Chaucer and the Reevers

A ballad exploring the subtle or hidden dimensions of ‘The Reeves Tale’ by Geoffrey Chaucer. 

This tale has always fascinated me because of the unknown or unrealized connections with Northumberland: the two scholars speaking in the dialect of that region. For me the central key to understanding the text is in the interplay of words; reve, reeve and reever, whilst a Reeve was the administrative political representative of a King in a particular area, in Northumberland a Reever was a poet/bandit of the borders, and ‘to reve’ is to steal. Here I see a microcosmic satire on the political organization of Chaucer’s day, a commentary on ethics and morality gone wild, the corruption of religion symbolized by the miller who assumes complete (and often illegal) control of an essential process in bread-making. A pun on the name of St. Cuthbert, making him ‘cutberd’ or deceiver enhances this attack on religion, combined with the dubious origin of Symkins wife; the daughter of a ‘Parson’ or parish priest.  Brute force, philosophy, deception, vengeance, lust and savage violence are the key elements of this tale, and I cannot but envisage (for some reason) the two scholars as the mythic Castor and Pollux on a mission from Cambridge to investigate the theft of grain and correct the wrongdoing.

What grieves a Reever in a Miller dear?

A Sheffield blade to prick the conscious thought

The Poet mocks in language o’ so clear

True words, the dialect cannot be bought.

Pride glows, dark heritage, found false and caught;

The trumpet blasts across a bridge of moans,

Perhaps the key lies in ancestral bones.

Bitter sweet broth, the Reever’s choicest cheer,

Tyne-sons Castor and Pollux, of scholars taught

They, knowing blind wife, loose daughter, no fear…

To Cornish king the horseman and the boxer sought

Within a Godless throne, false peacock’s fort;

The joke goes up and down in swyving rhyme

See night and day, and read between the line.

Drunken louts snore well on strong brewed beer,

The well of thought dries up in dreamy drought

Lusty-lad avenges with a stiffened spear

Pissed-wife mistakes her husband’s ugly snout

Heaven’s blessed leaven lost in sighing bouts

All is lost in a corrupt crown of greed

Natural law is but the thieves’ right creed.

But when the tale told true to common speech

Tis pearls to swine the poet’s most often preach

Delight in words behind the curtains closed

To see beneath the meal of bones the Poet posed.

All Rights Reserved: David John Drew/Versificator 2008