T H E N U N ’ S P R I E S T ’ S T A L E
from
T H E C A N T E R B U R Y
T A L E S
–––––––––––––––––––––– Geoffrey Chaucer
––––––––––––––––––––––
Once, long ago, there dwelt a poor old widow In
a small cottage, by a little meadow
Beside a grove
and standing in a dale.
This widow-woman of whom I tell my tale Since the sad day when last she was a wife Had led a very patient, simple life.
Little she had in capital or rent,
But still, by making do with what God sent, She kept herself and her two daughters going.
Three hefty sows—no
more—were all her
showing, Three cows as well; there was a sheep called
Molly.
Sooty her hall, her kitchen melancholy, And there she
ate full many a slender meal; There was no sauce
piquante to spice her veal, No dainty morsel ever passed her
throat, According to her cloth she cut her coat.
Repletion never
left her in disquiet
And all her physic was a temperate diet, Hard work for exercise
and heart’s content.
And rich man’s gout did nothing to prevent
Her dancing, apoplexy struck her not;
She drank no wine, nor white, nor red had got. Her board was mostly
served with white and black,
Milk and brown bread, in which she found no lack; Broiled bacon or
an egg or two were common,
She was in fact a sort of dairy-woman.
She had a yard that was enclosed
about By a stockade and a dry
ditch without,
In which she kept a cock called Chanticleer. In all the land for
crowing he’d no peer;
His voice was
jollier than the organ blowing
In church on Sundays, he was great at crowing.
Far, far more regular than any clock
Or abbey bell
the crowing of this cock.
The equinoctial wheel
and its position At each ascent he knew by intuition;
At every
hour—fifteen degrees of movement—
He crowed so well there
could be no improvement. His comb was redder than fine
coral, tall
And battlemented
like a castle wall,
His bill was black and shone as bright as jet, Like azure were his
legs and they were set On azure toes with nails of lily white,
Like burnished gold
his feathers, flaming
bright. This gentlecock was master in some measure
Of seven hens,
all there to do his pleasure.
They were his sisters and his paramours, Colored like him in all particulars;
She with the loveliest dyes upon her throat Was known as gracious Lady Pertelote.
Courteous she was,
discreet and debonair, Companionable too, and took
such care
In her deportment, since she was seven days old She held the heart of Chanticleer
controlled, Locked up securely in her every
limb;
O what a happiness his love to him! And such a joy it was to hear
them sing,
As when the glorious sun began to spring,
In sweet accord, My Love is far from land
—For in those far off days I understand
All birds and animals could speak and sing. Now
it befell, as dawn began to spring,
When Chanticleer and Pertelote and all
His wives were perched in this poor widow’s hall (Fair
Pertelote was next him on the perch),
This Chanticleer began to groan and lurch Like someone sorely
troubled by a dream, And Pertelote who heard him roar and scream Was quite aghast and said, “O
dearest heart,
What’s ailing you? Why do you groan and start? Fie, what a sleeper! What a noise to make!” “Madam,” he
said, “I beg you not to take Offense, but by the Lord I had a dream
So terrible just
now I had to scream;
I still can feel
my heart racing from fear.
God turn my dream to good and guard all here, And keep my body out of durance vile!
I dreamt that roaming up and down a while Within
our yard I saw a kind of beast,
A sort of hound
that tried or seemed at least
To try and seize me . . . would
have killed me dead! His color was a blend of yellow and red,
His ears and tail were tipped with sable fur Unlike
the rest; he was a russet cur.
Small was his snout, his eyes were glowing bright.
It was enough to make one die of fright.
That was no doubt what made me groan and swoon.” “For shame,” she said, “you
timorous poltroon!
Alas, what cowardice! By God above, You’ve forfeited my heart and lost my love. I
cannot love a coward, come what may.
For certainly,
whatever we may say,
All women long—and
O that it might be!— For
husbands tough, dependable and free, Secret, discreet, no niggard, not a fool
That boasts and then will find his courage cool At
every trifling thing. By God above,
How dare you say for shame, and to your love, That there was anything at all you feared?
Have you no manly heart to match your beard? And can a dream reduce you to such terror?
Dreams are a vanity, God knows, pure error. Dreams are engendered in
the too-replete From vapors in the belly, which compete With others, too
abundant, swollen tight.
“No doubt the redness in your dream tonight Comes from the superfluity and force
Of the red choler in your blood. Of course. That is what puts a
dreamer in the dread Of crimsoned arrows, fires flaming red,
Of great red monsters making
as to fight him, And big red whelps
and little ones to bite him; Just so the black and melancholy vapors
Will set a sleeper shrieking, cutting capers
And swearing that black bears,
black bulls as well, Or blackest fiends are haling him to Hell.
And there are other vapors that I know That on a sleeping
man will work their woe, But
I’ll pass on as lightly as I can.
“Take Cato now, that was so wise a man, Did he not say,
‘Take no account of dreams’?
Now, sir,” she said, “on flying from these beams, For love of God do
take some laxative;
Upon my soul that’s the advice to give For melancholy choler; let me urge
You free yourself
from vapors with a purge.
And that you may have no excuse to tarry By saying this town has no apothecary,
I shall myself instruct you and prescribe Herbs that will cure all
vapors of that tribe, Herbs from our very farmyard! You will find Their natural property is to unbind
And purge you well beneath and well above. Now don’t forget it,
dear, for God’s own love! Your face is choleric and shows distension;
Be careful lest
the sun in his ascension
Should catch you full of humors, hot and many. And if he does, my dear, I’ll lay a penny
It means a bout
of fever or a breath
Of tertian ague. You may catch your death. “Worms for a
day or two I’ll have to give
As a digestive, then your laxative. Centaury, fumitory, caper-spurge
And hellebore
will make a splendid purge;
And then there’s laurel or the blackthorn berry, Ground-ivy too that
makes our yard so merry; Peck them right up, my dear, and swallow whole.
Be happy, husband, by your father’s soul!
Don’t be afraid of dreams. I’ll say no more.” “Madam,”
he said, ‘I thank you for your lore,
But with regard to Cato all the same,
His wisdom has,
no doubt, a certain fame,
But though he said that we should
take no heed Of
dreams, by God, in ancient books I read
Of many a man of more authority Than ever Cato was, believe you me,
Who say the very opposite is true
And prove their
theories by experience too. Dreams have quite
often been significations As well of triumphs as of tribulations
That people undergo in this our life.
This needs no argument at all, dear wife, The proof is all too manifest indeed.
“One of the
greatest authors one can read
Says thus: there were two comrades once who went On
pilgrimage, sincere in their intent.
And as it happened they had reached a town Where such a throng
was milling up and down And
yet so scanty the accommodation,
They could not find themselves a habitation, No, not a cottage that
could lodge them both. And so they separated, very loth,
Under constraint of this necessity
And each went off to find some hostelry, And lodge whatever way his luck might fall.
“The first of them found refuge in a stall
Down in a yard with oxen and a plough.
His friend found
lodging for himself
somehow Elsewhere, by
accident or destiny,
Which governs all of us and equally.
“Now it so happened, long ere it was day, This fellow
had a dream, and as he lay
In bed it seemed he heard his comrade call, ‘Help!
I am lying in an ox’s stall
And shall tonight be murdered as I lie. Help me, dear brother, help
or I shall die!
Come in all haste!’ Such were the words he spoke; The dreamer, lost in terror, then awoke.
But, once awake, he paid it no attention, Turned over
and dismissed it as invention, It was a dream, he thought, a fantasy.
And twice he dreamt this
dream successively. “Yet a third time his comrade
came again,
Or seemed to come, and said, ‘I have been slain! Look, look!
my wounds are bleeding wide and deep.
Rise early in the morning, break your
sleep
And go to the west gate. You there shall see
A cart all loaded up with dung,’ said he, ‘And
in that dung my body has been hidden. Boldly arrest that cart as you are bidden.
It was my money that they killed me for.’ “He told him every detail, sighing
sore,
And pitiful in
feature, pale of hue.
This dream,
believe me, Madam, turned out true;
For in the dawn, as soon as it was light,
He went to where his friend had spent the night And when he came upon the cattle-stall
He looked about him and began to call. “The innkeeper, appearing thereupon,
Quickly gave answer,
‘Sir, your friend
has gone. He left the town a little after dawn.’
The man began to feel suspicious, drawn
By memories of his dream—the western gate, The dung-cart—off he
went, he would not wait, Towards the
western entry. There he found, Seemingly on its way to dung some ground,
A dung-cart loaded on the very plan Described so closely by the murdered man. So he began to
shout courageously
For right and
vengeance on the felony,
‘My friend’s been killed! There’s been a foul attack, He’s in that
cart and gaping on his back!
Fetch the authorities, get the sheriff
down
—Whosever job it
is to run the town—
Help! My companion’s murdered, sent to glory!’ “What need I add to finish off the
story?
People ran out and cast the cart to ground, And in the middle of the
dung they found
The murdered man. The corpse
was fresh and new. “O blessed God, that art so just and true,
Thus thou revealest
murder! As we say,
‘Murder will out.’ We see it day by day. Murder’s
a foul, abominable treason,
So loathsome to God’s justice, to God’s reason, He will not suffer
its concealment. True, Things may lie hidden for a year or two,
But still ‘Murder will out,’ that’s my conclusion. “All
the town officers in great confusion
Seized on the carter and they gave him hell, And then they racked
the innkeeper as well,
And both confessed. And then they took the wrecks
And there and then they hanged them by their necks.
“By this we
see that dreams are to be dreaded.
And in the
selfsame book I find embedded,
Right in the very chapter after this (I’m not inventing, as I hope
for bliss) The story of two men who started out
To cross the sea—for merchandise no doubt— But as the winds were
contrary they waited.
It was a pleasant town, I should have stated, Merrily grouped about the haven-side.
A few days later with the evening tide
The wind veered
round so as to suit them best; They
were delighted and they went to rest Meaning to sail next morning early. Well,
To one of them a
miracle befell.
“This man as he lay sleeping, it would seem,
Just before dawn had an astounding dream.
He thought a man was standing by his bed Commanding him to wait, and thus he said: ‘If
you set sail tomorrow, as you intend, You will be drowned. My tale is at an end.’
“He woke and told his friend what had occurred And begged him that the journey
be deferred
At least a day, implored him not to start. But his companion, lying
there apart, Began to laugh and treat him to derision. ‘I’m not afraid,’ he
said, ‘of any vision, To let it interfere with my affairs;
A straw for all your dreamings and your scares.
Dreams are just empty nonsense,
merest japes; Why, people
dream all day of owls and apes, All sorts of trash that can’t be understood,
Things that have never happened and never could.
But as I see you mean to stay behind
And miss the tide for willful sloth
of mind God knows I’m sorry for it, but good day!’
And so he took his leave and went his way.
“And yet,
before they’d covered half the trip
—I don’t know what went wrong—there was a rip And
by some accident the ship went down,
Her bottom rent, all hands aboard to drown In sight of all the
vessels at her side,
That had put out upon the selfsame tide. “So, my dear Pertelote, if you
discern
The force of these examples, you may learn One
never should be careless about dreams, For, undeniably, I say it seems
That many are a sign of trouble breeding.
“Now, take St. Kenelm’s life which I’ve been reading; He was Kenulphus’ son, the noble King
Of Mercia. Now, St. Kenelm dreamt a thing Shortly before they
murdered him one day. He saw his murder in a dream, I say.
His nurse expounded it and gave her reasons On every
point and warned
him against treasons But as the saint was only seven
years old
All that she said about it left him cold. He was so holy how could visions hurt?
“By
God, I willingly would give my shirt To have you read his legend
as I’ve read it;
And, Madam Pertelote, upon my credit,
Macrobius wrote of dreams and can explain us The vision of young
Scipio Africanus,
And he affirms
that dreams can give a due
Warning of things that later on come true.
“And then there’s the Old Testament—a manual Well worth your study; see the Book
of Daniel.
Did Daniel think a dream was vanity? Read about Joseph too and you
will see That many dreams—I do not say that all— Give cognizance of what is to
befall.
“Look at Lord Pharaoh, king of Egypt! Look At what befell his butler and his cook.
Did not their visions have a certain
force? But those who study
history of course
Meet many dreams that set them wondering. “What about
Croesus too, the Lydian king,
Who dreamt that he was sitting in a tree, Meaning he would be
hanged? It had to be.
“Or take Andromache, great Hector’s wife; The
day on which he was to lose his life
She dreamt about,
the very night
before, And realized that if Hector
went to war He would be lost that very day in battle.
She warned him; he dismissed
it all as prattle And sallied forth to fight, being
self-willed, And there he met Achilles
and was killed.
The tale is long and somewhat overdrawn, And anyhow it’s very nearly dawn,
So let me say in very brief conclusion
My dream
undoubtedly foretells confusion,
It bodes me ill, I say. And, furthermore, Upon your laxatives I set
no store,
For they are venomous. I’ve suffered by them Often enough before, and I defy them.
“And now,
let’s talk of fun and stop all this.
Dear Madam, as I
hope for Heaven’s bliss,
Of one thing God has sent me plenteous grace,
For when I see the beauty of your face,
That scarlet loveliness about your eyes, All thought of terror
and confusion dies. For
it’s as certain as the Creed, I know,
Mulier
est hominis confusio
(A Latin tag, dear Madam, meaning this: ‘Woman is man’s delight
and all his bliss’), For when at night I feel your feathery
side, Although perforce I cannot take a
ride
Because, alas, our perch was made too narrow, Delight and solace
fill me to the marrow
And I defy all visions and all dreams!”
And with that word he flew down from the beams, For it was day, and down his hens
flew all,
And with a chuck he gave the troupe a call For he had found a seed upon the floor.
Royal he was, he was afraid no more.
He feathered Pertelote in wanton
play
And trod her twenty times ere prime of day. Grim
as a lion’s was his manly frown
As on his toes he sauntered up and down; He scarcely deigned to set his foot to ground And every time a seed of corn was found
He gave a chuck, and up his wives ran all. Thus royal as a prince
who strides his hall Leave we this
Chanticleer engaged on feeding And pass to the adventure that was breeding.
Now when the month in which the world began,
March, the first month, when God created man, Was over, and the
thirty-second day
Thereafter
ended, on the third of May
It happened that Chanticleer in all his pride, His seven wives attendant at his side,
Cast his eyes upward to the blazing sun, Which in the sign of Taurus then
had run His twenty-one degrees
and somewhat more,
And knew by
nature and no other lore
That it was nine o’clock. With blissful voice He crew triumphantly
and said, “Rejoice, Behold the sun! The sun is up, my seven.
Look, it has climbed forty degrees in heaven, Forty degrees and one in fact, by this.
Dear Madam
Pertelote, my earthly bliss,
Hark to those
blissful birds and how they sing! Look
at those pretty
flowers, how they spring!
Solace and revel fill my heart!” He laughed.
But
in that moment Fate let fly her shaft; Ever the latter end of joy is woe,
God knows that worldly joy is swift to go. A rhetorician with a
flair for style
Could chronicle this maxim in his file
Of Notable Remarks with safe conviction. Then let the wise give ear;
this is no fiction. My story is as true, I undertake,
As that of good Sir Lancelot du Lake Who held all women in such high esteem.
Let me return full circle to my theme.
A coal-tipped
fox of sly iniquity
That had been lurking round the grove for three Long years,
that very night
burst through and passed Stockade and hedge, as Providence forecast,
Into the yard where Chanticleer the Fair Was wont, with all his ladies, to repair. Still, in a bed of
cabbages, he lay
Until about the middle of the day Watching the cock and waiting for
his cue, As all these homicides so gladly do
That lie about in wait to murder men. O false assassin, lurking in
thy den!
O new Iscariot, new Ganelon!
And O Greek Sinon, thou whose treachery won Troy town and brought it utterly to sorrow!
O Chanticleer, accursed be that morrow
That brought thee to the yard from thy high beams! Thou hadst been warned, and truly, by thy dreams That
this would be a perilous day for thee.
But that which God’s foreknowledge can foresee Must needs occur, as certain men
of learning
Have said. Ask any scholar of discerning;
He’ll say the Schools are filled with altercation
On this vexed matter of predestination
Long bandied by a hundred
thousand men. How can I sift it to the bottom then?
The Holy Doctor St. Augustine shines
In this, and there is Bishop Bradwardine’s Authority, Boethius’ too,
decreeing Whether the fact of God’s
divine foreseeing Constrains
me to perform a certain act
—And by “constraint” I mean the simple fact Of mere compulsion by
necessity—
Or whether a free choice is granted me To do a given act or not to do it
Though, ere it was accomplished, God foreknew it, Or whether Providence is not so
stringent
And merely makes
necessity contingent. But I decline discussion of the matter;
My tale is of a cock and of the clatter That came of following
his wife’s advice To walk about his yard on the
precise Morning after the dream of which I told.
O woman’s
counsel is so often cold!
A woman’s counsel brought us first to woe, Made Adam out of Paradise to go
Where he had been so merry, so well at ease. But, for I know not whom it may
displease If I suggest that women are to blame,
Pass over that; I only speak in game. Read the authorities to know
about
What has been said of women; you’ll find
out.
These are the cock’s words,
and not mine, I’m giving;
I think no harm of any woman living.
Merrily in her dust-bath in the sand Lay
Pertelote. Her sisters were at hand Basking
in sunlight. Chanticleer sang free, More merrily than a mermaid in the
sea (For Physiologus
reports the thing
And says how well and
merrily they sing).
And so it happened as he cast his eye Towards the cabbage at a butterfly
It fell upon the fox there, lying low. Gone was all inclination then
to crow.
“Cok cok,” he cried, giving a sudden
start,
As one who feels a terror at his heart, For natural instinct teaches
beasts to flee The moment they perceive an enemy,
Though they had never met with it before.
This Chanticleer was shaken to the core
And would have fled. The fox was quick to say However, “Sir! Whither so fast away?
Are you afraid of me, that am your friend?
A fiend, or worse, I should be, to intend You harm, or practice villainy
upon you; Dear sir, I was not even spying on you!
Truly I came to do no other thing Than just to lie and listen to you sing.
You have as merry a voice as God has given To any angel in the courts of Heaven;
To that you add a musical sense as strong
As had Boethius who was skilled in song.
My Lord your Father (God receive his soul!), Your mother too—how
courtly, what control!— Have honored my poor house, to my great ease; And you,
sir, too, I should be glad to please.
For, when it
comes to singing, I’ll say this
(Else may these
eyes of mine be barred
from bliss), There never was a singer I would rather
Have heard at dawn than your respected father. All that he
sang came welling from his soul And how he put his voice under control!
The pains he took to keep his eyes tight shut In concentration—then the tiptoe strut,
The slender neck stretched out, the delicate beak! No singer could approach him in technique
Or rival him in song,
still less surpass. I’ve read the story in Burnel
the Ass, Among some other verses, of a cock
Whose leg in
youth was broken by a knock
A clergyman’s son had given
him, and for this He made the father lose his benefice.
But certainly there’s no comparison Between the subtlety of such a
one And the discretion of your father’s art And wisdom. Oh, for charity of
heart,
Can you not
emulate your sire and sing?”
This Chanticleer began to beat a wing As one incapable
of smelling treason,
So wholly had this flattery
ravished reason. Alas, my lords! there’s many a
sycophant And flatterer that fill your courts with cant
And give more
pleasure with their
zeal forsooth Than he who
speaks in soberness and truth.
Read what Ecclesiasticus records
Of flatterers.
’Ware treachery, my lords!
This Chanticleer stood high upon his toes, He stretched his neck, his eyes began to close,
His beak to open; with his eyes shut
tight
He then began to sing with all his might. Sir Russel Fox leapt in to the
attack,
Grabbing his gorge he flung him o’er his back And
off he bore him to the woods, the brute, And
for the moment there was no pursuit.
O Destiny that may not be evaded! Alas that Chanticleer
had so paraded!
Alas that he had flown down from the beams! O that his wife took no account of dreams!
And on a Friday too to risk their necks! O Venus, goddess of the
joys of sex, Since Chanticleer thy mysteries
professed And in thy service always did his best, And more for pleasure
than to multiply His kind, on thine own day, is he to die?
O
Geoffrey, thou my dear and sovereign master
Who, when they brought King Richard to disaster
And shot him dead, lamented so his death,
Would that I had thy skill, thy gracious breath, To chide a Friday
half so well as you!
(For he was killed upon a Friday too.) Then I could fashion you a
rhapsody For Chanticleer in dread and agony.
Sure never such a cry or lamentation Was made by ladies
of high Trojan station, When Ilium fell and Pyrrhus
with his sword
Grabbed Priam by the beard, their king and lord, And slew him there as the Aeneid tells,
As what was uttered by those hens. Their yells Surpassed
them all in palpitating fear
When they
beheld the rape of Chanticleer.
Dame Pertelote emitted
sovereign shrieks That echoed
up in anguish to the peaks Louder than those extorted from the wife Of Hasdrubal, when he had lost his
life And Carthage all in flame and ashes lay. She was so full of torment and
dismay That in the very flames
she chose her part
And burnt to ashes with a steadfast
heart.
O woeful hens, louder your shrieks and higher Than those of Roman matrons when
the fire Consumed their husbands,
senators of Rome, When Nero burnt their city and
their home; Beyond a doubt that Nero was their
bale!
Now let me turn again to tell my tale; This blessed
widow and her daughters two Heard all these hens in clamor and halloo And, rushing
to the door at all this shrieking,
They saw the fox towards the covert streaking And, on his shoulder,
Chanticleer stretched flat. “Look, look!” they cried, “O mercy, look at that!
Ha! Ha! the fox!” and after him they ran,
And stick in hand ran many a serving
man,
Ran Coll our dog, ran Talbot, Bran and Shaggy, And with a
distaff in her hand ran Maggie,
Ran cow and calf and ran the very hogs In terror at the barking of
the dogs;
The men and
women shouted, ran and cursed,
They ran so hard they thought their
hearts would burst,
They yelled like fiends in Hell, ducks left the water Quacking and
flapping as on point of slaughter,
Up flew the geese
in terror over the trees,
Out of the hive came forth the swarm of bees; So hideous was the
noise—God bless us all, Jack Straw and all his followers in their brawl Were
never half so shrill, for all their noise, When they were murdering those Flemish boys,
As that day’s hue and cry upon the fox.
They grabbed up trumpets made of brass and box, Of horn and bone, on
which they blew and pooped, And
therewithal they shouted and they whooped
So that it seemed the very heavens
would fall. And now, good people, pay attention all.
See how Dame Fortune quickly changes side
And robs her enemy of hope and pride! This cock that lay upon the
fox’s back In all his dread contrived
to give a quack
And said, “Sir Fox, if I were you, as God’s My witness,
I would round upon these
clods
And shout, ‘Turn back, you saucy bumpkins all! A very pestilence upon you fall!
Now that I have in safety reached the wood Do what you like, the
cock is mine for good; I’ll eat him there in spite of every one.’”
The fox replying, “Faith, it shall be done!” Opened his mouth and spoke. The nimble bird, Breaking
away upon the uttered word,
Flew high into the treetops on the spot.
And when the fox perceived where he had got, “Alas,” he cried, “alas, my Chanticleer,
I’ve done you grievous wrong, indeed I
fear
I must have frightened you; I grabbed too hard When I caught hold
and took you from the yard. But, sir,
I meant no harm, don’t be offended, Come down and I’ll explain what I intended;
So help me God I’ll tell the truth—on oath!” “No,” said
the cock, “and curses on us both, And first on me if I were such a dunce
As let you fool me oftener than once. Never again, for all your
flattering lies,
You’ll coax a song to make me blink my
eyes;
And as for those who blink when they should
look, God blot them from his
everlasting Book!”
“Nay, rather,” said the fox, “his plagues be flung On all who
chatter that should hold their tongue.”
Lo, such it is not be on your guard Against
the flatterers of the world, or yard, And if you think my story is absurd,
A foolish trifle of a beast and bird, A fable of a fox, a cock, a
hen,
Take hold upon the moral, gentlemen.
St. Paul himself, a saint of great discerning, Says that all things
are written for our learning; So take the grain and let the
chaff be still.
And, gracious
Father, if it be thy will
As saith my Savior, make us all good men, And
bring us to his heavenly bliss.
Amen.
From The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics
1951, Fourth Revised Edition, 1977). Copyright 1951 by Neville Coghill,
copyright © 1958, 1960, 1975, 1977 by Neville Coghill. Used by permission of
Penguin Books Ltd., London.
