Chaucer's description of the seamen of his time.
Among the most graphic descriptions of the character
of the English seamen of the fourteenth
century, is that of the renowned Chaucer[1] in his
"Prologue to the Canterbury Tales." Although it
is the picture of a hardened, reckless "felawe," who
made no scruple to drown the prisoners whom he
captured—"by water he sent them home to every
land"—it affords an excellent insight into the
manners and customs, as well as the dress, of the
seamen of his time. Indeed, the poet's description
gives a good idea of the free-and-easy character of
seamen at all periods of English history; a class
of men scarcely less distinct and peculiar in their
habits now than then; and while equally expert
and ready in tempestuous weather, no less fond,
when at ease on shore, of "their draught of wyn,"
or of their glass of grog.
"A schipman was ther, wonyng fer by Weste:
For ought I woot, he was of Dertemouthe
He rood upon a rouncy, as he couthe,
In a gown of faldying to the kne.
A dagger hangyng on a laas hadde he
Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun.
The hoote somer had maad his hew al broun;
- [Footnote: represented standing in a large ship, were struck in allusion to, if not
in commemoration of, this action. (Hist. Roy. Navy, ii. p. 223.) Selden quotes the lines:
"For foure things our noble sheweth to me,
King, shippe and sword, and power of the sea."
Mare Clausum ii. c. 25.
The same writer also gives this line:
"Thus made he Nobles coyned of record,"
in honour, apparently, of the capture of Calais A.D. 1347.]
- ↑ Chaucer is generally believed to have been born in 1328, and to have died in 1400: it is certain that he flourished in the time of Edward III. and of Richard II. The orthography of this extract is from Bell's ed. of Chaucer, 1855.
