The Prioress Tale

Gabrielle Ferrell
Mrs. Rowena G. Loadholt
English IV
November 20, 2014

Analyzing a Pilgrims Tale

1. Name of Tale The Prioress Tale

2. Social Class of Pilgrim Clergy
3. Theme or Message: (1) An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. (2) No matter

how horrible your life is, the ones who trust in Christ will live happy lives, and end up
sitting in the afterlife with the lord.
4. Description of the Pilgrim: The Prioress dresses well. She wears a cloak with a veil. She

also wears a coral trinket on her arm with a pendant that reads love conquers all
5. Physical Description: The Prioress smile was very simple and coy. She had a small

mouth and it was red and soft. Her forehead was nine inches across her brows. Her nose
was elegant, and eyes were glass gray.
6. Chaucers Attitude: He likes the Prioress. He describes her very well.
7. Personality of Pilgrim: The Prioress is modest, quiet, have good manners, dainty,

charitable. compassionate, and sympathetic.

8. Summary: My pilgrim is the Prioress. I picked her because I felt as if she was an

important woman figure in the Canterbury tales, besides the Wife of Bath. Her tale is
about a boy who got his throat slit and dumped into a pit. On the way home from school,
a young boy sing a tune on his journey. That tune made the Jews that lived around the
area angry. in return, they hired a murderer to kill the little boy. The murderer slit the
boys throat and left him in a pit to die. His mother began looking for him. She heard him
singing that same tune, and ended up getting revenge on the Jews. The Jews were hanged.
When she asked her son how was he able to talk, he simply replied by saying the Virgin
Mary placed a grain on his tongue, so she would find him. The theme of the story is that
an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. The message of the story is no matter

how horrible your life is, the ones who trust in christ will live happy lives, and end up
sitting in the after life with God.

Once in an Asian town, there was a Jewish ghetto at the end of a street, in which usury and other
things hateful to Christ occurred. The Christian minority in the town opened a school for their
children in this city at the other end of the same street. Among the children attending this school
was a widow's son, an angelic seven year old who was, even at his young age, deeply devoted to
his faith. At school he learned songs in Latin, and could sing his Ave Marie andAlma
redemptoris, a song giving praise to the Virgin Mary, and pay due reverence to Christ.

As he was walking home from school one day singing his Alma redemptoris, he provoked the
anger of the Jews of the city, whose hearts were wasps nests made by Satan. They hired a
murderer who slit the boys' throat and threw the body into a cesspit.
The widow searched all night for her missing child, begging the Jews to tell her where her child
might be found, but they refused to help her or give her any information. Jesus, however, gave
her the idea to sing in the place where her son had been cast into the pit: and as she called out to
him, the child, although his throat was slit, began to sing his Alma redemptoris. The other
Christians of the city ran to the pit, amazed at what was happening, and sent for the provost.
The provost praised Christ and his mother, Mary, and had the Jews tied up. The child was taken
up and carried, in a great and honorable procession to the nearest abbey, his corpse singing all
the while. The local provost cursed the Jews, and ordered their death by hanging. Before the
child was buried, holy water was sprinkled onto him, and he began to speak. The abbot of the
abbey questioned him as to how he could sing, and the child answered that the Virgin Mary had
placed a grain on his tongue that allowed him to speak. The abbot took this grain from his
tongue, allowing him to die, and finally pass on to heaven. The child was buried in a marble
tomb as a martyr, and the tale ends with a lament for the young child, but also for Hugh of
Lyncoln (a real child martyr, allegedly slain by Jews in Chaucers day).