Chaucer’s gallery of ancient portraits contains a very life-like presentment of a mediaeval clerk in the person of “Jolly Absolon,” a somewhat frivolous specimen of his class, who figures largely in The Miller’s Tale.

     “Now was ther of that churche a parish clerk
     The which that was y-cleped[6] Absolon. 
     Curl’d was his hair, and as the gold it shone,
     And strutted[7] as a fanne large and broad;
     Full straight and even lay his folly shode.[8]
     His rode[9] was red, his eyen grey as goose,
     With Paule’s windows carven on his shoes.[10]
     In hosen red he went full febishly.[11]
     Y-clad he was full small and properly,
     All in a kirtle of a light waget;[12]
     Full fair and thicke be the pointes set. 
     And thereupon he had a gay surplice,
     As white as is the blossom on the rise.[13]
     A merry child he was, so God me save;
     Well could he letten blood, and clip, and shave,
     And make a charter of land and a quittance. 
     In twenty manners could he trip and dance,
     After the school of Oxenforde tho’,[14]
     And with his legges caste to and fro;
     And playen songes or a small ribible;[15]
     Thereto he sung sometimes a loud quinible.[16]
     And as well could he play on a gitern.[17]
     In all the town was brewhouse nor tavern
     That he not visited with his solas,[18]
     There as that any gaillard tapstere[19] was. 
       This Absolon, that jolly was and gay
       Went with a censor on the holy day,
       Censing the wives of the parish fast: 
       And many a lovely look he on them cast,

* * * * *

       Sometimes to show his lightness and mast’ry
       He playeth Herod on a scaffold high.”

[Footnote 6:  Called.]

[Footnote 7:  Stretched.]

[Footnote 8:  Head of hair.]

[Footnote 9:  Complexion.]

[Footnote 10:  His shoes were decked with an ornament like a rose-window in old St. Paul’s.]

[Footnote 11:  Daintily.]

[Footnote 12:  A kind of cloth.]

[Footnote 13:  A bush.]

[Footnote 14:  The Oxford school of dancing is satirised by the poet.]

[Footnote 15:  A kind of fiddle.]

[Footnote 16:  Treble.]

[Footnote 17:  Guitar.]

[Footnote 18:  Sport, mirth.]

[Footnote 19:  Tavern-wench.]

I fear me Master Absolon was a somewhat frivolous clerk, or his memory has been traduced by the poet’s pen, which lacked not satire and a caustic but good-humoured wit.  Here was a parish clerk who could sing well, though he did not confine his melodies to “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”  He wore a surplice; he was an accomplished scrivener, and therefore a man of some education; he could perform the offices of the barber-surgeon, and one of his