Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/114

 his death so sore, why have not I thine eloquence and learning to chide Friday, as ye did? (For in sooth on a Friday thy king was slain.) Then would I show you how I could lament for Chaunticleer's need and torment.

Certes, such cry, or lamentation, was never made by ladies, when Ilium was won, and Pyrrhus, with his sword drawn, had seized King Priam by the beard and slain him (as the Æneid telleth us), as made all the hens in the close when they had seen the sight of Chaunticleer. But most of all shrieked dame Pertelote—far louder than Hasdrubal's wife, when her husband had been slain and the Romans had burned Carthage; she was so full of torment and madness, that, of her own will, she leapt into the fire, and burned herself with a steadfast heart.

O woful hens! even so ye cried as cried the wives of the Senators, because their husbands had perished, when Nero burned the city of Rome; without guilt, this Nero hath slain them.

Now will I turn once more to my tale. This simple widow and eke her two daughters heard these hens cry and make woe, and anon they started out of doors and saw how the fox went toward the grove and on his back bare away the cock ; and cried : "Out! Harrow! Weylaway! Ha! ha! the fox!" and after him they ran, and eke many other folk with staves.

Ran Colle, our dog, and Gerland and Talbot and Malkin, with a distaff in her hand ; ran cow and calf and eke the very hogs, so frightened were they by the dogs' barking and the shouting of the men and women. They ran so that it seemed their hearts would crack; they yelled as do the fiends in hell. The ducks cackled as if men were killing them ; the geese flew over the treetops for fear; out of the hive came the swarm of bees. So hideous was the noise—ah! benedicite! certes, even Jack Straw