The "Cherry-Tree Carol" and the "Merchant's Tale"
[Proofed briefly, footnotes not proofed. The comparison of these ballads is weak but they are analogues, even though it's a stretch. "The Cherry Tree Carol" analogues are presented near the end, with a lengthy quote of Psuedo-Matthew XX. He mentioned but provided no text from the Ludus Coventriae, Play 15, and established it as Tradition 2. It's more likely that an ur-ballad from Tradition 2 (known as the N-Town Plays) was present during Chaucer's time and this unknown text is the ballad from which the Cherry-Tree Carol has descended.
R. Matteson 2014]
The "Cherry-Tree Carol" and the "Merchant's Tale"
by Bruce A. Rosenberg
The Chaucer Review, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring, 1971), pp. 264-276
THE "CHERRY-TREE CAROL" AND THE MERCHANT'S TALE
by Bruce A. Rosenberg
F. N. Robinson remarks briefly in his notes to the Merchant's Tale that an analogue to May's particular hunger may be found in "The Cherry-Tree Carol."[1] There he drops the analogy; but no doubt this was one of the many ideas which he simply did not have time to formulate in detail, or perhaps which he did not think important enough. In any event, several structural and thematic elements in this medieval story appear to have been used in the final garden scene of the Merchant's Tale that more fully explains Chaucer's purpose and his sources, which go further than some version of the "Enchanted Pear Tree" (Aarne-Thompson Type 1423 ).
Chaucer's use of the carol story in the narrative texture of the Merchants Tale quickly raises questions concerning the nature of medieval narrative technique. His approach and his method in this Tale apply not only to his other works but to the narratives of his contemporaries as well. The skill to combine, fluently and coherently, two or more narrative or dramatic elements into a single logical and autonomous story, is one that has been slighted. Before anything more than superficial respect for it can begin, it must first be analyzed. The details of the carol story are found in the apocryphal gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, chapter 20, one of the most popular apocryphal accounts of the childhood of Jesus in the fourteenth century. The version presented below is Child ballad 54B from a Worcester broad side of the eighteenth century;[2] I repeat only the pertinent stanzas:
1 Joseph was an old man,
and an old man was he,
And he married Mary,
the Queen of Galilee.
2 When Joseph was married,
and Mary home had brought
Mary proved with child
and Joseph knew it not.
3 Joseph and Mary walked
through a garden gay
Where the cherries they grew
upon every tree
4 O then bespoke Mary
with words both meek and mild:
'O gather me cherries, Joseph,
they run so in my mind.'
5 And then replied Joseph
with words so unkind:
'Let him gather thee cherries
that got thee with child.'
6 O then bespoke our saviour,
all in his mother's womb:
'Bow down, good cherry-tree,
to my mother's hand.'
7 The uppermost sprig
bowed down to Mary's knee:
'Thus you may see Joseph,
these cherries are for me.'
8 'O eat your cherries, Mary,
O eat your cherries now
O eat your cherries, Mary,
That grow upon the bow.'
Professors Robinson's note concerns only lines 2335 and 2336 of the Merchant's Tale, which occur within the final tableau scene:
I telle yow wel, a womman in my plit
May han to fruyt so greet an appztit . . .
But many other lines within this episode recall the "Cherry-Tree Carol"; not only is Mary's (presumably feigned) hunger for pears an ironic parody of the pregnant Virgin's desire for cherries, but both women are accompanied by old men. Joseph's initial doubts about Mary suggest a temporary spiritual blindness on his part, analogous to the physical and spiritual blindness of January, and both women are in a garden whose focus is a tree intimately related to their moral status. The piety of the carol story further heightens our perspective of the events of the pear tree episode of the Tale; the initials of January and May echo those of Joseph and Mary.
Chaucer's use of this apocryphal account of the childhood of Jesus when composing the Merchant's Tale led him to climax the story with a scene that parodies the "earthly paradise" which January had foolishly sought in marriage. The carol, or some other form of its story, provides a striking and contrasting background for the surface action of Mary's deception of her blind and foolish husband; the story of the Virgin and her old husband grown skeptical is a perfect negative of the licentious bride who dupes her credulous knight. Pregnancy, ever-present in the medieval consciousness, culminates and completes the parody: sacred and archetypal in Mary's story, it is feigned (presumably) for an immoral purpose in the other. To see how the "Cherry-Tree Carol" story fits the thematic context of the Merchants Tale we have only to recall how heavily Chaucer has loaded the latter with religious allusion. The narrator at first will not venture to say "were it for hoolynesse or for dotage" (1253) that the aging knight seeks to be married. Once having made the decision, January spends day and night in search of the partner who shall make his life blissful,
Preyinge our Lord to graunten him that he
Mighte ones know of thilke blisful lyf
That is bitwixe an housbonde and his wyf,
And for to lyve under that hooly boond
With which that first God man and womman bond.
(1258-62)
January's first words epitomize his spiritual blindness: "For wed lock is so easy and so dene,/ That in this world it is a paradys" (1264 65). Allusions to the first parents in Eden as well as to the bliss here after abound, showing that the old knight is seeking both an archetypal "paradys" and a perfect heaven here on earth. He says that no man may experience two perfect blisses, "This is to seye, in erthe and eek in hevene" (1639), and so he wishes to be reassured about eternity since "That I shal have myn hevene in erthe heere" (1647). While January thinks of May as "his paradys, his make" (1822), only Justinus warns him sagely that "Paraunter she may be youre purga torie,/ She may be Goddes meene and Goddes whippe" (1670-71).
Ironic as it may be, the narrator constantly keeps this Edenic imagery before us: marriage is "a ful greet sacrement" (1319); one can live "a lyf blisful and ordinaat (1284); man should "thanken his God that hym hath sent a wyf,/ Or elles preye to God hym for to send/ A wyf" (1352-54). When he argues that men's decisions should be founded upon "good conseil"[3] the four exemplars cited; Jacob, Judith, Abigail, and Esther, are from the Bible (1362-74).
As the narrative develops, the Merchant's language focuses more sharply on the story's thematic irony. This unlikely marriage, which we also know to be unholy, is likened to the metaphysical Christian marriage in which men generally, and January specifically, are urged to "love wel thy wyf, as Crist loved his chirche" (1384). With a grotesque lack of self-awareness of his own lechery, the knight has all along, according to his own lights, taken seriously the religious implications of his bond, "whiche purpos was pleasant to God" (1621).
The two most telling passages of Chaucer's intention are the icon of Adam and Eve (1325-36) and the parody of the Song of Songs in which January urges May to disport herself with him in his recently constructed garden (2138-48). The icon passage occurs early in the narrator's monologue and functions as a structural and thematic paradigm for the action in the Tale. Eden, a perverse and perverted Eden, is one of the evocations of January's real garden, and Eve's sin which brought death to the primal garden is Mary's negative. Created to be a paradise on earth, January's garden and the tree within it are concerned in an important way with both the actual and fictional "falls"; in Chaucer's version, matters are expedited by the physical aid of the seducer, Damyan, "lyk to the naddre in bosom sly untrewe" (1786).
The thematic importance of the tree in this scene has been carefully prepared for by several allusions to trees earlier in the story. January compares himself, rather proudly, to the old tree which nevertheless bears fruit:
Though I be hoor, I fare as doth a tree
That blosmeth er that fruyt ywoxen bee,
And blosmy tree nys neither drye ne deed. (1461-63)
He claims, furthermore, that his heart and all his limbs are as green as the laurel (1465). The analogy is not valid, and his logic, as we see more clearly in his responses to Justinus and Placebo, has been "cherry-tree carol" and merchants TALE overcome by his passions. This weakness is simply another view of the lechery of which his marriage is guilty. And the dendritic meta phor is again unconsciously self-indicting in that he allows himselfto believe that he is fruitful merely because he desires so badly to have an heir, a desire which in the final scene enables May to exploit rum.[4] There is bitter fruit in this Tale; January is not blossoming and he will not be fruitful. When a man is "oold and hoor" a wife is not necessarily "the fruyt of his tr3sor" (1270). The seven deadly sins form a tree with many branches; early in the story his spiritual corruption blinds him to their sight.
Fruits, because of the popular beliefs invested in them, can signal trouble whether they be apples or, as in this case, pears. Mary, in the carol story, had a yearning for cherries, and they are appropriate to her virginity.[5] The folktale analogues from which Chaucer derived this Tale, and which gave the name to the "The Enchanted Pear Tree" class of tales, have probably used the pear intentionally. In popular lore it is commonly associated with the erotic, originally, as Robert Graves guesses, because its wood burns readily, making it ideal for kindling and so giving it "ardent" associations.[6] Latin "pirum" and its Old French reflex "poire" mean both "pear" and "rod." Alisoun of the Millers Tale was more ''blisful on to see/ Than is the newe pere-jonette tree" (A 3247-49 ). It was a common medieval joke to identify pears with male genitalia but also, perhaps because of its suggestive shape, both like a womb or breast, its sexual connection was reinforced. One of the riddles of Claret explicitly uses the pear as a sexual symbol: "A vessel have I that is round like a pear, moist in the middle, surrounded by hair" (answer: eye).
Prior to the Pluto-Proserpine dialogue and the pear tree episode, January utters one of the most ironic grotesqueries in this Tale:
Rys up, my wyf, my love, my lady free!
The turtles voys is heard, my dowve sweete;
The wynter is goon with alle his reynes weete.
Com forth now, with thyne eyen columbyn!
How fairer been thy breastes than is wyn!
The garden is enclosed al aboute;
Com forth, my white spouse! out of doute
Thou hast me wounded in myn herte, O wyf!
No spot of thee ne knew I al my lyf.
Com forth, and lat us taken oure disport;
I chees thee for my wyf and my confort.
(2138-48)
The thematic importance of this passage to the Tale compels a seeming digression at this point, as it is a fulfilment of the narrator's earlier remark that man should "love well (his) wyf, as Crist loved his chirche."
In echoing the Canticum Cantorum, January despiritualizes it. The old knight's sense is at variance with Jerome's Epistola adversus Jovinianum (Migne, PL, XXIII, cols. 263 ff.); therefore, this treatise cannot be intended. Within the Tale, Jerome has to be seen as the standard from which January departs. Chaucer was familiar with Jerome's commentary; each figure of January is expanded in the Epistola:
2138 Rys up, my wyf, . . . (Cant. ii. 10 & 13): Christ and His church may rise for the shadow of the old law has passed.
The turtles voys . . . . ( Cant. ii. 12 ) : the turtle is the chasest of birds, dwelling in lofty places, and so is a type of the savior.
2140 The wynter is goon .... (Cant. ii. 11): the shadow of the old law has passed away.
Com forth . . . . ( Cant. i. 15 ) : ( Jerome does not comment specifically on this verse).
How fairer .... (Cant. iv. 10): the wine is the new wine (law) which Jesus bade the apostles drink; the "breasts" are the heart wherein lies the spirit, reinforcing the spirituality of wine.
The garden . . . . ( Cant. iv. 12 ) : the Virgin is like a garden sealed and enclosed.
Com forth, my white spouse .... (Cant. v. 10): the spotless bride from Lebanon is the Church.
2145 Thou hast me wounded .... (Cant. iv. 9): "killed" would have meant carnal love, but the "heart" is wounded meaning
that this marriage is spiritual, not carnal. No spot of thee .... (Cant. iv. 7): the Church is without spot or wrinkle.
Chaucer has eclectically taken verses from four different books of the Canticum Cantorum, and it is no coincidence that both he and Jerome were drawn to almost all of the same verses. January's song is blasphemous, probably unknowingly, and his blindness is reflected in the Merchant's evaluation of the performance: "swiche olde lewed wordes used he" (2149). In view of what Chaucer knows about the passage, and what his audience must have known about it, the Merchant's evaluation is primarily self-revealing.
The Pluto-Prosperpine intrusion?which is characteristic of this kind of tale and which functions to spring the action in the pear tree episode, maintains the thematic and analogic utility of Solomon whom Pluto quotes to the effect that though good men are scarce, good women do not exist at all. The "King of Fayerye" sounds like one of the early Fathers in calling Solomon "wys, and richest of richnesses,/Fulfild of sapience and of worldly glorie" (2242-43). Jerome saw him in his usual typological role as a type of Christ,who is the "true Solomon" (Migne, PL).
Prosperpine attack's Pluto's argument curiously. First she takes Solomon's words seriously and symbolically as in Melibee: the sentence of his language is that only God is capable of absolute goodness; neither man nor woman is good in the cosmic sense. But then she immediately begins an ad hominem attack on the later life of Solomon, that maker of temples of false gods (2295), that lecher and idolator (2298), who in his old age forsook God (2399).
Women have rejected logic with such attacks before (particularlyin the NPT); the immediate complexity is that here two pagan gods are debating with the terms of Christian scholasticism. The analogues of Type 1423 that have survived depict Jesus and one of the saints in the Pluto-Proserpine roles. Either Chaucer made the change of characters or else he gave the gods exegetical bents of mind. The latter possibility seems the more likely; lecherous Pluto and young Prosperpine are an ideal couple for the intricate network of analogy, and the retention of the character of Solomon is important for the thematic continuity of the entire Tale. We have seen that January's garden is a secularized Eden, a pagan paradise, and is a parody of a medieval Garden of Love; I am here agruing that it is also a negative of the garden in the "Cherry-Tree Carol" story. But we should not forget that the Song of Solomon is also set in a garden, and that much of the Biblical imagery is of the lovers in that setting ( Cant. v.1 et passim).
Finally, one is struck by the "covenant" (2176) that January proposes to May just prior to their outing. In exchange for her fidelity ("beth to me trewe," 2169), he promises that
Thre thynges, certes, shal ye wynne therby:
First, love of Crist, and to youreself honour,
And al myn heritage, toun and tour.
(2170-72)
Thus is offered a kind of triple temptation; she is to kiss him as a token of the covenant, to which she agrees because, as she explains it,
"I have," quod she, "a soule for to kepe
As wel as ye, and also myn honour
And of my wyfhod thilke tendre flour,
Which that I have assured in youre hond . . ."
(2188-91)
This is yet another sample of the biblical allusion scattered through out the tale. God made several covenants with His people and with certain individuals such as Noah, Abraham, and Moses. In return for their faith and service He promised to bless them and their tribes. Like January, all were old men when the covenant was made; but God also made one with Solomon (1 Kings 9). If the king of Israel walked in uprightness, God promised to establish the throne of his kingdom upon Israel forever. But Solomon, who had decided wisely among the two claimant mothers and who had built a temple, in his old age became infatuated with strange women, taking many of them for wives and concubines. When they turned him away from his true God (1 Kings 9: 1-4), enemies and misfortunes were sent to plague him, as January's lust is punished by enemies and misfortunes.
As the "Cherry-Tree Carol" is in some ways analogous to the "Enchanted Pear Tree," so elements in Solomon's life are analogous to the life of January; so is the old knight's love song a negative analogue of the Song of Solomon. January, lacking Solomon's wisdom, shares his lechery and idolotry in his old age. Joseph, another foolish old man in one sense, is actually a foil through his sacred role. Finally, Pluto's life is analogous, in the episode which Claudian relates of the ravishing of the youthful Prosperpine. In Piers Plowman one finds a similar analogic network.
Both Karl P. Wentersdorf and Mortimer J. Donovan have discussed the relevance of Pluto and Proserpina,[7] the latter agruing that Chau cer had this pagan pair in mind from the beginning. Relying on the doctrine of charity in medieval literary gardens, he enumerates a striking number of thematic and dramatic parallels between these fairies and the mismatched couple of the Tales. My understanding of Chaucer's intent is complementary: if the ur-tale did involve Jesus and one of the saints, Chaucer might well have changed characters to include a thematically analogous pair.
The contrast between the Clerk's idealism and the Merchant's materialism reinforces our belief in the cupidinous theme of the story in Chaucer's hands. The most eloquent exponent of this idea, Paul A. Olson, also relies on Robertson for inspiration, and sees each pair of "parallels", he prefers the less formalistic term, rather than "analogues", emblematic of unreasonable possession and the unreasonably possessed. Olson's analogues are thematic: the Merchant and his money; the Merchant and his wife; January and May; Pluto and Proserpina. The last pair supplant the Christian deities and rival pagans because they were associated with commerce and wealth, and are "more comfortable" to the Merchant's commercial ethos.[8] Given the elaborate religious resonance of the Merchant's Tale, we can understand why Chaucer would use the "Cherry-Tree Carol" story in this narrative. The garden, so beautiful that even the writer of The Romance of the Rose could not imagine its equal (2032), is both dramatically parallel and thematically contrary to Eden. So with the Holy Family in the carol story. Joseph and Mary stop by a garden because the Virgin's pregnancy has given her a craving for the fruit. Her aged husband is at this moment suspicious, though wrongly so, in contrast to the potentially jealous but credulous old knight. The Virgin is the spiritual, moral, and the dramatic counterpart to Chaucer's young and "fresshe" fictional beauty. And in both stories the young women get their fruits, though what that fruit is and the manner of attaining it illustrates the difference between saint and sinner, virtue and vice, and chastity and adultery in the Middle Ages.
One has never had difficulty in understanding May's role in this Tale; however, the implicit contrast with Mary, at this tender moment in her popular legend when her innocence and human warmth is so touchingly revealed, focuses our perception on May's guilt more acutely. May is the more culpable because she departs the more from Mary's purity and sweet innocence. At the point where May makes known her hunger and induces January to stoop over so that she may step upon his back ( well-chosen emblematic gesture) and thus joins with Damyan in the tree, the analogy with the "Cherry-Tree Carol," ends and "The Enchanted Pear Tree" begins. However, the "Enchanted Pear Tree" tale does not account for several important elements in the final scene of the Merchant's Tale. The particular hunger for fruit, feigned by May, is not an element in any of the literary analogues we have so far uncovered;[9] as Robinson noted, it is present in the carol. Nor is the advanced age of the husband ever stressed in the analogues; we are told only that the various husbands are blind. Their wives are usually young and fair, to make them evoke the expected response of such characters in fabilaux, but age does not seem to be an issue. Here again the carol story "fits" the situation Chaucer was creating perfectly. Joseph's advancing age made him something of a joke in medieval popular literature as a counterpart of the conventional fabliau old man who is cuckolded by his young and attractive wife; here Joseph is the ideal dramatic analogue for January and by the same token an ideal thematic contrast: to the seriousness of Joseph's situation, to the fidelity of his wife, to the importance of their mission, and in his attitude toward her maternity. Cherries are not pears. The rest of the tableau is as with the analogues: the blind husband below, the tree-tryst, the miraculously restored sight, and the some what less miraculous gift of persuasion given to the wife. While most of the action in this scene derives from some variant of Tale Type 1423,[10] "The Enchanted Pear Tree" has been conflated with the carol story, probably because Chaucer saw that the dramatic situation of both is so similar, and that having done so he exploited the resulting unified episode with devastating effect. The pear tree encounter is by itself damning in one sense only; when we are aware of the sacred comparison being made, Chaucer's statement is all the more cogent.
Although Chaucer's specific source, the text he used, or the version he heard are unknown, it might be useful to speculate in what precise form the carol story came to him. Child's earliest versions of the carol come from the eighteenth century, three hundred and fifty years after Chaucer's time. Possibly he did not know of a carol either in the form in which Child collected it and certainly with the same story line; however, the story was well-known in the fourteenth century in various forms. The most popular of these was in the apocryphal gospel of Pseudo-Matthew; the stories in this work had by the fourteenth century become the commonplace property of all strata of society, and its influence was tremendous. Despite persistent attempts to denounce such specious materials, they persisted throughout the Renaissance, exerting perhaps even more influence on literature and art than the Bible. A large number of manuscripts exist today, including three from Chaucer's century.[11]
The story of the tree that bowed on the blessed child's command to Mary's hunger was also told in the immensely popular Childhood of Jesus, and in the Ludus Coventrise; a contemporary Cornish play, the Origo Mundi has Satan forcing the apple tree to bow so that Eve may pluck one of its fruits; and Child lists several versions in the popular literature of the time.[12] Even in this simple story we seem to have at least two major traditions concerning the setting of the episode and the reason for Mary's hunger. Tradition 1, so designated simply for clarity and without regard for precedence, is found in Pseudo-Matthew, 20: 1-2:
Now on the third day of their journey, as they went on, it happened that blessed Mary was wearied by the too great heat of the sun in the desert, and seeing a palm-tree, she said to Joseph: "I should like to rest a little in the shade of this tree." And Joseph led her quickly to the palm and let her dismount from her animal. And when blessed Mary had sat down, she looked up at the top of the palm-tree and saw that it was full of fruits, and said to Joseph: "I wish someone could fetch some of these fruits of the palm-tree." And Joseph said to her: "I wonder that you say this; for you see how high this palm-tree is, and (I wonder) that you even think about eating of the fruits of the palm. I think rather of the lack of water, which already fails us in the skins, and we have nothing with which we can refresh our selves and the animals." Then the child Jesus, who was sitting with a happy countenanee in his mothers lap, said to the palm: "Bend down your branches, O tree, and refresh my mother with your fruit." And immediately at this command the palm bent its head down to the feet of blessed Mary, and they gathered from it fruits with which they all refreshed themselves.[13]
This version differs from the "Cherry-Tree Carol," tradition 2, in five significant details. The scene is set in a garden in the carol, but, naturally enough, in a desert in this story about the flight to Egypt. The fruit varies more frequently, being a cherry in the carol, apparently a palm-date here, simply "froyt" in the Childhood,[14] and in Southern Europe an apple.[15] The cause of Mary's hunger is here simply the heat of the desert, while in the carol it is pregnancy. The situation is necessary because in tradition 1 Jesus is already an infant while in the carol version he is not yet born. Finally, the relationship of Joseph and Mary varies according to the above two details. In tradition 1 they have been married for some years; in the "Cherry Tree Carol" tradition they are newly-wed, or perhaps as David Fowler suggests, in "in courtship."[16]
The earliest text of tradition 2 is the fifteenth century Ludus Coventriae, which suggests that it is probably derivative. If the date of popular materials were ascertained by manuscripts alone, this would be the necessary conclusion, but there are several other possibilities. The absence of a tradition 2 document in the fourteenth century does not prove that none ever existed or, more likely, that oral versions of the story were not circulating at the time. Despite the modernity of the stanza form of the Child version of the "Cherry-Tree Carol," it is entirely possible that the story was sung as a carol in Chaucer's time in a somewhat different form. And finally, there is the possibility that Chaucer made certain changes in some tradition I story to fit his Tale. More likely, however, is the possibility that the Merchant's Tale is the earliest text of a tradition 2 version.
Certainly Chaucer made use of all of the art forms he found around him in England and on the continent. Just as he used Aubes, devotional hymns, ubi sunt lyrics, and oratorical structures throughout his narrative, so are many of those narratives based intimately upon folktales of several sorts. His writing reflects popular beliefs of every kind about weather, animals, herbal medicine, proverbs, magic, plants, and about every other recognized folk genre. He was much closer to "Das Volk" than we are to the singer of ballads in the southern Appalachians, and their traditional beliefs,his beliefs usually, permeate his works. Why not then this tremendously popular story from the accepted apocryphal gospels?
In the Merchant's Tale, Chaucer has conflated two similar traditions to make a richer, fuller narrative. His use of the accounts of the childhood of Jesus pointedly directs our attention to his intense ridicule of May as well as of January (whose folly is more obvious than hers prior to the last tableau)[17] and to those aspects of their characters that are germaine to the Tale's meaning. But manipulation of this device, which has thus far been overlooked by most medievalists, goes beyond an immediate concern with this particular Tale, and even beyond the corpus of Chaucer's work.
Romances, for instance, are often the artful combination of two or more simpler tales that the minstrel or copyist has molded to his own taste. The skill with which some medieval writers blend previously discrete structural and thematic narrative elements results in a framework that both retains the separate features of the original stories, yet culminates the disparate elements simultaneously. This skill must be judged by the subtlety and effectiveness of the device: it is not enough to throw several tales into a churn, tumble them about, and then string out an arbitrary narrative from the mixture. Within the newer, larger narrative each tale must retain something of its structural integrity and must be concluded in an aesthetically satisfying fashion.
The Pennsylvania State University
1. Fred N. Robinson, ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston, 1957), p. 716. All citations of Chaucer's works in this paper are from this text. 2. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II (New York, 1886), 2-3.
3. January, following Placebo's hint, does not heed the words of Solomon that he "wirk alle thyng by conseil" ( 1485), and the results are disastrous. Chauntcleer also disregards reason with equally disastrous results. At the heart of the matter is the medieval concept of Prudence.
4. Milton Miller, "The Heir in the Merchant's Tale," PQ, 29 (1950), 437-40,
develops the irony in the situation of January's wanting and heir and Mary's
claims of pregnancy to dupe him.
5. J. Barre Toelken, "Riddles Wisely Expounded," WE, 25 (1966), 3-4.
6. The White Goddess (New York, 1959), p. 26.
7. Mortimer J. Donovan, "The Image of Pluto and Prosperpine in the Merchant's
Tale," PQ, 36 ( 1957), 49-60; and Karl P. Wentersdorf, "Theme and Structure
in the Merchant's Tale: The Function of the Pluto Episode," PMLA, 80
(1965), 522-27.
8. Paul A. Olsen, "Chaucer's Merchant and January's 'Hevene in Erthe HeereV'
ELH, 28 (1961), 203-14.
9. John C. McGalliard, "Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Deschamps' Miroir de
Manage," PQ, 25 (1946), 230, argues that some sixty lines on the appetites
of pregnant women was Chaucer's source. Wisely, he does not argue for
specific items but the idea of such a menu. Clearly, the "Cherry-Tree Carol"
story provides a much closer analogue.
10. The Italian version, a novellino, is the likely candidate for the primary
source: see Sources and Analogues; Germaine Dempster, "On the Source of
the Deception Story in the Merchant's Tale," MP, 24 (1936), 133-54, argues
for the secondary use of French sources. A recent article, Karl P. Wenters
dorf, "Chaucer's Merchant and it's Irish Analogues," SP, 63 (1966), 604-29,
points out that the Irish stories alone include the "machinery" of the miracu
lous cure, and that some Irish version was Chaucer's likely secondary source.
11. Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher
(Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 368 and 406.
12. Popular Ballads, II, 1-2.
13. Quotation from Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, p. 411.
14. C. Horstmann, Childhood of Jesus in Archiv, 74 ( 1885), 11. 77 if.
15. Popular Ballads, II, 1.
16. A Literary History of the Popular Ballad (Chapel Hill, 1968), p. 48. A special meaning is surely assigned here since the first stanza tells us that
Joseph was an old man,
and an old man was he,
And he married Mary
the Queen of Galilee.
17. To my mind the most profound understanding of the Tale is that of Bertrand
H. Bronson, "Afterthoughts of the Merchant's Tale," SP, 58 (1961), 583-96,
who points out that both the young, sensual wife and the senex amans were
traditional butts, and that one should be surprised to find them treated gently.
The Tale was written not for misogyny, but mirth.