Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrimage

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: their peace. He then requested the Wife to tell her tale without more ado; and she, with a parting shot at the Frere, said she would gladly do it, provided she had his gracious permission, which he gave like a lamb. The Wyf Of Bathes Tale: The Knight And The Fairy. The tale is much shorter than the prologue, and is a very pleasant one. Its scene lies " in the olde dayes of the King Arthur," when "all was this land ful filled of faerie," and when the Elf-queen with her jolly company danced " full oft their ringlets to the whistling winds." " But now," said the Wife, " the Good People have all been driven out of the land by these limitours and other ecclesiastics," and she evidently thought that the change was not for the better. At the Court of King Arthur there was a knight who disgraced his order by doing a shameful deed, and " the Blameless King" ordered him to be put to death for what he had done. The queen, however, and the other ladies of the Court, interceded for him, and his life was spared on condition that, within a year and a day from that time, he would, after banishment, return to Court, and be able totell " what thing it is that women most desire." This the queen told him he must do, in order " to save his nekke-bone from the iron." He went away, and sought diligently all through the year "to learn what thiuge women love the moste "; but he could get no two of them to agree upon it. Some said riches; some jolliness; some rich array; some flattery; some careful tendence; some liberty to do exactly as they liked; some freedom from blame, whether they did well or ill; and some to have the ability to keep a secret. The expression of this last desire leads Chaucer to tell the well-known story of the wife of Midas, King of Phrygia. He says that, in answer to th...