Page 81 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes described) because he acts first, and preaches second (or, in Chaucer’s phrase, ‘first he wroghte, and
afterward he taughte’). The narrator believes that there is no better priest to be found anywhere.
With the Parson travels a Plowman (who does not tell a tale), who has hauled many cartloads of
dung in his time. He is a good, hard-working man, who lives in peace and charity, and treats his
neighbor as he would be treated. He rides on a mare, and wears a tabard (a workman’s loose garment).
A Miller comes next, in this final group of pilgrims (now at the bottom of the class scale!). He is big-
boned and has big muscles, and always wins the prize in wrestling matches. There’s not a door that
he couldn’t lift off its hinges, or break it by running at it head-first. He has black, wide nostrils,
carries a sword and a buckler (shield) by his side, and has a mouth like a great furnace. He’s good at
stealing corn and taking payment for it three times. But then, Chaucer implies, there are no honest
millers.
A noble Manciple (a business agent, purchaser of religious provisions) is the next pilgrim to be
described, and a savvy financial operator. Though a common man, the Manciple can run rings
round even a ‘heep of lerned men’. The Manciple, his description ominously ends, ‘sette hir aller
cappe’: deceived them all.
The Reeve, a slender, choleric man, long-legged and lean (“ylyk a staf”). He knows exactly how
much grain he has, and is excellent at keeping his granary and his grain bin. There is no bailiff,
herdsman or servant about whom the Reeve does not know something secret or treacherous; as a
result, they are afraid of him ‘as of the deeth’.
The Summoner is next, his face fire-red and pimpled, with narrow eyes. He has a skin disease
across his black brows, and his beard (which has hair falling out of it) and he is extremely lecherous.
There is, the narrator tells us, no ointment or cure, or help him to remove his pimples. He loves
drinking wine which is as ‘reed as blood’, and eating leeks, onions and garlic. He knows how to
trick someone.
Travelling with the Summoner is a noble Pardoner, his friend and his companion (in what sense
Chaucer intends the word ‘compeer’, meaning companion, nobody knows) and the last pilgrim-
teller to be described. He sings loudly ‘Come hither, love to me’, and has hair as yellow as wax,
which hangs like flaxen from his head. He carries a wallet full of pardons in his lap, brimful of
pardons come from Rome. The Pardoner is sexually ambiguous-he has a thin, boyish voice, and the
narrator wonders whether he is a ‘gelding or a mare’ (a eunuch or a homosexual).
The narrator writes that he has told us now of the estate (the class), the array (the clothing), and the
number of pilgrims assembled in this company. He then makes an important statement of intent for
what is to come: he who repeats a tale told by another man, the narrator says, must repeat it as
closely as he possibly can to the original teller - and thus, if the tellers use obscene language, it is not
our narrator’s fault.
The Host is the last member of the company described, a large man with bright, large eyes - and an
extremely fair man. The Host welcomes everyone to the inn, and announces the pilgrimage to
Canterbury, and decides that, on the way there, the company shall ‘talen and pleye’ (to tell stories
and amuse themselves). Everyone consents to the Host’s plan for the game, and he then goes on to
set it out.
What the Host describes is a tale-telling game, in which each pilgrim shall tell two tales on the way
to Canterbury, and two more on the way home; whoever tells the tale ‘of best sentence and moost
solas’ shall have supper at the cost of all of the other pilgrims, back at the Inn, once the pilgrimage
returns from Canterbury. The pilgrims agree to the Host’s suggestion, and agree to accord to the
Host’s judgment as master of the tale-telling game. Everyone then goes to bed.
The next morning, the Host awakes, raises everyone up, and ‘in a flok’ the pilgrimage rides towards
‘the Watering of Seint Thomas’, a brook about two miles from London. The Host asks the pilgrims
to draw lots to see who shall tell the first tale, the Knight being asked to ‘draw cut’ first and, whether

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