The Host gives leave on the one condition that the tale shall be fresher and wholesomer than the Cook's victuals sometimes are--
'For many a pasty hast thou letten blood, And many a Jack of Dover hast thou sold [meat pie That hath been twyës hot and twyës cold! Of many a pilgrim hast thou Christës curse, For of thy parsley yet they fare the worse That they have eaten with thy stubble-goose; For in thy shop is many a flyë loose!'
The Cook's "little jape," however, to judge by its commencement, was even more fly-blown than his stubble-goose. The Miller seemed to have let loose every riotous element, and to have started the company upon a downward slope of accelerating impropriety. But this to Chaucer would have been more than a sin, it would have been an obvious artistic blunder; and when the ribaldry begins in earnest, the best manuscripts break off with "of this Cook's tale maked Chaucer no more." In other MSS. the Cook himself breaks off in disgust at his own story, and tells the heroic tale of Gamelyn, which Chaucer may possibly have meant to rewrite for the series. Here end the tales of the first day; incomplete enough, as indeed the whole book is only a fragment of Chaucer's mighty plan. The pilgrims probably slept at Dartford, fifteen miles from London.
Next morning the Host seems to have found it hard to keep his team together; it is ten o'clock when he begins to bewail the time already wasted, and prays the Man of Law to tell a tale. The lawyer assents in a speech interlarded with legal French and legal metaphors, and referring at some length to Chaucer's other poems. He then launches into a formal prologue, and finally tells the pious Custance's strange adventures by land and sea. This, if not so generally popular with the company as other less decorous tales before and after it, enjoyed at least a genuine _succès d'estime_. Thereupon followed one of the liveliest of all Chaucer's dialogues. The Host called upon the Parish Priest for a tale, adjuring him "for Goddës bones" and "by Goddës dignitie." "_Benedicite!_" replied the Parson; "what aileth the man, so sinfully to swear?" upon which the Host promptly scents "a Lollard in the wind," and ironically bids his companions prepare for a sermon.[161] The Shipman, professionally indifferent to oaths of whatever description, and bold in conscious innocence of all puritanical taint, here interposes an emphatic veto--