The Story of the Canterbury Pilgrims
Description:... This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS THE FIRST DAY -: .-.: .-, -: AT THE TABARD; THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE LONG ago, when Richard II. was King, the highways of England must have been a far gayer and stranger sight than they are nowadays. The roads themselves were bad ones, little better than rough, muddy lanes, and often very dangerous by reason of the robbers who lurked in the woods which were so widely spread over the land. But on these roads, bad as they were, traveled wayfarers who appear to us now no more than the people of legends, who seem never really to have lived except in songs and stories. Day after day men would pass up and down in strange garments and on errands so strange that, if we could look back and see them close at hand, we might fancy ourselves, so far as outside appearances went, well on the way to fairyland. Yet these were after all the ordinary Englishmen of those days, living and thinking really not very differently from ourselves, though we only know of them now through books. Imagine a highway of those times, and fancy the travelers going to and fro upon it. Here you might see a knight riding with his squire to some tournament, or maybe merely roving in search of adventures with other knight-errants like himself. Or round a bend in the road would appear some great lord, with a long train of armed men and servants on horseback; even the ladies would be riding, for carriages were rare and uncomfortable. Here, again, was a wandering minstrel, or a troop of jugglers, going to some castle near at hand, where they would be sure of a welcome, rich 'arid poor alike showing hospitality according to their mjran'sV . Perhaps a monk or a friar would pass on his way to beg offerings from anyone he could find, meeti
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