Passage from Chaucer’s Prologue Introducing the Wife of Bath
Hello, my name is Kimberly Reach and I am studying the History of Language at UMGC. This week we are discussing Middle English and Chaucer’s General Prologue to his Canterbury Tales. The passage that I will be reading from are lines 447 to 454 of the prologue, introducing the Wife of Bath. First I will read Chaucer’s text from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition Volume 1. Then I will read my own modern translation of the text. Here is my passage from Chaucer:
A good Wif was ther of biside Bathe,
But she was somdeel deef, and that was scathe.
Of cloth-making she hadde swich an haunt,
She passed hme of Ypres and of Gaunt.
In al the parish wif ne was ther noon
That to the offring before hire sholde goon,
And if ther died, certain so wroth was she
That she was out of alle charitte (Chaucer 229).
This is my translation:
There was a wife from a place near Bath
But she was a bit deaf and that was a pity.
She was a skilled clothing maker.
Her work surpassed that of Ypres and Gaunt.
In all the wives at the parish, there was none
That went before her to the offering,
And if one did, it made her so angry
That she no longer felt charitable.
The Norton Anthology translates several of the words from Old English to modern English. For instance:
- “somdeel deef” to “a bit deaf,”
- “scathe” to “a pity,”
- “haunt” to “skill,”
- “passed” to “surpassed,”
- And “wroth” to “angry” (Norton).
The Norton Anthology also provided several helpful notes on the text. One of the notes explains that “Ypres and Ghent” or “Gaunt” were Flemish cloth-making centers at the time (Norton). It also explains that “offring” were offerings taken at the church “when the congregation brought its gifts forward” (Norton). This context helped in translating the Middle English text to modern English.
One of the words that stood out to me was “somdeel.” Perhaps when Chaucer wrote this, he was using this word to mean the phrase “some deal” which the Norton Anthology has equated with the popular British phrase “a bit” (A Bit). Here are a few examples of this British phrase, pulled from “Very British Problems” Twitter feed:
- “Saying you ‘feel a bit Christmassy’ to hint that you’re in the mood to drunkenly consume 50,000 calories of cheese and chocolate,”
- and, “It will make everything better for a bit” (@verybritishproblems).
These examples of the semantic use for the British phrase “a bit” seem to be in line with the use of the word “somdeel” that Chaucer has in the sentence. The original text reads: “But she was somdeel deef.” The translation reads: “But she was a bit deaf.”
I was curious how “some deal” was translated to “a bit” and so I opened the Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology. Pulling this compound word apart, we are left with the roots “som” and “deel” (Hoad). Using the Online Etymology Dictionary, “some” or the Old English root “sum” meaning “a certain quantity” stems from the Proto-Germanic root *sumaz, where the Old Saxon root “sum” is derived from. And the Proto-Germanic root stems from the Proto-Indo-European root “*sem” (Some).
I looked up “deal” on the Online Etymology Dictionary and it looks as though “deel” is derived from the Middle Dutch “deelen” (Deal). I still feel like there is a jump between how we have a Proto-Germanic root and a Middle Dutch root forming a Middle English compound word. In his work, “Traditional English? Chaucerian Methods of Word-Formation” Simon Horobin says “Since the fifteenth century Chaucer’s readers have insisted that he revolutionsed the English language… One dominant view [on how he did this] is that Chaucer embellished literary English by adopting numerous words from the stylistically more sophisticated romance languages, Latin and French” (Horobin). What I find interesting about the word “somdeel” is how it translates to the modern English phrase “a bit” as well as how the roots do not seem to fall into the romance languages that Chaucer pulled from.
However, looking at another word, “haunt,” The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the roots of this Old English word meaning “to practice habitually, busy oneself with, [or] take part in,” to the Old French root meaning “to be familiar with, indulge in, [or] cultivate” (Haunt) The Old French root is possibly related to the Norse root, which stemmed from a Proto-Germanic root. Considering the blend of Old French, Old Norse, Middle Dutch, and Proto-Germanic roots in Chaucer’s text, it is less surprising that some of the words do not come from the romantic languages. In fact, the British Isles had a foundation of Danish, Roman, and Norman rulers who brought with them their Anglo-Saxon languages (Norton 10). The Middle Ages brought in a wave of French and Norman rulers to the British Isles. This explains the culmination of Dutch, Germanic, French, and Latin roots in Chaucer’s text.
Thank you for watching my video and please view the below transcript to find my sources in MLA format.
Works Cited:
“A Bit.” Collins English Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/a-bit. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
“Deal.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=deal. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Norton Anthology of English Literature.” Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 8th, vol. 1, W.W. Norton and Company, 2006. “The General Prologue,” pg. 218-238.
“Haunt.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=haunt. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Hoad, T. F. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, edited by T. F. Hoad, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.
Horobin, Simon. “Traditional English? Chaucerian Methods of Word-Formation.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 110, no. 2, 2009, pp. 141–57. JSTOR.
“Some.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=some. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
“The Norton Anthology of English Literature.” Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 8th, vol. 1, W.W. Norton and Company, 2006.
@verybritishproblems. “It’ll make everything better for a bit #MondayMotivaton.” Twitter, 8 January 2018. https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish/status/955424185689440256 Accessed November 2019.
@verybritishproblems. “Saying you “feel a bit Christmassy” to hint that you’re in the mood to drunkenly consume 50,000 calories of cheese and chocolate.” Twitter, 8 November 2019, https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish/status/1192852870548332544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1192852870548332544&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Ftwitter.com%252FSoVeryBritish%252Fstatus%252F1192852870548332544%26widget%3DTweet. Accessed November 2019.