Drawing Straws

In the years following the Black Death, the bubonic plague that swept across Europe, killing a third of its population, twenty-nine men and women gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwerk, across the Thames from London. They were an unlikely mix, varied in class, abilities, dress and dispositions. What they had in common was their goal, the Cathedral of Canterbury, sixty miles away.

We know about them because of Geoffrey Chaucer, the first English author of his age to publish not in French, the language of the court, or Latin, the language of the church, but English. We call Chaucer’s London dialect Middle English. It’s Anglo Saxon infused with the vocabulary of the Norman rulers.

It’s not unreasonable to guess that Chaucer, himself, was the thirtieth guest that evening at the inn, and that the stories he would later publish as Canterbury Tales, were drawn from his fellow travelers, pilgrims on their way to the shrine of the martyr, St. Thomas Becket.

In the first lines of the Prologue, Chaucer tells us it is springtime.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

The sweet showers of April, ending the drought of March, bathing the roots of every plant, bringing forth flowers--not modern English, for sure, but not that far off, either.

Chaucer’s rhyming couplets, cadenced in iambic pentameter, spring easily off the tongue. For my students, I sometimes play a performance by rappers. It isn’t long before feet are tapping and hands clapping.

But the reason I’m writing about the Canterbury Tales now has something to do with the pandemic we are going through. I’m wondering why the pilgrims chose Canterbury as their destination. See if you can glean it from these lines:

And specially from every shires ende

Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

The holy martyr (St. Thomas Becket) who helped them when they were sick. The Canterbury Tales were stories told by survivors of the plagues. They were going to the martyr’s shrine in gratitude for their very lives.

Although their motivations varied--some came to do penance, others to gain favor, others to be seen, and some, perhaps, just to have a good time--they all were happy to be alive. Described by Chaucer in realistic detail, they revealed themselves in their faith and foibles.

After the Black Death, which reached England in 1348, then reappeared over decades, life in medieval England began to change. Feudal structures and strictures were cracking. A middle class of merchants, lawyers, accountants, artisans and tradesmen was forming. Women, too, were finding their voice. The clergy, from the pious to the worldly, maintained their roles in common life, but were not immune from satire, as we learn from Chaucer’s profiles.

The night before the pilgrims set out for Canterbury, the innkeeper proposed an activity to entertain them on their way. Each person would be called on to tell a story, both going and coming. When the pilgrimage was completed, the one with the best story would win a free dinner.

But who would go first? Keen not to cause offense, the innkeeper came up with a method of choosing we used when we were kids--drawing straws. What could be more fair? Sure, the group included members of the nobility. There were also clergy and merchants, millers and seamstresses, clerks and farmers.

While pretending random selection, however, the innkeeper slyly rigged the straws so the first person to tell his story would be the one with the highest social rank: the knight.

For Chaucer, a court writer, this twist was a way for him to pay his respects to the prevailing order, although it would not last. For us, the drawing of straws reminds us how alike we are with those pilgrims long ago. Perhaps when we have survived our pandemic, we, too, will find that sharing our stories is the best way to celebrate being alive.

© Ben Jacques

A Stoneham resident, Ben Jacques is professor emeritus at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is the author of In Graves Unmarked: Slavery & Abolition in Stoneham, Mass. He is a board member of Stoneham Historical Society & Museum.