Griseld' is dead, and eke her patience, And both at once burièd in Itayle.
So begins this satirical ballad, and goes on to bid the wife of the present day to enjoy herself at her husband's expense--
Be aye of cheer as light as leaf on lind, [lime-tree And let him care and weep, and wring and wail!
The last line rouses a sad echo in one heart at least, for the Merchant had been wedded but two months--
'Weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow, I know enough, on even and a-morrow' Quoth the Merchant, 'and so do other more That wedded be ...'
His tale turns accordingly on the misadventures of an old knight who had been foolish enough to marry a girl in her teens. Upon this the Host congratulates himself that _his_ wife, with all her shrewishness and other vices more, is "as true as any steel." Here ends the third day; the travellers probably slept at the Pilgrim's House at Ospringe, parts of which stand still as Chaucer saw it.
Next morning the Squire is first called upon to
... say somewhat of love; for certes ye Do ken thereon as much as any man.
He modestly disclaims the compliment, and tells (or rather leaves half told) the story of Cambuscan, with the magic ring and mirror and horse of brass. Chaucer had evidently intended to finish the story; for the Franklin is loud in praise of the young man's eloquence, and sighs to mark the contrast with his own son, who, in spite of constant paternal "snybbings," haunts dice and low company, and shows no ambition to learn of "gentillesse." "Straw for your 'gentillessë,' quoth our Host," and forthwith demands a tale from the Franklin, who, with many apologies for his want of rhetoric, tells admirably a Breton legend of chivalry and magic.
Another gap brings us to the Second Nun, who tells the tale of St. Cecilia from the Golden Legend, with a prefatory invocation to the Virgin translated from Dante. By the time this is ended the pilgrims are five miles further on, at Boughton-under-Blee. Here, at the foot of the hilly forest of Blean, with only eight more miles before them to Canterbury, they are startled by the clattering of horse-hoofs behind them. It was a Canon Regular with a Yeoman at his heels.[164] The man had seen the pilgrims at daybreak, and warned his master; and the two had ridden hard to overtake so merry a company. While the Canon greeted the pilgrims, our Host questioned his Yeoman, who first obscurely hinted, and then began openly to relate, such things as made the Canon set spurs to his horse and "flee away for very sorrow and shame." The Yeoman is now only too glad to make a clean breast of it. He has been seven years with this monastic alchemist, who has fallen meanwhile from one degree of poverty to another; half-cheat, half-dupe, with a thousand tricks for cozening folk of their money, but always wasting his own on the search for the philosopher's stone. Meanwhile, after ruinous expenses and painful care, every experiment ends in the same way: "the pot to-breaketh, and farewell, all is go!" The experimenters pick themselves up, look round on the mass of splinters and the dinted walls, and begin to quarrel over the cause--