak, and which can also sing.
Phoebus has a wife whom he guards out of jealousy, despite treating her well in
all other respects. The Manciple makes the connection between the wife and the
crow, pointing out that keeping a bird in a gilded cage is all very well, but
its chief desire will always be to escape. In case the point has not sunk in,
the Manciple also says that the same principle applies to cats and wolves in
equal measure.
The wife
therefore takes a lover, whom she invites to the house when Phoebus is away.
The adultery is, however, witnessed by the caged crow, who tells Phoebus all
about it. In his anger, Phoebus kills his wife with an arrow, after which he
breaks his bow and his musical instruments. In his despair he then turns on the
crow, whom he accuses of having told a falsehood against a guiltless woman, as
well as blaming himself for his jealousy.
The crow’s
punishment is to be turned black, by having his white feathers pulled out, to
lose the power of speech, and also his beautiful singing voice, being reduced
to an ugly “caw”. Hence, crows today are black and cannot sing sweetly like
other birds.
The Manciple
expounds the moral of the Tale, which is that it is good to be careful what you
say. In particular, one should not tell a husband that his wife has been untrue
to him, because “A wikked tonge is worse than a feend”. It is better to keep
quiet and keep your friends. Indeed, the Manciple goes on at some length in
advising his hearers not to say too much! He ends with the line, “Kepe wel thy
tonge, and thenk upon the crowe”.
Discussion
This is a
rather sad tale as the last-but-one of the collection; indeed, given that the
final tale is the Parson’s interminable sermon, this is the final contribution
that can really be called a tale. Perhaps there is a joke here in that the
Manciple urges everyone not to say too much and the Parson promptly gives them
a thousand lines of dense prose!
It is a tale
the message of which is, “don’t tell tales”, which sounds strange given the
whole “raison d’etre” of the Canterbury Tales. It is also an arguable moral, in
that the Manciple thinks it best to keep unwelcome news to oneself and let a
wronged person stay in ignorance of the truth and continue to live a lie. There
is more than one way of looking at this dilemma.
However, the
message is also confused by the second cause of Phoebus’s anger, which is his
jealousy. That is what is at the heart of his anger, and had he not been so
jealous it could be argued that what the crow said would not have had such
fatal consequences. Phoebus bitterly repents of his deed immediately after it
is committed, and refuses to believe the truth of what he has been told. Take
away the jealousy, and we can imagine that his disbelief would have expressed
itself before his angry violence and not the other way round.
As has been
remarked in connection with several other Canterbury Tales, there are problems
with “continuity” caused by the unfinished and unedited nature of the
collection. Another one occurs here. It seems clear enough that the
conversation between the Host and the Cook, that leads to the Manciple telling
his Tale, takes place in the morning. The Host asks the Cook what he has been
doing all night, for example. However, the Parson’s Prologue starts by
commenting that the Manciple has just finished his Tale, but that the sun is
descending and the time is around four o’clock. As mentioned above, the
Manciple’s Tale is very short, and certainly would not have taken all day to
tell! Something is awry here, surely!
© John
Welford
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