Who clepeth there?

So asked Morpheus, god of sleep and dreams, when Juno's messenger came to him in his sleepy cave "And blew his horn ryght in here eere, And cried 'Awaketh!' wonder hye." I hope someday I can muster the cheek to cry "Awaketh!" wonder high to bestir some sleeper. I wonder if all I'll get is a "Who clepeth there?"

It is I, Monica the Man, here to tell all of nobody who's ever seen this blog that I'm on a Chaucer binge that's going strong. These here quotes are from his early poem, now called "The Book of the Duchess." It's a medieval dream poem...a statement which I know doesn't exactly scream "Partaaaayyyy" to very many people, but if you ever have trouble sleeping...

Actually, that's how the whole ruddy thing is framed. It begins with an insomniac in some serious lovelornery who gets a servant (who probably could sleep, but nevermind couldn't because his master keeps demanding books in the middle of the night) to bring him a story that's sadder than he is. So he gets his book. Reads it in bed. Maybe gets his sleep-starved servant to fix him up his favorite medieval snacks. I mean, he's up anyway, right? The narrator feels pity for the woman in the story. Name of Queen Alcione. Loves her husband, King Seys, who dies on a sea voyage, but Alcione doesn't know it and can't sleep for sorrow and doubt, so she asks the goddess Juno to send her a vision of her husband in a dream to tell her what the deal is, which Juno does via Morpheus. Not the first thing that I would have thought of, but hey...I'm not a queen. I mean, at all. They do strange things, queens.

The narrator, on the other hand, thinks it's a great idea, and he throws out an invitation to Juno, or Morpheus, "Or some wight elles, I ne roughte who," that if he can get some sleep, he'll deliver the goods. The goods being: a nice bed in a decked out room. Sounds sketchy to me, though, that kind of prayer. Just throwing desire out there specifically for some spirit to find and fulfill for payment. Probably how paganism got started in the first place. Well, it works in this case, anyway, and the narrator falls asleep and dreams stuff.

Eventually he meets a knight, a black knight, who's making a woeful noise unto himself and composing poetry. About some lady, obviously. But instead of thinking, "What a chump," the narrator goes up and sort of waits out the moaning until the knight is aware of him. The knight, being a gentleman after all, apologizes for ignoring the narrator, citing the excuse that he simply didn't notice his presence. The narrator also apologizes for interrupting. So everybody is sorry and polite, which often is the same thing. Excuse me! No, excuse me! No need! Ditto!

Then something happens, and this something is something I love in medieval type literature. The narrator basically says, "I know it's none of my business, but just go ahead and spill your guts to me, and I'll do my utmost to heal whatever hurt you have." Long sidenote: you'll run into this if you read some knightly tales. In one episode of Le Morte d' Arthur one knight finds another knight making great dole and asks him what the dole is all about. The doleful knight says, "Like I'm gonna tell you." Then the pitying knight says, "I'll fight you for it," and the doleful knight says, "Fine, I guess." So they fight! How great is that? The pitying knight wins, so the doleful knight is obliged to tell him what the matter is. Other people's sorrow is like a quest.

Well, that's enough for now. I'm not done yet, though. Stay tuned for part 2.