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Medieval Children Witness their Mothers’ Indiscretions: The Maid Child in Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale Peter G. Beidler In this paper I discuss three medieval fabliaux in which young children witness their mothers’ infidelities: a thirteenth-century French story in which a boy watches his mother make love to a priest; a mid-fourteenth-century Italian one in which a boy is taken into the bedroom where his mother makes love to a friar; and, at greater length, a late-fourteenth-century English one in which a maid child witnesses her mother’s offering sexual pleasure to a monk in exchange for a loan of one hundred francs. Although the first two are in no sense sources for or even analogues to the Chaucerian third, the three tales share some features: an innocent child, a lecherous man of the church, a cuckolded husband/father, a clever wife/mother. Because each is written for a different set of literary purposes, the first two help us see what is distinctive in Chaucer’s treatment of the situation in which a child is witness to her mother’s indiscretion. “The Man Who Kicked the Stone” We have two extant versions of the very short thirteenth-century anonymous French fabliau called “The Man Who Kicked the Stone,” in which a boy watches his mother make love to a priest. In the shorter version, which runs to sixty-two lines of octosyllabic couplets, a certain priest comes to the house of one of his parishioners. He is welcomed by the wife, whose husband is out working, and who has a young son at home with her. In the yard is a stone that they intend to make into a mortar. When the wife kicks the stone, the priest tells her to let it be: [End Page 186] “Se la botez ne ça ne la, je cuit que je vos foutré ja.” “Kick it a little or a lot and I will fuck you on the spot!”1 The wife is pleased with that prospect and again kicks the stone. With her consent, the priest picks her up and carries her to the bed, where they make love. The little boy sitting near the fire sees them and speaks quietly: “En moie foi,” dist l’enfançon, “je cuit bien que issi fout l’on!” “I think,” muttered the innocent, “when they say fuck, that that’s what’s meant.” (37–38) Not long afterwards the priest gets up and leaves, just before the boy’s father, who has been out tilling the fields, comes home. The boy’s father starts to move the stone, but his son stops him: L’enfens li dist: “Pere, ne faire! Se la boutez ne sa ne la, nostre prestres vos foutra ja sicom il fist ore ma mere.” His son said, “Da, leave it alone! Move it a little or a lot, our priest will fuck you on the spot just like he did to Ma just now.” (46–49) The boy’s father understands what his wife has been doing and takes his revenge later on—the timing and the method of the revenge are not specified. The story ends with a specific moral: [End Page 187] Se l’enfançon n’eüst veü lo prestre jöer a sa mere, il nel deïst pas a son pere. If the kid hadn’t seen the priest and his mother having a lark, his dad would still be in the dark. (60–62) The other version of “The Man Who Kicked the Stone,” also in octosyllabic couplets, is almost twice as long (114 lines). The chief differences are in the characterization of the mother and the father. In the longer version, the mother, particularly, comes across as a coquette who is enamored of the priest and who makes the first moves to get him to make love to her, while the father comes across as a loving man who cares about his child and, instead of postponing his revenge, punishes his wife straightaway by dragging her by the hair, rolling her around, and stomping on her. The stated moral, however, is similar: Beware of little children because...
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