The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer Author:Geoffrey Chaucer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Say yow a song to glade yow, I wene : 9Oo And lat us stynt of ernestful matiere. Herknith my song, that saith in this manere. L'envoye de Chaucer. Gris... more »ild is deed, and eek hir paeience, And bothe at oones buried in Itayle : For whiche I crye in open audience, No weddid man so hardy be to assayle His wyves paeience, in hope to fynde Grisildes, for in certeyn he schal fayle. O noble wyves, ful of heigh prudence, Let noon humilite your tonges nayle : 9O6O Ne lat no clerk have cause or diligence To write of yow a story of such mervayle, As of Grisildes pacient and kynde, Lest Chichivache yow swolwe in hir entraile. 9064—Chichivache. According to a popular fable, which scans to have had its origin in France, the chichevache or chicheface, was a monster which lived only on good women, and which was said to be always thin and meagre on account of the extreme rarity of this article of food. M. Achille Juhinal, in the notes to his Mysteres inedits du art?. siecle, tom, i, p. 390, has printed a French poetical description of this animal from a manuscript of the fourteenth century. In the French miracle of St. Genevieve, of the fifteenth century, (Jubinal, ib. p. 281) a man says satirically to the saint,— Gardez-vous de la chicheface, El vous mordra s'el vous encontre, Vous n'amendez point sa besoigne. I am not aware of any allusion to this fable in England before Chaucer ; but our countrymen carried the satire still further, and added another beast named Bycorn, who lived upon good and patient husbands, and who was as fat as the other was lean, on account of the abundance of his favourite food. A poem by Lydgate on " Bycome and Chichevache," Folwith ecco, that holdith no silence, But ever answereth at the countretayle : Beth nought bydaffed for your inno...« less