Canturberry Tales - The Nun's Priest's Tale

Canturberry Tales - The Nun's Priest's Tale This is a charming little fable cleverly disguised as a barnyard story. In the first twenty-six lines, the setting of the story is described as a small farm, belonging to a very plain widow and her two daughters. The widow is a simple woman of good heath, who has managed to make it despite her unfortunate circumstance of being slightly impoverished. In lines twenty-seven through forty-four we are introduced to the story's main character, Chanticleer. He was in fact an exceptional rooster who was blessed with an equally exceptional crow. In lines forty-five through fifty-nine we learn that Chanticleer is the master of his domain. However, as we read on it is found that the key to his heart belongs to the Lady

Pertelote, indirectly characterized as the perfect woman. The next two lines are a dead give away that the story is in fact, a fable, lending onomatopoetic devises to the barnyard members. Line sixty-two finally brings us to the actual story. One morning right before dawn, Chanticleer awoke in sheer terror. Of course Lady Pertelote was considerably concerned, and questioned her true love as to what the problem was. Chanticleer goes on to describe a very vivid, very disturbing dream. In fact it was a premonition of his own untimely death. Upon hearing the cause of Chanticleer's fright,

Lady Pertelote becomes slightly upset. Actually she downright enraged. How, she wondered, could such an amazing animal be scarred of one little dream, especially since it was most likely caused by something he ate. Basically, she told him he was a big cowar...

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...indeed going to eat him, he'd better do it before the lynch mob caught him.

The fox readily agrees and as he is about to swallow Chanticleer, the clever little bird flies to the sanctuary of a nearby tree. At the thought of loosing his meal, the fox tries in vain to trick Chanticleer again by suggesting he was merely excited at the prospect of hearing his wonderful voice, and accidentally grabbed him too hard. Fortunately, our hero has learned his lesson, and is not to be deceived so easily ever again. There is more than one lesson to be learned from Chanticleer's story. One theory being that one should trust one's own intuition and let it be their guide.

Another lesson learned is that you should never let your pride interfere with your judgement. So ends the first story of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.