Page 165 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes wine, which he gives to the Cook to drink, with the result that the Cook thanks him generously.
Everyone is much amused, and the Host comments that good drink turns rancor into love, blessing
Bacchus, god of wine. He then asks the Manciple to tell his tale.

18.2.2 The Manciple’s Tale Text

When Phoebus, god of poetry, lived on earth, he was the lustiest of bachelors, a superior archer and
the envy of all for his singing and playing on his musical instruments. Phoebus kept in his house a
white crow, which could imitate the speech of any man, and who could sing more beautifully than a
nightingale.
Phebus also had a wife, whom he loved more than his own life, and did his best to please her and
treat her courteously–except that he was extremely jealous, and so would watch her suspiciously.
Guarding a wife so closely, the narrator reminds us cynically, is pointless-if she is faithful, there is
no need to do so, but if she is unfaithful no amount of monitoring will keep her faithful. Take any
bird, he says, and put it in a cage–and no matter how gilded the cage and how good the treatment,
the bird would still twenty thousand times rather go and eat worms in a forest. Animals, the narrator
insists, can never be trained to be unanimalistic. So do men, the logic continues, always have a
lecherous appetite to sleep with someone socially lower than their wives. Flesh is fond of novelty.

Why is it appropriate for the Manciple to tell this particular tale?

This Phoebus, though he had no idea of it, was deceived: his wife had another man, “of litel
reputacioun”, hardly worth comparing with Phoebus himself. One day when Pheobus was away,
she sent for her “lemman” (lover–a word the narrator takes some pains to reject having said). The
white crow saw their “working” together, and said nothing until Phoebus returned home, when the
crow sang “Cokkow! Cokkow!” (Cuckold! Cuckold!).

Pheobus initially thought the bird sang a song he did not recognize, but the crow
clarified that his wife had had sex with a man of little reputation on his bed.

Phoebus thought his heart burst in two–he took his bow, set an arrow to it and murdered his wife,
and for sorrow of that, destroyed his harp, lute, cithern and psaltry, snapping too his arrows and
his bow. Then he turned to the crow, calling it a traitor, mourning his wife, and accused the crow of
lying to him - and then, to “quite anon thy false tale”, pulled out every one of the crow’s white
feathers, made him black and took away his song and his speech, slinging him out of the door and
leaving him to the devil. It is for this reason that all crows are black.
The narrator turns to his audience, and tells them to be aware of what they say-never tell a man that
he is a cuckold because he will hate the messenger. One must think on the crow and hold one’s
tongue.

Self Assessment

Short Answer Type Questions:
5. Into what genre does the Manciple’s tale fall?
6. How does the Cook calmed and persuaded not to argue further with the Manciple?
7. How does the behavior of Phoebus wife relate her to other women in the tales?

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