Last time, I promised you filth and then delivered a pretty mild story about two love-sick cousins and some swoony women. I can only apologise.
In my defence, here's the next few. Same disclaimer (ie rely on my summaries in any exam-type situation at your own peril) applies:
The Miller's Tale: A story about an un-named carpenter and his gorgeous wife Alison. "She was young and lusty. He was old and crusty". They have a lodger called Nicholas, and if I tell you that "no girl near him would have been a virgin for very long" I'm sure you can see where this is going.
Alison and Nicholas trick the carpenter into thinking there's a great flood on the way, and he ends up suspended from the roof of his barn in a tub, waiting for the heavens to open, while they sneak downstairs and have it off. There's another bloke in love with Alison as well, and to cut a long story short Nicholas ends up with a hot plough blade shoved up his.....well, I'm sure you can work out where. It's his own fault, really, for trying to get the other guy to kiss it.
This leads Nicholas to cry out for water (as you would, no?) and on hearing this the carpenter assumes the cries of "Water! Water!" mean "The (made-up) flood is here! We are all DOOMED!!" and cuts the rope suspending his tub from the ceiling, and plummets to the floor. He survives, but everyone thinks he's an idiot. Which, to be fair, he sort of is.
The Reeve's Tale: Simkin is a naughty miller, who short-changes all of his customers. Two scholars from Trinity College (that's Cambridge, don't you know?) go and visit him to try and prove he's a thief. While they are there, he unties their horse and it escapes. They get it back, but by then it's dark, so they have to stay the night, and there's only one room which the two scholars, and the miller and his wife, and their daughter, and their baby, who sleeps in a cradle at the foot of her parents' bed, have to share. No biggie, you might well think. Ha! It's quite a big biggie, as it turns out.
Everyone gets quite drunk over dinner, and when they eventually go to bed the miller and his wife snore and fart which keeps the scholars (who I forgot to tell you are called John and Alan) awake. For some reason, Alan decides this makes it OK for him to shag their daughter, and so he does. Quite a lot. She doesn't exactly complain.
Meanwhile, John is feeling a bit left out, so when the wife gets up to go to the bathroom, he moves the baby's cradle from the foot of her parents' bed to the foot of his own bed. When the wife comes back she feels for the cradle, gets into the bed where she finds it, and spends the rest of the night shagging John, thinking he's her husband.
Roll forward a few hours until it's nearly dawn, and Alan decides he better get back into his own bed. Here's where it gets confusing, so listen up carefully. He's about to get into the bed which he thinks is his bed, and which actually IS his bed, but then notices it has the cradle at the end of it. "Silly me" he thinks "I nearly got into bed with the Miller and his wife. Wouldn't THAT have been embarassing!" So he gets into the other bed, which he thinks is his bed, but is actually the Miller-and-his-wife's bed,but only the Miller is in it. He then wakes up the Miller, who he thinks is John, to tell him all about what he got up to with the Miller's daughter, and how she didn't exactly complain. Funnily enough, the Miller isn't too happy about this, and he and Alan have a big fight, which ends up with Alan falling on top of the Miller's wife, and she gets confused and hits her husband with a staff, thinking he's one of the scholars, and he passes out. Meanwhile, the scholars escape scott free.
Not surprisingly, the actual Miller in the party doesn't like the Reeve much after he tells this story.
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