The Canterbury Tales – A Retelling

The Reeve’s Prologue

The prologe of the Reves Tale

When everyone had finished laughing at the lewd tale of Absolon and Nicholas, they all interpreted it in different ways. There is more than one way to peel an apple. But the main response was laughter. No one took offence at it – apart from the Reeve, Oswald. He was a carpenter himself, you see, and he suffered just the tiniest bit of resentment. So he grumbled and complained under his breath.

‘If I wanted to compete with you in dirty stories,’ he eventually said to the Miller, ‘I could tell you one about your profession. I could get my own back. But I don’t want to do that. I am old. I don’t want to soil my mouth with any filth about a cuckolded miller. My grass time is done. Now I eat only winter hay. My white hairs tell my age, I know. And my heart is frail, too. It has gone to mould, like the fruit of the medlar that is ripe only when it is rotten. It is laid in rubbish or in straw, and there it sits until it falls apart like an open arse. That is what old men do. We are rotten before we are ripe. Of course we will still cut a caper, while there is a piper playing; we are always tickled by desire. It is our fate, like the leek, to have a white head and a green tail. Our strength may have gone, but the longing is still there. When we cannot do it, we talk about it. In the white ashes there still smoulders the fire, stirred by four burning embers. They are, in order, boasting, lying, rage and envy. These are the live coals of old age. Our limbs may not be supple, and our members may not rise to the occasion. But the need will surely never go away. It has been many years since I came weeping into the world, but I still have all the yearnings of a young man. The tap of my life began to run far back, further than I remember, and the years have flowed on. Death turned the tap, of course. I am flowing towards him. The vessel of my life is almost empty. There are only a few drops left. Well, I could carry on about the folly and the wickedness of times long gone. I still have a tongue in my head. But there is nothing left for old age but dotage.’

Harry Bailey, our Host, had been listening to all this. And now he spoke out peremptorily to the Reeve. ‘Do you really want to give us a sermon?’ he asked him. ‘Are you a priest? I don’t think so. The devil that turns a reeve into a preacher might just as well turn a cobbler into a sailor, or a dairyman into a doctor. Can you please just tell your story? We are already at Deptford and it is half past seven in the morning. We will soon be at Greenwich, that school for scoundrels. I know. I used to live there. So the time has come, old Reeve. Fire away.’

Oswald the Reeve took the rebuke in good spirit. ‘Now, fellow pilgrims,’ he said, ‘please do not take anything amiss. I may decide to continue in the way the Miller has begun. As they say, a nail can drive out a nail. This drunk has already told us how a carpenter was tricked. He happens to know that I am also a carpenter. What do you think? By your leave, then, I will repay him in his own coin. I will tell you a dirty story about a miller. He mocks the mote in my eye, when he cannot see the beam in his. Well, sir, I hope you break your neck.’