Perhaps Chaucer knew the tale in a form similar to that in Hans Sach's version, or the combination may have been Chaucer's own independent work. This version, by the famous German Meistersinger, has almost all the elements of the tale as it appears in Chaucer, though in a highly condensed form. The combination of the two motifs in one tale does not appear until after Chaucer's time and then only in German sources: Hans Sachs' The Smith in the Kneading Tub. Morlini's "The Monk Who Prophesied an Earthquake" renders the simple tale in elegant Latin verse. The motif of prophesying some disaster as part of arranging a lovers' tryst also appears in a simple form: Massucio's "Viola and Her Lovers" shows the tale in its fully-developed form, complete with the hot metal implement.īèrenger of the Long Arse, employs the motif in a quite different manner, as a means of punishing snobbery of the sort Absolon displays (though the punishment and its effect are quite different). The motif can also be developed in an elaborate manner: It is late enough to have been influenced by Chaucer's Tale, but it may also reflect an oral version of the motif in its most primitive form.
Old Hogyn's Aventure, for example, is a sixteenth-century ballad version of the climax in the Miller's Tale. The "Misdirected Kiss" can appear in a simple form: It embodies two widespread motifs - "The Misdirected Kiss" and the "Second Flood." The Miller's Tale is Chaucer's finest fabliaux indeed, it is the best of all the fabliaux in English or French. (Students reading this text for the first time may find an interlinear translation helpful.) The neighbors rush in, and all are convinced old John is mad.
Nicholas puts his backside out, Absolon strikes it with the red-hot coulter, Nicholas yells for water the carpenter awakes and thinks the flood has come, cuts lose his tub and falls and breaks his arm. He gets a hot coulter (plow blade) from Gervase, the smith, and returns to ask for another kiss. She promises him a kiss and puts her backside out the window.
They are interrupted by Absolon, who has come to woo Alisoun at the window. John goes to sleep, Alisoun and Nicholas go back to the bedroom. When the flood is due, all three climb up into the tubs. Nicholas tricks John into thinking that Noah's flood is coming again John rigs up three kneading tubs, in which he, Nicholas, and Alisoun can float until the waters recede. Absolon, the parish clerk and village dandy, also lusts for Alisoun, but he woos her in vain, for Nicholas is there first. He has a boarder, the clerk Nicholas, who makes advances to Alisoun she quickly agrees and they determine to consummate the affair. John, a rich old carpenter of Oxford has a young wife, the eighteen-year-old Alisoun, whom he guards carefully, for he is very jealous. And therwithal he brought us out of towne.
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