CHAPTER VI TALES THE most delightful and abiding literature of the Middle Ages is narrative. Didactic and moral treatises have for us mainly the interest of curiosity, histories are ill-conceived and inexact, fine lyrics are rare, the 'drama is in its swaddling-clothes; but everywhere the story reigns. It may be popular ballad or chanson de geste, chivalrous lay or romance, legends of "Cupid's Saints or of worthies of the Church, secular or religious allegory, fabliau or fable-everywhere, not only in separate form, but in an infinitude of combinations, the story appears holding an unquestioned sway. We have studied in detail the productions termed romance, extended stories of adventure and love, of feudalism and chivalry. We now turn to the other types of narrative that found literary embodiment in the medieval period, and shall try to discover what was their nature, where they originated, how they were perpetuated, and in what mould they were made. Final results in these inquiries are too much to expect. From time immemorial people everywhere have told tales, and no continent or race has had the exclusive power to produce them. The more we know of the matter, the more we are amazed at the peregrinations of popular saga. We are baffled at the uniformity of men's conceptions. In treating oral tradition, complete knowledge of what has happened is impossible to obtain. ORIENTAL TALES It appears certain, however, that many tales popular in the West originated in the East. Three at least of the Canterbury Tales are Oriental in character: the Pardoner's account of the three rioters directed by Death to a hidden supply of gold, in the endeavour to gain which each loses his life (compare Kipling's tale of The King's Ankus); the Merchant's pear-tree story; and that of the Manciple, concerning Phoebus and the speaking crow. In no case is the direct source evident. Dame Sirith is an Oriental tale, which was put into English verse before the death of Henry III. It relates how, while a merchant is absent at the fair in Boston, his wife rejects the advances of a clerk, but is later brought to yield to her lover by the wiles of a female Pandar called Sirith, who makes her victim fear transformation into a dog-a situation that indicates at bottom the Indian belief in metempsychosis. The story is told in a clever, jovial manner, with much realism and piquancy, in a style almost worthy of Chaucer, yet a century before his time. Similar in character is Adam Cobsam's entertaining tale of The Wright's Chaste Wife (fifteenth century), which narrates how three associates, a lord, his steward, and the proctor of the parish church, try to win the love of the Wright's wife, but are trapped by her into a cellar and made to spin flax to get food, until they are finally freed under humiliating circumstances. The Wright wore a garland of roses which would remain fresh as long as his wife was chaste. It was to test the virtue of this talisman that each of the three suitors tried to bribe the lady to his desires. This tale in one or other feature of the chastity-test and the gulled lovers has many parallels: one is reminded in the first part of the magic horn of Caradoc in the ballad-fabliau of the MantleMade-Amiss, and the girdle of Florimel in Spenser; in the second, not only of many Eastern tales (one in The Arabian Nights), but also of the Decameron (ix. 1), Lydgate's Lady Prioress and her Y Three Wooers, the French fabliau Constant du Hamel, and the old tale of The Friar Well-Fitted. In Sir Amadace we have an admirable legendary tale embodying the world-wide belief in "the thankful dead." It turns on the law (that Herodotus tells us existed among the Egyptians) by which a creditor might deny his debtor the rights of decent burial. Emphasis is laid upon the virtue of fulfilling troth plighted, in a way that recalls the Franklin's Tale. It is interesting to observe that the story of Dame Sirith was transformed by a contemporary into an "interlude," De Clerico et Puella, fragmentarily preserved. A parallel to the tale was put into a German fastnachtspiel by Hans Sachs. The themes of The Wright's Chaste Wife and Sir Amadace appeared later in Massinger's Picture and Fatal Dowry. Sometimes tales of shrewdness and wit took on the guise of romance. In Sir Cleges, a short poem of the fourteenth century, the events are placed in the reign of King Uter, though the hero is very unlike Crestien's of the same name, or any British knight. While the hero is kneeling under a cherry tree in his garden at Christmastime, having abated his misery by humble prayer, his head catches a bough on which he discovers delicious fruit. Greatly astonished, he bears some to his wife, Dame Clarys, and at her suggestion takes a basket the next day to the king at Cardiff. Because of his poor array, he is unable to approach the king, until he promises to porter, usher, and steward each in turn a third of the present he expects. Recognising, however, that all is disposed of in advance, he takes a witty way of accomplishing revenge. When the delighted Uter asks him to name his own reward, he asks for twelve strokes; and these he then dispenses to the grasping steward and his fellows, much to the merriment of the court. On a French prose romance was based the long-winded Tale of Beryn, written in English early in the fifteenth century by an anonymous author, who, like Lydgate, foolishly tried to continue the Canterbury Tales. He explains in a prologue how the pilgrims occupied themselves at Canterbury, and then represents the merchant as telling the tale before us as the first on the return journey. The main incidents picture the wilful, perverse youth, Beryn, in Falsetown, a prey to sharpers, only extricating himself from serious trouble by the aid of a helpful cripple, who turns the table on his evil persecutors by countercharges of wit. Beryn, for example, loses a game of chess to a burgess, and as a result has the alternative of drinking all the salt water in the sea or of forfeiting his ships. The cripple, appearing in his defence at the prosecution, agrees that Beryn shall drink the salt water, but first requires that all the fresh water running into the sea be separated from it. Again he confounds another rascal who has induced Beryn to exchange his five ships for five loads of what he can find in a certain house. The house appears empty when they enter, but the cripple lets loose two butterflies in it, and secures heavy damages because the prosecutor cannot secure five ship-loads of these to justify the bargain. FABLIAUX Occasionally of Oriental origin are the merry tales in verse known as "fabliaux," which were immensely popular in the Middle Ages. Arising in France about the middle of the twelfth century, they enjoyed particular favour in the thirteenth, and maintained themselves for a good while after. They were never taken very seriously as works of literature. The writers, almost all of whom are unknown, were not bent on exalting themselves in the eyes of posterity. Though only a few fabliaux are extant in English verse, it is certain that many were composed. This was not the sort of production to be carefully transcribed; it did not need writing to be remembered. The fabliaux offer a striking contrast to legends and romances. They are not chivalric and courtly, but bourgeois and rough; they picture the real and practical, not the ideal or sentimental; their primary object is to evoke laughter, to stimulate jovial intercourse at close range; they are not necessarily vile, but they do not inculcate ethics; their satire is amiable, their moral waggish. They are, moreover, short and to the point; no detailed descriptions or long-drawn-out discussions ever disturb the rapid advance of the story: the reader finds himself in the middle of things and hears no more than enough. more, is their attitude towards women. Characteristic, further The fair lady heroines of romance are supercilious, haughty, cruel, when they wish, but valiant warriors delight to serve them; they are all endowed with virtue and charm; their worship is an established and honourable cult. In the fabliaux, on the contrary, women are universally pictured as deceivers, sure to be unfaithful to their husbands if given a chance, ill-tempered, vain, nagging, thorns in the side of submissive men—a necessary evil. The cynic replaces the devotee. Guillaume de Lorris yields to Jean de Meung. If one would reconstruct mediæval society accurately, if one would learn of the actual surroundings and occupations of the majority of the people, the fabliaux deserve at least as careful consideration as any other type of mediæval literature. Chaucer felt obliged to relate some of them to portray suitably certain classes of his time. Then in the real world were as marked contrasts as appear in his tales. The vulgarly coarse elbowed the over-refined, materialists moved with mystics, the lewd bowed to the learned, the subservient churl scraped before a haughty lord. The juxtaposition of the "noble story" of Palamon and Arcite with the vulgar anecdotes of the Miller and the Reeve, the tale of the Prioress with that of the Shipman, the Manciple's with the Parson's, pictured the strange associations of ordinary life; and their tales the unlike predilection of unlike people. Say what one will of the churlishness or obscenity of the fabliaux that Chaucer chose to repeat, the poet makes clear that they pleased the pilgrims. Of the Miller's ribald tale, he remarks: Diverse folk diversely they seyde; But for the moste part, they loughe and pleyde, save only the Reeve, who resented it because the joke was on |