Geoffrey Chaucer, The Cook's Tale (A Minimalist Translation) Poem by Forrest Hainline

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Cook's Tale (A Minimalist Translation)

Here beginneth the Cook's Tale.

4365 A prentice once dwelt in our city,
4366 And of a craft of victuallers was he.
4367 Gay he was as goldfinch in the grove,
4368 Brown as a berry, a proper short fellow,
4369 With locks black, combed full fetisly.
4370 Dance he could so well and jollily
4371 That he was called Perkin Reveler.
4372 He was as full of love and paramour
4373 As is the hive full of honey sweet;
4374 Well was the wench with him might meet.
4375 At every bridal would sing and hop;
4376 He loved best the tavern than the shop.
4377 For when there was any riding was in Cheap,
4378 Out of the shop thither would he leap -
4379 Til that he had all the sight seen,
4380 And danced well, he would not come again -
4381 And gathered him a meine of his sort
4382 To hop and sing and make such disport;
4383 And there they set a time for to meet,
4384 To play at the dice in such a street.
4385 For in the town was there no prentice
4386 That fairer could cast a pair of dice
4387 Than Perkin could, and thereto he was free
4388 Of his dispense, in place of privacy.
4389 That found his master well in his chaffer,
4390 For often times he found his box full bare.
4391 For certainly a prenticereveler
4392 That haunted dice, riot, or paramour,
4393 His master shall it in his shop abye,
4394 All have he no part of the minstrelsy.
4395 For theft and riot, they be convertible,
4396 All can he play on gittern or fiddle.
4397 Revel and truth, as in a low degree,
4398 They be full wroth all day, as men may see.
4399 This jolly prentice with his master bade,
4400 Til he were nigh out of his prenticehood,
4401 All were he snubbed both early and late,
4402 And sometimes led with revel to Newgate.
4403 But at the last his master him bethought,
4404 Upon a day, when he his paper sought,
4405 Of a proverb that says this same word:
4406 "Well best is rotten apple out of hoard
4407 Than that it rot al the remnant."
4408 So fares it by a riotous servant;
4409 It is full less harm to let him pace,
4410 Than he shamed all the servants in the place.
4411 Therefore his master gave him acquittance,
4412 And bade him go, with sorrow and with mischance!
4413 And thus this jolly prentice had his leave.
4414 Now let him riot all the night or leave.
4415 And for there is no thief without a louk,
4416 That helps him to waste and to suck
4417 Of that he bribe can or borrow may,
4418 Anon he sent his bed and his array
4419 Unto a compeer of his own sort,
4420 That loved dice, and revel, and disport,
4421 And had a wife that he held for countenance
4422 A shop, and swived for her sustenance.