The Pardoner’s Pants (and Why They Matter)

The Pardoner's Pants (and Why They Matter) Richard Firth Green University ofWestern Ontario W.AT THE END of his 1ale, Chaucer's Pardoner offers the Host the first chance to kiss his spurious relics, the offer produces a surprisingly violent reaction (PardT 946-55): "Nay, nay!" quod he, "thanne have I Cristes curs! Lat be," quod he, "it shal nat be, so theech! Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech, And swere it were a relyk of a seint, Though it were with thy fundement depeint! But, by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond, I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond In stide of relikes or of seintuarie. Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie; They shul be shryned in an hogges toord!"1 This passage has provoked considerable critical interest, but almost all of it has focused on the reference to the Pardoner's "coillons" and the question whether a threat to castrate a putative eunuch is to be seen as ludicrously improbable or wittily appropriate. My interest here, however, isnot directly with those "coillons" but rather with the Pardoner's "olde breech."2 I shall 1 All citations of Chaucer's works are from Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 2 This detail has generated far less discussion, the main exception being Daniel Knapp's suggestion that it might have been prompted by the recollection of St. Thomas of Canter­ bury's hair breeches, which, at least in the early sixteenth century, were to be seen in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral; "The Relyk of a Seint: A Gloss on Chaucer's Pilgrimage," ELH 39 (1972): 1-26. Melvin Storm, "The Pardoner's Invitation: Quaestor's Bag or Becket's Shrine," PMLA 97 (1982): 815, seems to regard Knapp's case as proved. Joseph Grennen, "The Pardoner, the Host, and the Depth ofChaucerian Insult," ELN25 (1987): 21, sees in the "old breech" a sacrilegious parody of the vernicle that the Pardoner wears on his cap. 131 SWDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER argue that the passage contains a previously unrecognized allusion whose exposition may, nevertheless, throw some light on the vexed question ofthe Pardoner's sexuality. The allusion, I will argue, is to a tale belonging to the general folktale type "Adulteress Outwits Husband,"3 whose best-known surviving English-language representative is probably the ballad "Our Goodman."4 This ballad, which is widely distributed throughout Europe and North America, presents a dialogue between an incredulous husband, who has returnedunannounced to find a trail ofincriminatingobjectsleadingfrom the stable to the bedroom, and hisunrepentant wife, who offers an increas­ ingly implausible explanation for each of them in turn. In a spirit oflocal chauvinism I quote one of their exchanges from a version collected in southwestern Ontario in 1962: When I got home the other night my loving wife to see, I spied some pants upon the rack where my pants out to be. So I said to my wife, the light of my life: "Explain this thing to me. Whose are those pants upon the rack where my pants ought to be?" She said: "You're drunk, you skunk, you silly old skunk, you're drunk as a skunk can be. 'Tis only a dishrag my neighbor left with me." Now in all my years of travelling, a million miles or more, A zipper in a dishrag I never have seen before.5 Like most ofthe Child ballads, "Our Goodman" is not recorded before the eighteenth century, but the general tale type to which it belongs reaches back a long way-further back, indeed, than the Middle Ages.6 One ofits incarnations is the widespread medieval tale "The Friar's Pants," some 3Stith Thompson,MotzflndexofFolkLiterature, 6 vols.(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), Kl510-40 (the specific tales we shall be concerned with are indexed as K1526). 4 F. J. Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1882-1898), 5.88-95 (no. 274). 5 Edith Fowke, "A Sampling of Bawdy Ballads from Ontario," in Bruce Jackson, ed., Folklore andSociety: Essays in Honor ofBenj. A. Botkin (Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore...