Geoffrey Chaucer's Retraction of his Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer end on a rather strange note, namely 350 words (or thereabouts) under the heading “Heere taketh the makere of this book his leve”, which is usually referred to as “Chaucer’s Retraction”. This is both a revocation of all Chaucer’s works that might have caused offence and a dedication to God of those that have not. Chaucer thus appears to divide his works into two groups, those towards which he feels a degree of shame and those that he thinks are worthy of being dedicated to the praise of God.

The list for which an apology seems to be in order is particularly interesting. He groups them as “translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees,” mentioning not only those Canterbury tales “that sownen into synne” but also some works that seem quite inoffensive. These include “The Book of the Duchess”, “The House of Fame”, “The Parliament of Fowls”, “The Legend of Good Women”, and “Troilus and Criseyde”, plus the unknown “Book of the Lion” which presumably was a work of which no manuscript has survived.

On the “good” side of the ledger are his translation of the “Consolations of Philosophy” by Boethius, “and othere bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies and moralitee, and devocioun.” Chaucer seems to want to do a deal with Jesus, Mary and the saints of Heaven, to the effect that these works earn him sufficient grace to “biwayle my giltes” and undo the harm of those on the other side of the balance.

To our modern way of thinking, Chaucer seems to have got this all wrong. If the world had only been left with the “good” books, then it is highly unlikely that we would have heard of Geoffrey Chaucer at all. We can assume that the “sinful” Canterbury Tales would include those of the Miller and the Reeve, for starters, with their stories of bed-hopping, and of the Friar and the Summoner, with their coarse jibing at each other. However, the retraction is not just of downright sin but of all worldly vanities, and the common theme of the named “non-Canterbury” books is romantic love, in one guise or another. Take all these away from the Canterbury Tales, and nothing much is left apart from those of the Parson and Chaucer’s own “Tale of Melibee”, which are generally regarded as the two least readable of the Tales. We do not need such an apology.

However, this is to misread Chaucer’s intention. He was a highly moral person, indeed moralistic at times, but was also a great humourist and very human. He had a well developed sense of fun and mischief as well as a deep sense of respect for the foibles of his fellow travellers, not only on the Canterbury pilgrimage but on the journey of life. Many writers throughout history have combined these two aspects of personality, and some have been able to reconcile them better than others. I believe that this Retraction is Chaucer’s attempt to make this reconciliation.

Another possibility is that Chaucer underwent some sort of religious conversion towards the end of his life, possibly during the period of writing the Canterbury Tales, and that his growing sense of mortality (he died in 1400 at the age of about 60) had focused his mind on the fate of his immortal soul. This would not have been unusual for his age. Chaucer’s Italian near-contemporary Boccaccio, whose “Decameron” has much in common with the Canterbury Tales, renounced his frivolous and licentious works in middle life and wrote nothing but learned treatises in Latin in his later years. Can we put Chaucer in the same bracket?

If this is the case, and I am not convinced that it is, then surely Chaucer is being unduly hard on himself, certainly on the evidence of the Canterbury Tales. Agreed, there is vulgarity and indecency in places, but Chaucer is a realist, painting 14^th century life as he sees it, with all its earthiness, dirt and crudity. He is never morbid or unhealthy, and he sees life in a true perspective. He is always quick to point to the moral of a story, and those who do wrong usually get their comeuppance one way or another. There may be a few cases in which people who play cruel tricks get away with it, such as Alison in the Miller’s Tale, but Chaucer is happy to forgive the high-spirited deeds of a young woman who will doubtless settle down in later life. He is less sympathetic towards the Wife of Bath, for example, whose middle-aged feminist posturing stretches his liberalism just a little bit too far. As mentioned above, he is always a moralist as well as a humanist.

So was Chaucer right to “retract” or not? Did he really mean it? Or is this just a form of words designed to put him on the side of the sheep rather than the goats at the Day of Judgment? At a distance of 700 years, it is not easy to say. However, we can at least be grateful that Chaucer left us a body of work that we can still enjoy today, both “sinful” and otherwise.

© John Welford

The Parson's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Parson’s Tale has to be the least approachable of all the Canterbury Tales, with the possible exception of Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee. For one thing, it is not a tale but a long digression on penitence and confession. It has been described as a sermon, but that is not an accurate description because, although it starts with a text from Jeremiah, it uses the text more as a general theme for a wide-ranging treatise. At some 1,000 lines of prose text, a sermon this long would send even the most dedicated congregation to sleep! According to the Tale’s prologue, the Parson starts speaking as evening is fast approaching. It must have been long after dark before he finished.

We have met the Parson before, in the passage that is generally headed “The Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale”. The Host invites the Parson to tell the next tale, and describes him as a Lollard, which, to the Host, is not a problem. However, the Shipman objects strongly to such a man being allowed to preach to them: “He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. … He wolde sowen som difficulte, or springen cokkel in our clene corn.” There are a number of problems with this passage, but the point here is that the label of Lollard is not apparently objected to by the Parson, although there is clearly considerable antipathy on the part of at least one of the other pilgrims.

Lollards were followers of John Wycliffe, who was a near contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. He had produced the first English translation of the Bible, to which he ascribed greater authority than to the Pope and the Church hierarchy; he believed in a greater role for lay people in the Church, and he questioned some basic Church teachings such as transubstantiation (i.e. that the communion bread and wine change to being the actual flesh and blood of Christ). The Lollards were therefore early back-to-basics reformers who excited strong feelings both for and against them.

It is not surprising that Chaucer treats his Lollard priest sympathetically. We know from his treatment of other members of the clergy (and religious hangers-on) on the pilgrimage that he is well aware of the corruption that played such a huge part in 14^th century religious life. He is perfectly happy to let the Monk, Friar, Summoner and Pardoner condemn themselves by their words and actions, and the Parson is the only religious pilgrim who is treated without a hint of irony in his General Prologue pen-portrait.

We also know that Chaucer was closely associated with John of Gaunt, who was at one time the most powerful man in England and also, towards the end of Chaucer’s life, related to him by marriage (the two men’s wives were sisters). John of Gaunt was known to have been John Wycliffe’s friend and protector.

The Prologue to the Tale, which unlike the Tale itself is in rhyming couplets, makes it clear that this is to be the final tale, because only the Parson has not yet obeyed the Host’s requirement. It may be that Chaucer intended this to be the very last tale on the return journey (although the internal evidence suggests otherwise), and that the original plan for each pilgrim to tell four tales, which may well have been reduced to two at one stage, has now come down to one apiece. As it is, we have to assume that some of the Tales have been lost to posterity, because several pilgrims, such as the Parson’s brother, the Ploughman, have not told tales that have come down to us.

The Parson complains that, being a Southerner, he is not adept at rhyming, as other pilgrims presumably would have been. This is an interesting footnote on the state of English at the time, in that the dialects spoken in different parts of the country were very different. This may be another piece of self-mockery by Chaucer, who was himself a Southerner! As it is, the Parson agrees to tell “a myrie tale in prose, to knytte up al this feeste, and make an ende”. “Merry” is not the word that most readers would assign to what follows.

The Tale

The text from Jeremiah is from chapter 6, verse 16. The Parson gives the text in Latin, which may sound strange for a Lollard, but a rough translation is “stand and see, ask for the old ways, the good paths, and walk therein; and you shall find rest for your souls”. This does sound appropriate for a Lollard, as it would for any reformist in the history of the Church who has claimed to be sweeping away the overburden of man-made distractions from the truth and getting back to basics.

It soon becomes clear that this treatise is going to be a very long-winded affair, because virtually every concept mentioned can be sub-divided into three or more categories, and most of those have two or more aspects that need to be considered. We therefore get a thorough analysis of penitence and its three “parts”, namely contrition, confession and restitution.

Under the heading of confession comes a very full discussion of sin, and in particular the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lechery) and their remedies. For each sin there is a long list of specific actions that constitute that sin, such that it seems impossible not to be committing deadly sins every hour of the day.

There are some surprising sins to watch out for. Being too healthy is not recommended, because the flesh is the enemy of the soul and the healthier the body, the more likely it is to commit sins. That sounds like a good excuse for not indulging in regular exercise, but taking that line too far will of course lead one to Sloth. You can’t win with sin.

As for the 21^st century’s favourite sin, lechery is given the full works. Even within marriage, having sex for the mere fun of it is a deadly sin. The Devil grabs men into his embrace with the five fingers of each hand, one hand being gluttony, the other lechery. Included among the lecherous fingers are “touchynge in wikede manere” and “kissynge”. Widows are urged to be “clene” and “eschue the embracynges of man”. The Parson and the Wife of Bath would clearly have been at odds on this one.

However, the Parson is careful to list the remedies as well as the sins. For example, the remedy for anger is gentleness or patience, and for lechery he recommends, not surprisingly, chastity and continence.

Having dealt with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Parson apologises that he is not qualified to discourse on the Ten Commandments. What a shame!

The terms of confession are then laid out, and how to ascertain the severity of the sin. It would appear that the Parson is thinking exclusively about sexual peccadilloes at this stage. There are apparently some sins of this kind for which confession will not easily absolve the sin. One of the oddest must be the priest who masturbates in church and must never sing Mass there again. This Parson thinks of everything.

Naturally enough, there is a list of conditions that mark a false confession, one of which is admitting to sins of which one is not guilty. Given the vast list of sins that the pilgrims have just been treated to, it would seem unlikely that any of them would feel the need to commit this particular offence.

The third element of penitence is restitution. This is possible through alms giving, or bodily pain, both of which have various manifestations.  It is slightly worrying that one way of absolving your sins is to suffer the loss by death of your wife or child, which is presumably meant thereby to be a cause of rejoicing.

After all is done, and true confession and expiation made, the fruits of penance can be enjoyed, namely the “endeless blisse of hevene”. Strange to tell, this final part of the “Tale” is the shortest section of all.

This account of how to live the good life and prepare oneself for Heaven is not an enjoyable read, and it is not the reason why posterity holds the Canterbury Tales in such high regard. It has interest insofar as it gives an insight to the religious sensibilities of the late Middle Ages, but not otherwise. It is doubtless a matter of regret to the modern reader that this tale survived whereas that of the Parson’s brother, the Ploughman, presumably did not. We feel that it must have been “merrier” than what we have, as it could hardly have been less so.

© John Welford

The Manciple's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

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 (near the delightfully named village of “Bobbe-up-and-doun”) so it may have been destined to be told either near the end of the outward journey or the start of the return.

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

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens: a summary of the plot

David Copperfield was the novel of which Charles Dickens was most fond among his works, and it is not difficult to see why. It was the first of his novels to be told in the first person, and there are many elements of it that have parallels with his own life. However, it would be a mistake to regard this novel as a hidden autobiography, because there is much in the book that is pure fiction, and it is as such that it should be judged.

The first chapter, dealing with David Copperfield’s own birth, is clearly told from hearsay, but in it we meet one of Dickens’s best female characters, the redoubtable but eccentric Aunt Betsey Trotwood, who comes to help David’s widowed mother at the time of his birth, but who leaves without a word when told that he is a boy and not the girl that she had always assumed he would be.

During his first few years David is blissfully happy with his mother, her maidservant Peggotty, and later with Peggotty’s family who are fishermen who live in a converted upturned boat on the beach at Great Yarmouth. Peggoty’s brother, Daniel Peggotty, looks after the children of his brothers, both lost at sea, and “Young Em’ly” becomes David’s childhood sweetheart.

However, things take a darker turn when David’s mother, who is easily manipulated, is persuaded to marry Mr Murdstone, who moves in together with his sister. The Murdstones are convinced that David has not been properly brought up by his free-spirited and kindly mother and do everything they can to reform his character. He is sent away to school, where his fellow pupils include Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth, for whom David acquires a devoted attachment.

When David’s mother dies in childbirth, he is taken from school and sent to work in the wine warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby. This is a remarkable episode in that the description of the location (by the River Thames) and work involved (pasting labels on bottles) directly parallels the work that the young Charles Dickens was forced to do at a similar age, an experience that scarred him mentally for life and which he told no-one about, not even his wife, except for the strong hints dropped here in “David Copperfield”. These hints were missed entirely by his contemporary readers.

At this juncture we meet another of Dickens’s best-drawn characters, the kind-hearted but always impecunious Mr Micawber, who provides lodgings for David during his time at Murdstone and Grinby. The portrait of Mr Micawber, who tries to support a growing family by borrowing money that he can never pay back, and is eternally optimistic that “something will turn up”, owes a huge amount to Dickens’s recollections of his own father, John Dickens. The two men, one real and the other fictional, both spent a period in a debtors’ prison through their inability to live within their means.

David runs away to Dover, where Betsey Trotwood, David’s only living relative, lives in a cliff-top cottage with Mr Dick, a slow-witted gentleman whom Betsey had rescued from mistreatment by his own family. Betsey reveals the softer side to her character as she takes David under her wing, making sure that he lacks for nothing, despite being a boy. However, she insists on calling him “Trotwood” rather than David.

When the Murdstones come looking for David, they are sent packing by Betsey, being given no more respect than the donkeys that trespass on her lawn.

David is sent to school in Canterbury, where he lodges with Mr Wickfield, who is Betsey’s legal and financial adviser. Mr Wickfield has a level-headed daughter, Agnes, and a clerk, Uriah Heep, who soon develops an abiding mistrust of David, partly because he regards David as his rival in love for Agnes, although Agnes never gives Uriah any encouragement, and David comes to regard her as a sister rather than a potential lover.

Uriah Heep is one of Dickens’s greatest villainous creations. He is secretive and scheming, hiding his true purposes under a cover of obsessive humility. As the story progresses it becomes clear that Uriah has a hold on Mr Wickfield, who turns to drink as Uriah becomes increasingly powerful.

The book contains a number of unlikely coincidences, one of which involves Mr Micawber turning up in Canterbury and happening to spot David at the home of Uriah and his mother, where David had gone in an attempt to try to bridge the gap between himself and Uriah. This brings Micawber into contact with Uriah, which is important for the final working out of the plot.

David visits Yarmouth again, this time accompanied by his old friend Steerforth, but things go disastrously wrong when Steerforth abducts Em’ly. This leads to Daniel Peggotty setting off on a long journey across Europe in search of his niece.

Betsey Trotwood pays a huge sum of money to enable David to train as an articled clerk under Mr Spenlow, whose daughter Dora takes David’s eye. When he announces that he wishes to marry Dora, her father takes great exception, and marriage is only possible after Mr Spenlow’s sudden death.

Betsey suddenly loses all her money under mysterious circumstances, so David has to abandon his aspirations for a legal career. He therefore seeks to better himself by learning shorthand so that he can work as a Parliamentary reporter, which is exactly what Dickens himself did. Like Dickens, David also starts writing stories which gradually attract public notice. While living in London he once again meets Mr Micawber, whose lodger is now Tommy Traddles, David’s old schoolfriend.

When David marries Dora, who proves to have no idea of how to run a household, he takes a small house in the suburbs and finds another close by for Betsey and Mr Dick.

Mr Micawber finds employment with Uriah Heep and slowly begins to unearth Heep’s business practices. Tommy Traddles, who is training to be a lawyer, is eventually able to recover Betsey Trotwood’s money, and Micawber denounces Heep as a villain who is consequently soon arrested for fraud.

David suffers a personal tragedy when Dora dies after a long illness, but he also helps to reunite Em’ly with Daniel Peggotty, who had discovered on his travels that Steerforth abandoned her in Italy and returned to England, as has Em’ly.

In the most dramatic scene of the book a yacht founders in a storm at Yarmouth. Ham Peggotty, Em’ly’s cousin and former fiancé, sets off to rescue the sailors, but is drowned in the attempt, along with the master of the boat who turns out to be Steerforth. The hero and the villain are washed ashore together.

The Micawber family and Em’ly emigrate to Australia. David becomes a successful writer and eventually marries Agnes.

There are many other notable characters in the book who play supporting roles. Among them may be mentioned Barkis, the carrier who uses the young David as his go-between to woo Peggotty, but who proves to be very tight with his money after they are married. There is Creakle, the schoolmaster in the “Wackford Squeers” mould who later retires from teaching and becomes an enlightened magistrate. Also worth a mention is Rosa Dartle, who has been cruelly treated by Steerforth but still loves him with a fierce passion from afar. 

The wealth of characters, plus a number of sub-plots that only touch on the main story in passing, mean that there are long intervals in the book when certain characters disappear from view only to turn up again many pages later. This may be considered a weakness of “David Copperfield” from a modern standpoint, but the characters in question are so well drawn that their re-appearance does not leave the reader trying to remember who they were. Many people, as well as the author, have come to regard “David Copperfield” as their favourite Dickens novel.

© John Welford

The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is one of the Canterbury Tales told by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340 – 1400). As with many of the tales in the collection, it is accompanied by the story of its telling; it has features that set it apart from the other tales.

The Canon and his Yeoman servant

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is the only one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that is not told by one of the original pilgrims who set out from Southwark. It is also unique in that the tale is, at least in part, told at first hand, meaning that the teller is part of the tale.

After the Second Nun has finished her tale, Chaucer relates that the pilgrims have journeyed on for another five miles when two horsemen, who have been riding very fast, catch up with them. These are a canon, in other words a person in holy orders attached to a cathedral as opposed to being a parish priest, and his servant, who is referred to as a yeoman.

It turns out that they had seen the pilgrims as they left their previous night’s lodgings and decided to join them, because they looked like an amusing bunch of people. The Host asks the Yeoman if the Canon can tell a good tale, and the Yeoman then praises his boss to the skies as “a man of high discretion”. At the Host’s bidding, he then goes on to tell the pilgrims that the Canon is more than he appears, and that he could pave the streets of Canterbury with gold and silver.

But why, asks the Host, is he dressed so badly if he is so skilled? The Yeoman answers that the Canon does not apply his skills as wisely as he might and will never be rich. The Host asks where they live, and the Yeoman replies that they are in the worst part of town, with thieves and robbers. The Yeoman goes on to reveal that the Canon is an alchemist who purports to make silver and gold, but that it is all a sham.

The Canon himself has not been part of this discussion, but he suddenly starts to show interest when he realises that his servant is spilling the beans and telling these strangers all their trade secrets. However, he is unable to stop the Yeoman’s tongue; he decides that joining these pilgrims was not such a good idea after all and he rides off, leaving the Yeoman behind.

The Yeoman appreciates that his employment is now at an end, but is happy enough to part company with somebody who has led him astray. He now offers to tell everything he knows about the craft of alchemy, as an act of confession and penitence. And so he begins his Tale.

A tale of dishonesty

In effect, the Yeoman tells two tales, the first being a personal account of the dishonest practices of the recently departed Canon. He begins by lamenting the state to which he been brought after seven years of working as the Canon’s assistant.

He then describes the “elvish craft” of mixing together and heating all sorts of strange ingredients. There is a huge amount of detail here, which shows that Chaucer was deeply knowledgeable and interested in science as it existed during his time.

The Yeoman goes on to say that the object of all this effort is to discover the “philosopher’s stone” that would produce the elixir to cure all illnesses. However, their experiments often fail because the crucible in which the metals and everything else are heated is not strong enough, so it breaks and all the precious ingredients are lost.

This is then followed by an inquest as to why the experiment failed, with the people who have been conned into supplying the metals advancing various reasons, none of them being the right one, which is that the enterprise was doomed from the start. The alchemist is always able to persuade his backers that things will be different next time, but there is clearly no intention of any money being refunded!

A new tale

The Yeoman now appears to tell a different tale, as it concerns “a canon of religion [who] would infect all a town”, without it being made clear whether or not this is the same person as in the first tale. We can take it as read that the Yeoman intends, through the telling of the tale, to implicate the whole class of alchemists as conmen and villains. However, the Yeoman also takes the trouble to point out that most canons do not fall into this category, so specifying a second canon as an alchemist does sound like a strange coincidence if his former employer is not intended to be the target of his anger.

The canon of the story goes to a priest and asks to borrow a gold mark, promising to return it after three days. This he does, thus convincing the priest that he is a man who can be trusted. To thank the priest, the canon offers to show him how he “can work in philosophy”. The priest agrees, at which point the Yeoman bewails his fate in advance, so that we know already that some foul deed is to be committed.

There is an aside at this point, as if the Host had asked the question that was asked above, namely are the two canons one and the same person? No, says the Yeoman, but the man I used to work for was a villain nonetheless who “has betrayed folk many a time”.

The canon asks the priest to supply him with three ounces of quicksilver (mercury), which he does. The canon offers to transform the quicksilver into real silver, but then performs a series of tricks that involve the use of silver filings, wax, and sleight of hand, to give the impression that solid silver has been produced. One of his tricks involves the transformation of copper into silver, performed by switching the copper for silver while the priest is not looking. The canon even “proves” his science by having the silver assayed by a goldsmith.

The priest is so impressed that he asks the canon for the “recipe”, and is told that it will cost him forty pounds, which would have been a huge sum of money at that time. The canon agrees to share the secret, but swears the priest to absolute secrecy on his part. Of course, the recipe is useless, the canon disappears from the scene, and the priest realises that he has been conned.

The moral of the tale

The Yeoman points out the moral of the story, which is that the promise of riches will lead gullible people into losing their money. He quotes several sources, including Plato, who state the impossibility of transforming one substance into another, and ends by stating that such work is evil because it is against God’s will.

There is something about the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale that rings true for all ages, as even today there are millions of people who are willing to be duped and scammed due to their mistaken belief that vast riches lie just around the corner. There have always been snake oil salesmen, and fools who can be parted easily from their money. The trick of proving oneself honest, so that the victim will trust the conman when “the con is on”, has been the stuff of hustling for centuries. We can imagine the ghost of Chaucer reading about today’s Internet scams and saying “I told you so”.

The immediacy of this Tale derives in part from its universality, and also possibly from a real example of a canon who practised alchemy and who was known to Chaucer. This was William Shuchirch of Windsor, who may even have duped Chaucer, or perhaps Chaucer was wise enough not to have fallen victim to his tricks and wanted to warn others to be careful.

Be that as it may, the Yeoman, his employer, and the characters of the tale are particularly lifelike and human, and the tale works well on several levels. It is certainly one of Chaucer’s best.

© John Welford

The Three Strangers, a short story by Thomas Hardy

“The Three Strangers” is one of the stories included in Thomas Hardy’s collection of “Wessex Tales”, originally published in 1888, but the story first appeared on its own in “Longman’s Magazine” and bears the date of March 1883. Its first readers in Hardy’s native Dorset would have been well aware of the hard times then being experienced in the rural areas and would therefore have related sympathetically to the conditions hinted at in the story, which was set in the 1820s during a similar period of agricultural distress.

The setting is an isolated shepherd’s cottage on the downs not far from the county town of Casterbridge (Hardy’s name for Dorchester). The house, named Higher Crowstairs, is in an exposed location and therefore bears the brunt of all the wind and rain from whatever direction it may come. The weather is bad on the March night when the events of the story take place, during a celebratory party following the christening of the shepherd’s youngest child.

The reader is introduced to the residents and guests in the cottage, who number nineteen in all. Everything is very friendly and convivial in the cramped space of the cottage’s living room, where there is just enough space for dancing to the music of a violin and serpent (a wind instrument in the shape of a snake). Meanwhile, a stranger approaches the house and waits until the music dies down before knocking on the door. He is welcomed inside by the shepherd, sits in the chimney corner to dry off, and is given tobacco and the loan of a pipe. He tells the company that he is from “further up the country”.

He has hardly had time to get settled when there is a second knock at the door and another stranger comes in. He says that he is on his way to Casterbridge but would appreciate shelter from the rain, plus a mug of mead (an alcoholic drink made from honey) which he is sure the shepherd’s wife must have as he has seen her beehives outside. She is reluctant to give him much of this, but the shepherd is more hospitable and continues to refresh the stranger’s mug, much to his wife’s displeasure.

There is then a discussion as to what the second stranger’s profession might be, given that the shepherd’s wife has become very suspicious of him. The second stranger makes a game of it by dropping clues such as “the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers”. He then starts singing a song, with words of his own, that soon tell the reader (and then the assembled company), that he is the new hangman who is about to start his duties at the local jail.

People start whispering among themselves that he has come on this night because there is to be a hanging at the jail in the morning, this being of a poor man from several valleys away who, being unable to get work at his trade of clock-making, and with his family starving, had stolen a sheep and been arrested. Sheep-stealing was a capital crime before 1832, and it is clear from the conversation that the sympathy of the locals is with the man who is about to be hanged.

There is then a third knock at the door and another man enters, begins to ask the way to somewhere, but then catches sight of someone else in the room, turns deathly pale, and runs off. The firing of a gun is heard in the distance, and the second stranger, now revealed as the hangman, tells everyone that this is a signal that a prisoner has escaped from the jail, at which everyone assumes that it must be the condemned man, and that he must be the man who has just arrived and left in a hurry on seeing the hangman, although this ignores the fact that he could have had no idea as to what the hangman looked like.

One of the guests at the party is the local constable, who is called upon by the hangman to organise a search party, which he proceeds to do. All the males rush off, lanterns in hand, while the women go upstairs to attend to the baby who has started crying in distress at all the noise and hullaballoo. With the room empty, two people return, these being the first two strangers who proceed to help themselves to cake and mead before shaking hands and going their separate ways.

The search party eventually catches up with the third stranger, and there is a wonderfully comic interlude as the constable, who has clearly never been in such a situation before, proceeds to make an arrest, although the only words that come to mind for such an occasion are: “Yer money or yer life”! The man is then escorted back to the cottage, where two officers from the jail and a local magistrate have arrived. The constable presents his prisoner, only to be told that he has the wrong man.

As the reader might have guessed by now, the description of the wanted man fits the first stranger, not the third. The arrested man explains that he is the brother of the condemned man and had been on his way to visit him at the jail for the last time before his execution. On entering the cottage it had not been the sight of the hangman that had agitated him but that of his brother, and it was his fear of giving the game away and betraying the escapee that had caused him to flee the scene. Needless to say, the condemned man is never seen again, much to the relief of all concerned bar the hangman.

Hardy gives the impression that “The Three Strangers” is based on local folklore, as is evident from the concluding line: “The arrival of the three strangers … is a story as well known as ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs”. Be that as it may, it certainly has elements that fit the tradition of local myth, such as the familiar pattern of simple country folk outwitting the machinations of authority, which is a theme that has always proved popular. There are also echoes of the Christmas story, involving as it does the celebration of a birth, shepherds, the visit of three people from afar, and even a Herod character in the form of the hangman.

To a modern reader the story does not start well, due to Hardy’s convoluted prose style that produces the opening: “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries may be reckoned the long, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are called …” Hardy is more readable when giving dialogue rather than description, but the story is six pages old before the first character says anything.

However, the effort of persevering is worthwhile, because once the story gets going it flows along at considerable pace. Particularly notable are the humour surrounding the constable, mentioned above, the interplay between the shepherd and his wife over how generous they should be towards the strangers, and the characterisations of the first two strangers. The overweening pride of the hangman, who rejoices in his trade, and the contrasting coolness under pressure of the condemned man, are very well done, with the scene in which the two return to the empty cottage and then part on amicable terms being a memorable one, especially as it lets the reader into a secret that is withheld from the other characters.

Given the dramatic nature of the tale, and the reliance on a single scene for most of the action, it should not surprise anyone that Hardy later dramatized the story as “The Three Wayfarers”. It was first performed in 1893 and by was staged by professional companies several times during Hardy’s lifetime.

All in all, this is a very enjoyable story that is worth the trouble to discover and read.

© John Welford

The Second Nun's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

There are several characters among the pilgrims who feature in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales of whom we know virtually nothing before they tell their tale. The “Second Nun” is one of these. In the General Prologue, we learn quite a lot about the Prioress, and at the end of the paragraph we learn that:

“Another nun with her had she

That was her chaplain, and priests three.”

The tale told by this other nun is far removed from the earthiness of many of those told by the other pilgrims, being an account of the life and martyrdom of St Cecilia. We can well imagine that this lady must have blushed considerably as she listened to the tales of the Miller and the Summoner!

The tale is usually considered to be the work of Chaucer before he had developed his full powers. It is virtually a straightforward translation of a Latin text from the “Legenda Aurea” or “Golden Legend”, which was a collection of lives of the saints, many of them of dubious authenticity.

The prologue to the tale is partly based on the prayer of St Bernard to the Virgin in Dante’s “Paradiso”. Although the tale itself may date from Chaucer’s early years as a poet, the prologue was probably written after he had made his first visit to Italy. It is interesting to note a small error made by Chaucer, in that he puts the prologue into the mouth of a female character but includes the line “And though that I, unworthy son of Eve…”

The prologue melds into the translation from the Golden Legend, concluding as it does with the original explanation of the name “Cecilia”. There are in fact several possible meanings listed here, such as “Heaven’s lily”, “the way for the blind” and “lacking in blindness”. The explanations are given as being descriptions of her character, although there is no indication here or later that the name was bestowed on her after her death. We have therefore to assume that her parents had considerable foresight in giving her the name that they did! Needless to say, these name derivations are completely spurious, as is typical throughout the Golden Legend.

The Tale

The nun continues with the story of Cecilia’s life, starting with her being brought up as a Christian in Rome. She is given in marriage to a young man named Valerian, but she is so afraid of losing her virginity that she tells Valerian, on her wedding night, that she is guarded by an angel who will kill Valerian should he attempt to have sex with her.

Valerian, needless to say, is somewhat taken aback by this and demands to see the angel. Cecilia sends him off to find an old man, named Urban, who baptises him into the Christian faith. On returning to Cecilia, he finds the angel with her, who gives each of them a floral coronet that they are commanded to wear for ever. These will be invisible to anyone who is not “chaste and hates villainy”.

The angel asks Valerian what he would most desire, and he replies that he would like his brother, Tibertius, to become a Christian as well. When Tibertius arrives he can smell the scent of the floral crowns but cannot see them. Celicia and Valerian urge him to put aside all false idols and turn to the true God, which he agrees to do. Tibertius is, however, alarmed to hear that the man who will baptise him is Pope Urban, whom he knows is being hunted by the Roman authorities, and that anyone found with him will also be killed.

Cecilia assures Tibertius that martyrdom will bring a reward in Heaven, and is therefore not to be feared. The baptism takes place, and Tibertius is also introduced to the angel.

It is not long before the brothers are arrested and taken before Almachius, the prefect, and sentenced to death. However, Maximus, the officer to whom they are committed for execution, takes pity on them, listens to what they have to say, and is himself converted by Cecilia. After the brothers are beheaded, Maximus testifies that he saw their souls ascend to Heaven and is himself beaten to death on the orders of Almachius.

It is now the turn of Cecilia to be questioned by Almachius, and a debate ensues between the two of them on the question of earthly versus Heavenly power and authority, with Cecilia accusing Almachius of being blind to the truth.

Needless to say her own martyrdom follows, the sentence being that she be boiled alive in her bath. However, after a night and a day she is still alive, without feeling a thing or even sweating a single drop. The executioner is then told to behead her, but after three strokes her head is still in place. It takes three days before she dies, which she spends teaching and preaching and sending converts to Urban for baptism. She is then buried by Pope Urban, with her house becoming a church.

Discussion

The nun ends her tale abruptly without any further adornment, and it is not followed by any discussion between the pilgrims. There is no mention, for example, of any connection between Cecilia and music, of which she is the patron saint. This association was made somewhat after Chaucer’s time, and was based on a legend that she sang as she died. However, this is mentioned neither in the Golden Legend nor Chaucer’s tale.

Chaucer’s skill in this tale is not in its characterisation or plot development, which derive almost entirely from his source, but in his versification, the translation being in the form of seven-line stanzas with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme. This is known as “rhyme royal”, a verse form that Chaucer used for three other Canterbury Tales, as well as works including “Troilus and Criseyde”. We know that Chaucer was familiar with the 14-line sonnets of Petrach, and this “half sonnet” form was clearly one that Chaucer was very comfortable with.

It is notable that one of the other tales that uses rhyme royal is that of the Prioress, the other “nun” on the pilgrimage, which was almost certainly written at a later date than that of the Second Nun. The other tales that use this form are those of the Clerk and the Man of Law, indicating that Chaucer regarded this as a suitable vehicle for people of refinement who had a tale to tell. The only other female story-teller is the Wife of Bath, and rhyming couplets are good enough for her!

© John Welford