The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 12

It's been two weeks since the last installment.  TWO WHOLE WEEKS!  How on earth have you been coping? 

The Prioress's Tale: A little Christian boy, who lives near a Jewish ghetto and likes to sing,  learns a new song all about the Virgin Mary.  It's a catchy tune, and he likes it so much he can't stop singing it, especially when he's walking to school every morning.  Which turns out to be a bit of an issue, because his route to school takes him right through the middle of the Jewish ghetto.  The Jews don't like his singing much; they slit his throat and he dies.  A slightly drastic measure, perhaps, but then maybe it was just a really, really annoying song.

When he doesn't come home from school that day,  the boy's Mum goes off in search of him and eventually comes across the body, which has been thrown into a pit.  She is about to carry her dead son home when, miracle of  miracles, he rises up and starts to sing.  She is overjoyed; but then he dies again.  She's less overjoyed about this.

The body is taken to a church where, more miracle of more miracles, the boy rises up and starts to sing again.  The startled priest asks the boy how he can sing with a great big chunk cut out of his neck (ignoring the small matter of him also being DEAD), and the little boy explains:   The Virgin Mary, who he met at heaven's gates, placed a seed on his tounge and while it's there he will be able to sing about her.

The priest, clearly not a fan of the little boy's singing either, removes the seed. They bury the little boy and every one is very sad but also they are all in awe of the Virgin Mary.

Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas: Next, the Host asks Chaucer himself (who is also travelling with the party; have I mentioned this?) to tell a story.  He obliges, and starts to tell a hillarious rhyming poem about a knight called Sir Thopas.  By hilliarious, I mean it is so bad it is good.  A summary won't do justice so let me share with you a few lines straight from the horse's mouth. (There is no speaking horse in the story.  It is just an expression.)

Thopas has just been for a long ride through the woods:

Thopas himself was exhausted
He god down from his quadruped
And lay stretched on the ground.
The horse was free at one bound
It wriggled its arse
And chewed on the grass.
Fodder was solace

After a rest, he keeps riding.  After all, he's a man on a mission:

Then up on to his steed
He jumped, in need
Of action with a fairy queen
He rode along each hill and dale
Looking for that certain female.
Then quite by chance he found
A secret spot of magic ground,
The kingdom of the fairies.
In truth it was a little scary
And wild. And deslolate.

A few things happen to Thopas (he runs into problems with a giant called Oliphiant, for a start) but we don't find out how the story ends, or if he ever gets lucky with the fairy queen, because the Host gets so sick of Chaucer's terrible rhymes that he asks him to tell a story in prose instead.

Chaucer says he'll tell a story about a patient and prudent wife but the Host is having none of this either; he says they don't exist, and then launches into a rant about how horrible his own wife is.  Clearly the Host is having a few marital problems, which might explain why he was so keen to join the party on their journey in the first place.  Anyway, Chaucer is off the hook, and it's the Monk's turn next.

The Monk's Tale:   The Monk isn't the cheeriest fellow.  Instead of telling a story, he rattles off a list of people who have had great misfortune strike them from nowhere.  It's a long list, including: Lucifer (fell from heaven to hell), Adam (we all know the apple story, surely?), Sampson (fine until his super-strength hair was all cut off), Hercules (poisonous shirt given to him by his lover), Nebuchadnezzar (turned into an ox), his son Belshazzar (couldn't manage to avoid being killed, even though the writing was on the wall), Queen Cenobia (captured by a Roman Emperor), and.....well, you get the idea.  There are a load more of them, but it's all a bit depressing really.  And, as the knight says, people can only bear so much tragedy.