Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/104

 such peril that my heart even yet is sore afeard. Now may God," quoth he, "bring my dream to good, and keep my body out of foul prison! I dreamed how that I was roaming up and down in our yard, when I saw a beast that was like a hound, and would have seized upon my body, and would have killed me. His colour was betwixt yellow and red, and his tail was tipped—and so were his ears—with black, unlike the rest of his hide; his snout was pointed and his two eyes glowed. Even yet I almost die for dread of his look. This, it was, caused my groaning doubtless."

"Avoy!" quoth she, "fie on you, chicken-hearted! Alas!" quoth she, "for now, by that God in heaven, have ye lost my heart and all my love. By my faith, I cannot love a coward! For certes, whatsoever any woman may say, we all desire, if may be, to have husbands hardy, wise, generous, and trusty with secrets; yea, and no niggard, nor fool, nor him that's aghast at every knife, nor a boaster, by that God in heaven! How for shame durst ye say unto your love that anything might make you afraid? Have ye no man's heart—and have a beard? Alas! how can ye be aghast at dreams? There is nothing, God wot, but vanity in dreams. Dreams be engendered by repletions, and fumes, and oft of a man's temperament, when humours be too abundant in a wight. Certes, this dream which ye have dreamt cometh from the great superfluity of your red colera, which causeth folk in their dreams to be in terror of arrows, of fire with red flames, of great beasts, lest they bite them, of fighting, and of whelps, great and small; right as the humour of melancholy causeth full many a man to cry out in his sleep for fear of black bears, or black bulls, or else lest black devils catch them. I could also speak of other humours, that work sore woe to many a