The Tale of Beryn is a late MIDDLE ENGLISH verse
tale that survives in a single mid-15th-century
manuscript of The CANTERBURY TALES, although it
is clearly not the work of CHAUCER. It is also clearly
somewhat earlier than the manuscript, perhaps
about 1410 (as linguistic parallels with the contemporary
MUM AND THE SOOTHSEGGER suggest), or
as late as 1420, which would have been a jubilee
celebration in Canterbury (the 250th anniversary
of Thomas BECKETT’s murder in the cathedral),
which might have been a logical time for a revival
of interest in Chaucer’s story of a Canterbury pilgrimage.
The anonymous author was thoroughly
familiar with The Canterbury Tales, and displays
his knowledge of the GENERAL PROLOGUE as well as
The MILLER’S TALE, The REEVE’S TALE, The FRIAR’S
TALE, The SUMMONER’S TALE, The PARDONER’S TALE
and The CANON’S YEOMAN’S TALE. The tale is preceded
by a lengthy prologue in which Chaucer’s
pilgrims arrive in Canterbury, visit the shrine, engage
in other exploits, and begin their homeward
journey. The Tale of Beryn, presented as the second
tale of the Merchant, follows. The prologue
and tale include 4,022 lines of rhymed couplets;
however, only a few of these can be construed as
decasyllabic (10-syllable) lines in the manner of
Chaucer. Generally the lines contain 12 to 14 syllables,
and (perhaps under the influence of popular
English ALLITERATIVE VERSE) seem to be
six-stress lines with a pause or caesura in the middle.
Thus the poem begins:
When all this fresh feleship were com to
Caunterbury,
As ye have herd tofore, with tales glad and
mery,
(Bowers 1992, 60, ll. 1–2)
The compiler of the manuscript (Northumberland
MS 455, dated ca. 1450–1470) apparently
wanted to complete Chaucer’s plan from the General
Prologue, wherein the Host describes a taletelling
contest that would be held on the way to
Canterbury and on the way back. In virtually all
other manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, it is
clear that Chaucer abandoned that original idea
and intended the pilgrimage to end with The Parson’s
Tale, at the gates of the city. In the Northumberland
manuscript, however, The Tale of Beryn is
assigned to the Merchant as the first tale to be told
on the journey back to London. It is followed by
Chaucer’s TALE OF MELIBEE, The MONK’S TALE, The
Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The MANCIPLE’S TALE, and the
PARSON’S TALE, all displaced from their normal positions.
Since there are some leaves missing from
the end of the manuscript, it is unknown whether
the compiler included a section on the pilgrims arriving
back at the Tabard Inn and Harry Bailey’s selection
of a winner in the storytelling competition.
In the prologue, the pilgrims reach the city and
visit the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett in the cathedral.
The various pilgrims interact with one another
and explore the city, and they stay at one of
the local inns for the night.Much time is spent on
a FABLIAU-like escapade involving the Pardoner.
The poet depicts the Pardoner as a lustful heterosexual
with a keen interest in a bartender named
Kit (ignoring implications of homosexuality or
castration in the General Prologue that modern
readers have emphasized). The Pardoner convinces
Kit to meet him privately, and gives her money to
buy them supper.When he reaches her room, however,
he is locked out and she is supping with her
lover, who beats the Pardoner with a staff. Kit and
her love convince the Innkeeper that the Pardoner
is a thief, and he winds up spending the night out
in the cold in a kennel with a fierce dog who continually
threatens to bite him.
When morning comes, the pilgrims reassemble
and start their homeward journey, and the Host
calls upon the Merchant to start the trek back to
London with a tale. The tale is perfectly suited to the
Merchant: It is a comic story whose noble young
protagonist decides he would rather be a merchant
than a knight. He sets sail for foreign parts with his
merchandise, but a storm drives him to an unknown
land. The natives of the strange land are
thieves and tricksters who ensnare the young merchant
in complex legal maneuvers. But he meets a
lame man named Geffrey, who reveals that he, too,
is a foreigner and has been faking his handicap for
years in order to study how to take revenge upon the
men of that land. Geffrey shows the young merchant
how to win his law case by using tricks even
more outrageous than those used on him.
The poet’s interest in legal matters has led some
scholars to speculate that he may have been a
lawyer himself, or may have written the tale for an
audience at one of the Inns of Court (the schools
in London that trained lawyers). It is true that the
French source of the tale, called Bérinus, does not
emphasize the legal aspects quite so much. However,
there is a Latin couplet following the tale in
the manuscript that identifies the author as a “son
of the church of St. Thomas.” This, plus the fact
that the language of the text shows clear evidence
of a Kentish origin for the tale, and the fact that the
poet evinces an unusual familiarity with pilgrim
rituals at St. Thomas’s shrine, all point to an author
who was a monk connected with the cathedral
shrine and the cult of St. Thomas.
The Tale of Beryn and its prologue provide an
interesting look at how one 15th-century reader
of Chaucer understood the master’s text. It is also
an interesting satire of legal practices and an amusing
comic story in its own right.
Bibliography
Bowers, John M., ed. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth-
Century Continuations and Additions. Kalamazoo,
Mich.: Published for TEAMS by Medieval Institute
Publications University, 1992.
———.“The Tale of Beryn and The Siege of Thebes:
Alternative Ideas of The Canterbury Tales,” Studies
in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1985): 23–50.
Brown, Peter. “Journey’s End: The Prologue to The
Tale of Beryn.” In Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century
Poetry, edited by Julia Boffey and Janet Cowan,
143–174. King’s College London Medieval Studies
5. London: King’s College, 1991.
Darjes, Bradley, and Thomas Rendall. “A Fabliau in
the Prologue to the Tale of Beryn,”Mediaeval Studies
47 (1985): 416–431.
Green, Richard Firth. “Legal Satire in The Tale of
Beryn,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989):
43–62.
Winstead, Karen A. “The Beryn-Writer as a Reader of
Chaucer,” Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 225–233.