"The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prioress's Prologue and Tale

O mother-maid, maid-mother, chaste and free!

help me to tell my story
In reverence of thee and of thy glory!

No tongue or knowledge can have confidence,
Lady, to tell thy great humility,
Thy bounty, virtue and magnificence

For sometimes, lady, ere men pray to thee
Thou goest before in thy benignity
And through thy prayer thou gettest for each one
Light that may guide them to thy blessed Son.

Weak is my skill in speech, O blissful Queen;
How then shall I declare thy worthiness
Or how sustain the weight of what I mean?

In Asia once there was a Christian town
In which, long since, a Ghetto used to be
Where there were Jews, supported by the Crown
For the foul lucre of their usury

Among these children was a widow’s son,
A little chorister of seven years old

This little child, while he was studying
His little primer, which he undertook,
Sitting at school, heard other children sing
O Alma Redemptoris from their book.

If I may,
I certainly will show my diligence
To learn it off by heart for Christmas Day.

So every day his comrade secretly
As they went homewards taught it him by rote

He sang it with a childlike clarity
And boldly, word by word and note by note;
And twice a day it filled his little throat,
Going to school and coming back again,
Praising Christ’s mother with all his might and main.

Is this not something that should be redressed?
Is such a boy to roam as he thinks best
Singing to spite you, canticles and saws
Against the reverence of your holy laws?

This cursed Jew grabbed him and held him, slit
His little throat and cast him in a pit.
Cast him, I say, into a privy-drain,
Where they were wont to void their excrement.

She made enquiry with a piteous cry
Of every Jew inhabiting that place,
Asking if they had seen her child go by,
And they said, ‘No.’

The Provost, praising Christ our heavenly king
And His dear mother, honour of mankind,
Bade all the Jews be fettered and confined.

They took the child with piteous lamentation
And he was brought, still singing out his song

His mother, swooning as they went along
Beside the bier, could not be reconciled,
A second Rachel, weeping for her child.

‘Evils shall meet the evils they deserve.’
And he condemned them to be drawn apart
By horses. Then he hanged them from a cart.

This abbot then, who was a holy man
As abbots are, or else they ought to be,
In invocation of the boy began
To say aloud, ‘Dear child, I conjure thee
By virtue of the Holy Trinity
To say how singing is permitted thee
Although thy throat is cut, or seems to be.’

This abbot then, who was a holy man
As abbots are, or else they ought to be,
In invocation of the boy began
To say aloud, ‘Dear child, I conjure thee
By virtue of the Holy Trinity
To say how singing is permitted thee
Although thy throat is cut, or seems to be.’

had I been confined
By natural law I should, and long ago,
Have died.

That well of mercy, sweetest mother of Christ,
I long have loved with all that I could bring;
This at the hour of my death sufficed
To draw her down to me.

“My little child, behold I come for thee
When from thy tongue this grain of seed is taken.
And have no fear; thou shalt not be forsaken.”

And down he fell, prostrate upon the ground,
And lay as still as one who had been bound.

Pray mercy on our faltering steps, that thus
Merciful God may multiply on us
His mercy, though we be unstable and vary,
In love and reverence of His mother Mary.