The Canterbury Pilgrims

The Canterbury Pilgrims - Being
Chaucer's Tales Retold for
Children

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Canterbury Pilgrims, by M. Sturt
and E. C. Oakden
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Title: The Canterbury Pilgrims
Author: M. Sturt and E. C. Oakden
Release Date: December 28, 2003 [eBook #10538]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
CANTERBURY PILGRIMS***
E-text prepared by Roy Brown

THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS
Being Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Retold for Children
By M. Sturt, BA and E.C. Oaken, MA

INTRODUCTION
Geoffrey Chaucer lived mere than five hundred years ago, when
Edward II. waged war in France, and the peasants rebelled in England
against his son, Richard II, Yet for all this, England was then "Merrie

England." Her trade prospered, men laughed and sang and delighted in
tales, in art, end in out-door life.
Chaucer was not a poet who lived apart from his fellows, but one who
dealt constantly with men and affairs, and loved his fellow-men. He
was an important person in his time. He began life as a page boy at
Court, where he saw great ladies and gallant courtiers, and heard music
and took part in pageants and processions. He fought for the king in
France and was taken prisoner by the enemy; but the king sixteen
pounds for his ransom and he returned to England. He went to France
again and to as ambassador on the king's business. Thus he met famous
men in foreign lands and saw the beautiful land of Italy, where in his
day lived two Italian poets whose names are as famous as Chaucer's
own, one of whom he makes his Clerk mention--Petrarch of Padua. He
saw, too, the fine buildings and paintings which Italian artists were
making, whose fame has spread abroad throughout world. Chaucer
loved all this colour and beauty, and carried it in his mind, so that when
he again came to London he remembered it and wrote of it.
He was a member of Parliament, and a civil servant too, whose work it
was to collect the customs. He had to make long records of his accounts
all day; but at night returned with joy to his house above the Aldgate in
the walls of London. There he pored over his books, and "dumb as any
stone," he tells us, he read, and dreamed, and wrote.
But when spring came, no more indoors for him! Away he went, out to
the fields, which then came to the edge of the Thames and to the very
walls of the city. There in the bright sunshine he sought his favourite
flower, the daisy, and met men in the open roads and lanes, and
because he liked men and respected them, they talked to him very
freely of their lives and doings. Often in April he saw motley
companies of men and women riding out of the stuffy narrow streets of
the town, away along country roads by hedgerow and meadow, to some
distant shrine, where they would pray to the saints for prosperity and
help.
Chaucer one day went with such a company, and he has left us his
record of it. The Canterbury Tales describe better than any history book
the people of Chaucer's time. You will find that in their dress and
manners they are often strangely different from ourselves; but in much
we are very like to them. All kinds and conditions of men are there,

good and bad. There is love for honour and beauty, laughter for a jest,
impatience for a dreary tale, ridicule for a worn-out one,
good-fellowship and joy in the open air, loose tongues and travellers'
stories, drinking by the way, and mishaps by the road. Travelling was
difficult, for the roads were full of holes and very muddy and dirty, and
a man must either walk or go on horseback. Some of the party had bad
horses and some were anything but expert riders, so that it took four
days to ride the fifty-six miles from London to Canterbury. The nights
were spent at inns where many shared one room, and beds were not as
clean as they might have been. But the pilgrims made a happy party, as
you will see, for they beguiled the way with stories. Chaucer tells these
stories in his account of his pilgrimage. He never completed the
account, however, but left some gaps in the story. The general plan of
the work is clear enough, and in this little book the gaps have been
bridged in a manner