Prologue

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne with swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour.
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half-course y-ronne
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages -
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrymages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes kouthe in sondry londes
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende
The holy blisful martyr for to seke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Of course, this is how the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales commences, in Chaucer's original Middle English.  Many years ago I set out to memorize this, mostly because the title echoed my own name, but soon I found it specially fascinating because of the sound and flow of the language.  It seems about halfway between an English that we could comprehend without special effort and a fully foreign language.  Almost every word is at least related to a modern word of similar meaning, even if it is not immediately obvious (for "ferne halwes", think "far/foreign hallows/holies").  But the emphasis and intonation of the syllables is very different, so when I speak it aloud most people can only catch the meaning of a few phrases.

It has been a nice party trick from time to time.  I was able to commit it to memory as far as the portrait of the knight - about three minutes of verse - but I foundered on the squire, who was just a bit too insufferable for me to tolerate him as permanent resident in my head.

It seems an appropriate piece to set the tone here, since it actually does bear on multiple facets of my life.  The recognition of characters at a distance in time and space, remote enough that speech and custom have altered, but near enough that their common humanity is palpable.  The placement of everyday human life and meaning within the cycles of nature and the cosmos.  The threads connecting these people to us, and by implication those threads connecting us to our descendants seven hundred years hence.  And I have always been fond of the "smale foweles", although the ones I know best make their annual pilgrimages from the forests of western North America to the thorn scrub and cloud forests of the Neotropics.

Bifil that in that sesun on a day
At Southwerk, at the Tabard, as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde
The chambres and the stables weren wyde
And wel we weren esed atte beste
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
That I was of hir felaweshipe anon
And made forward erly for to ryse
To take oure way ther as I yow devyse
But nathelees, whily I have tyme and space
Ere that I ferther in this tale pace
Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To tell you al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne
And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

GEC