Chaucer: "And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille"

Chaucer's Clerk

"And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille"

Canterbury Tales, "Clerk's Tale," line 1206

(Image from Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Page)

Two days ago, I quoted an email from my Aunt Pauline to my daughter, Sa-Rah, in which the word "quaille" was used:

I hatched about one hundred and fifty quaille for Velna . . . they sure are growing and she loves them . . . . these are birds.

I remarked on this spelling:

Quaille, as Aunt Pauline explains -- in case Sa-Rah doesn't know -- are birds. When my aunt says that she 'hatched' the quaille, she means that she used a brooder, a box-like structure often heated by lights. That word "quaille"' must be an Ozark variant for "quail," possibly a holdover from "quaille" in Middle English.

Trolling around the internet, I located this use of the word "quaille" in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where it appears in his rendition of "The Clerk's Tale," specifically, in the "envoy" (i.e., concluding stanzas"), where the clerk advises wives not to be too submissive to their husbands, unlike the 'long-suffering' Griselda. See line 1206 of the passage below, which includes the word "quaille" in a conveniently interlinear arrangement providing both the Middle English and Modern English versions:

Ne dreed hem nat; doth hem no reverence, 1201
Fear them not; do them no reverence, 1201

For though thyn housbonde armed be in maille, 1202
For though thy husband be armed in mail, 1202

The arwes of thy crabbed eloquence 1203
The arrows of thy spiteful eloquence 1203

Shal perce his brest and eek his aventaille. 1204
Shall pierce his breast and also his neck-guard. 1204

In jalousie I rede eek thou hym bynde, 1205
In jealousy I advise also that thou bind him, 1205

And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille. 1206
And thou shalt make him cower as does a quail. 1206

Chaucer was writing in the late 14th century, over 600 years ago, but as I've noted before, Ozark dialect has retained old meanings and old words, so it may even have kept some older spellings . . . or my aunt might have picked up this spelling of "quaille" from her high school Chaucer many years ago.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates this use by Chaucer to 1386, though it cites "Thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille" as line 1150 (OED Compact Edition, Volume 2, page 2381D).

The word "quaille" looks like a borrowed word, and a check of online dictionaries confirms this. In The Free Dictionary by Farlex, we find this: "Middle English quaille, from Old French, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *coacula, of imitative origin." The Online Etymological Dictionary is more informative, telling us that the word entered English around 1300, via Old French, which also provided the spelling "quaille":

c.1300, quayle, from O.Fr. quaille, perhaps via M.L. quaccula (cf. Prov. calha, It. quaglia, O.Sp. coalla), from a Gmc. source (cf. O.H.G. quahtala "quail," Ger. Wachtel), imitative of the bird's cry.

Interestingly, the word seems to have originated in the Germanic tongue despite coming into English by way of Latin and French.

And that's as far as I have time to investigate this unusual spelling, but if anyone knows other cases of the spelling "quaille" in English, whether Medieval or Modern, please let me know.

Sir Gawain: "quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes"

A Headless Cock

This could have been Gawain's chicken-hearted fate!

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I concluded with the threat to subject my readers to more of my rough draft-in-progress on Gawain's adultery of the heart. What follows is a still-developing argument in which I attempt to bring together two sorts of 'infidelity' in Gawain's acceptance of Lady Bertilak's belt.

I have already noted that by accepting the belt, Gawain breaks faith with his true lady, the Virgin Mary, but he also breaks faith with Lord Bertilak, and he does so in two ways: in committing an adultery of the heart confirmed by the terms luf-lace and drurye, as already noted, and in failing to keep to the agreement reached to exchange each day's 'winnings'. I will begin by alluding to the former point, then deal at some length with the latter point before returning to the former point with a bit more evidence.

Gawain's acceptance of the belt has set up a further problem in addition to an adultery of the heart. Recall that Gawain has confirmed an agreement with Lord Bertilak to exchange their winnings each day, and as already noted, Gawain does give to Bertilak the three kisses received from Lady Bertilak when she last parted from him. He does not, however, hand over the belt. Of course, he cannot do so without losing the magical protection that it supposedly offers, but by keeping it for himself rather than giving it to Lord Bertilak, Gawain breaks an agreement and thereby proves himself less than perfectly honest, as the Green Knight informs him when they meet at the Green Chapel on New Year's Day to finish their beheading game. The Green Knight has just made two feints to test Gawain before finally bearing down hard, yet only just nicking Gawain's neck, but nevertheless fulfilling the game started one year before in Arthur’s court. As the Green Knight tells Gawain:

"I owed you a hit and you have it; be happy therewith!
The rest of my rights here I freely resign.
Had I been a bit busier, a buffet, perhaps,
I could have dealt more directly, and done you some harm.
First I flourished with a feint, in frolicsome mood,
And left your hide unhurt -- and here I did well
By the fair terms we fixed on the first night;
And fully and faithfully you followed accord:
Gave over all your gains as a good man should.
A second feint, sir, I assigned for the morning
You kissed my comely wife -- each kiss you restored.
For both of these there behooved two feigned blows

by right.

True men pay what they owe;
No danger then in sight.
You failed at the third throw,
So take my tap, sir knight.

"For that is my belt about you, that same braided girdle,
My wife it was that wore it; I know well the tale,
And the count of your kisses and your conduct too,
And the wooing of my wife -- it was all my scheme!
She made trial of a man most faultless by far
Of all that ever walked over the wide earth;
As pearls to white peas, more precious and prized,
So is Gawain, in good faith, to other gay knights.
Yet you lacked, sir, a little loyalty there,
But the cause was not cunning, nor courtship either,
But that you loved your own life; the less, then, to blame."
(ll 2341-2368)

Interestingly, the Green Knight -- who we now learn is also Lord Bertilak -- does not ascribe to Gawain any adulterous motive. He is, however, judging from appearances. We know differently, for we have been privy to Gawain's heart, courtesy of the narrator, who informed us in lines 1658 through 1660, as noted previously:

So uncommonly kind and complaisant was she,
With sweet stolen glances, that stirred his stout heart,
That he was at wits' end, and wondrous vexed;
(ll 1658-1660)

Moreover, Gawain himself proceeds to suggest that Lady Bertilak's seductive charms have succeeded with him, for in a somewhat misogynist monologue, he compares himself to other men seduced by women:

But if a dullard should dote, deem it no wonder
And through the wiles of a woman be wooed into sorrow,
For so was Adam by one, when the world began,
And Solomon by many more, and Samson the mighty --
Delilah was his doom, and David thereafter
Was beguiled by Bathsheba, and bore much distress;
Now these were vexed by their devices -- 'twere a very joy
Could one but learn to love, and believe them not.
For these were proud princes, most prosperous of old,
Past all lovers lucky, that languished under heaven,

bemused.

And one and all fell prey
To women that they had used;
If I be led astray,
Methinks I may be excused.
(ll 2414-2428)

Traditionally, all these men had been seduced by the sensual, physical charms of the women. Gawain is thus claiming the same thing in his case, tantamount to a confession of having committed an adultery of the heart. Moreover, Gawain accepts the Green Knight's offer of the belt as a gift:

But your girdle, God love you! I gladly shall take
And be pleased to possess, not for the pure gold,
Nor the bright belt itself, nor the beauteous pendants,
Nor for wealth, nor worldly state, nor workmanship fine,
But a sign of excess it shall seem oftentimes
When I ride in renown, and remember with shame
The faults and the frailty of the flesh perverse,
How its tenderness entices the foul taint of sin;
And so when praise and high prowess have pleased my heart,
A look at this love-lace will lower my pride.
(ll 2429-2438)

Note that Gawain emphasizes the weakness of his "flesh perverse" (flesche crabbed), which can have a sexual connotation, and he does refer again to the belt as a "love-lace" (luf-lace). Also, one should note the perhaps not too remote possibility of still other sexual innuendo in the Middle English original of lines 2437-2338:

And þus, quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes,
Þe loke to þis luf-lace schal leþe my hert.

Translated more closely to the original:

And thus, when pride shall prick me for prowess of arms,
A look at this love-belt shall humble my heart.

The word "pride" (pryde) has the connotation of "sexual desire" in Middle English, albeit only recorded in writing about 100 years after the Pearl Poet (OED 2, "pride," 1351 11). The word "prick" (pryk) is a notorious wordplay in Middle English, as noted by Stephen Knight in his discussion of the Pearl Poet's contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, who uses the word "priketh" in line 13 of the "General Prologue" to his Canterbury Tales, playing on its vulgar meaning, for "the sexual pun on 'prick' operates in Middle as well as Modern English" (Stephen Knight, "Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales," Literature in Context, edited by Rick Rylance and Judy Simons (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001), p. 12). If "prowess of arms" could also be taken as sexual innuendo, then the significance of the luf-lace for Gawain's probable adultery of the heart is further enhanced.

I've previously poked about on Chaucer's probable prick-pun, as readers may recall, so this is familiar territory to me. Anyway, there it stands, thus far, rough but ready.

Proof that you can learn something from anybody...

19th-Century Depiction of Geoffrey Chaucer

But is it really him?

(Image from Answers.com)

... even if you might not exist.

Truly asiduous readers might recall my blogging from Singapore in the summer of 2005, when I was attending a Society of Biblical Literature conference and presenting a paper on the concept of "holiness" in Mark's Gospel. At that time, I was told of rumors that I didn't exist, to which I responded:

My nonexistence has been greatly exaggerated.

Somebody thinks that I don't exist. No, not here at the conference, where nobody is yet conflating me with the docetic Christ. Rather, it's somebody whom I've never met . . . but maybe that goes without saying. If I had met him, he'd have to believe in my existence, right?

Jeffrey Gibson informs me that a certain Geoff Hudson has been emailing various scholars to alert them to the 'fact' that I am actually an alias for Gibson.

I won't waste my time trying to prove Mr. Hudson wrong. But if you various scholars out there are willing to attest to my existence as the genuine Horace Jeffery Hodges attending this SBL Conference in Singapore . . . well, have at it.

I guess that nobody managed (or tried) to prove my existence to Mr. Hudson, for I received an email from him only yesterday in response to a note that I had posted to one of the biblical studies listserves that I participate in. The listserve had been discussing a certain Gnostic Gospel of Judas and using the acronym GoJ for convenience. I'd previously done a lot of work on Gnosticism and the Gospel of John, so at one point, when a scholar named Hindley referred to the Gnostic GoJ, I got my signals crossed and asked why he though that the Gospel of John was Gnostic. Hindley reminded me:

Jeffrey: That stood for Gospel of Judas, the subject of the post. THAT gospel, I'm sure, most everybody will agree is "Gnostic".

Notice that he called me "Jeffrey" rather than "Jeffery." That was enough for the apparently ever-alert Geoff Hudson, who sent me an email:

I am surprised you have not complained that Hindley has spelt your middle name incorrectly. So why doesn't he call you Horace? May be he knows your real name is Jeffrey -- his Freudian slip, or senior moment, may be?

I replied to this as succinctly as I courteously could:

You have me mixed up with someone else.

To which, Mr. Hudson retorted:

So it seems did ... Hindley who called you Jeffrey. As a long-standing member of the group, he should have known better, shouldn't he?

I could see where this was going -- into an endless string of emails -- so I replied as politely (and briefly) as possible:

I won't try to convince you of my identity, for I recall you making a similar confusion a year or two ago. Have a Merry Christmas anyway.

And I hope that I've seen the end of this. Meanwhile, I have Mr. Hudson to thank for teaching me a new expression: "senior moment."

To be precise, he didn't 'teach' me, for he used the expression without explaining it, leaving me baffled. Because I'm living in Korea, where Koreans often use the word "senior" to refer to somebody above them in Korea's hierarchical society, my initial, unreasonable thought was that Mr. Hudson was suggesting that Hindley had called me "Jeffrey" out of some sort of Confucian evaluation of my hierarchical position relative to his -- but I wasn't sure if this put me above or below Hindley. Who was the 'senior'? Who the 'junior'?

In re-reading Mr. Hudson's email, however, I realized that "senior moment" must be an analogous to "Freudian slip" and that it must be a fixed expression.

So, I Googled it and found the answer on a webpage hosted by the Macmillan English Dictionary:

The term senior moment was coined in America in the mid-nineties, but has become more widely used in the UK during the past couple of years. Originating with specific reference to seniors or senior citizens -- people aged sixty or over -- it has now entered more general use and can be applied in any situation where someone experiences a momentary lapse of memory, regardless of their age. The term highlights the idea that our brains simply weren’t built to cope with the information overload and stress generated by life in the 21st century. An absent-minded activity, like putting cornflakes in the fridge or milk in the cupboard, can also be referred to as a senior moment.

Macmillan even provided a humorous anecdote as an example, "A True Senior Moment":

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.

The two elderly gentlemen were talking, and one said, 'Last night we went out to a new restaurant, and it was really great. I'd recommend it very highly.'

The other man said, 'What's the name of the restaurant?'

The first man thought and thought and finally said, 'What's the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know ... the one that's red and has thorns.'

'Do you mean a rose?'

'Yes,' the man said, then he turned toward the kitchen and yelled, 'Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?'

So, that's a senior moment! I have those all the time. And the expression was coined in America in the mid-90s and resided there before emigrating to the UK more recently. Interesting. Either I've missed it completely in my long absence from the States and the long time since my last UK trip, or I heard it but have suffered a long senior moment since then, for I really don't recall the expression.

Anyway, Mr. Hudson -- if you really are Mr. Hudson -- a hat tip to you for the inadvertent but fascinating English lesson.