Geoffrey Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
In the olden days of King Arthur,
Of whom Britons speak with great honour,
All this land was filled full with faerie.
The Elf-Queen with her fair company
Danced full oft in many a green mead....
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Geoffrey Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
In the olden days of King Arthur,
Of whom Britons speak with great honour,
All this land was filled full with faerie.
The Elf-Queen with her fair company
Danced full oft in many a green mead.
That was the old opinion, as I read –
I speak of many hundred years ago.
But now no man sees elves I know,
For now the endless charity and prayers
Of limiters and other holy friars,
Who search every field and every stream
As thick as are the motes in a sun-beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, bowers,
Cities, boroughs, castles and high towers,
Thorps, barns, cattle-sheds, and dairies –
This is why there are no longer faeries.
For wherever there used to walk an elf,
There walks now the limiter himself
In the noon-time and in the mornings,
And says his matins and his holy things
As he goes round his limitation’s bounds.
Women may go safely up and down;
In every bush or under every tree,
There is no incubus about but he,
And he will
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