In olden days the most usual reason for a journey, next to business, was a pilgrimage.  Sometimes this was simply an act of religion or devotion.  Clad in a simple gown, and perhaps with bare feet, the pilgrim set out.  Carrying a staff in his hand, and begging for food and shelter by the road, he took his way to the shrine of some saint.  There he knelt and prayed and felt himself blessed in the deed.  Sometimes it was an act of penance for some great sin done; sometimes of thanksgiving for some great good received, some great danger passed.

But as time went on these pilgrimages lost their old meaning.  People no longer trudged along barefoot, wearing a pilgrim’s garb.  They began to look upon a pilgrimage more as a summer outing, and dressed in their best they rode comfortably on horseback.  And it is a company of pilgrims such as this that Chaucer paints for us.  He describes himself as being of the company, and it is quite likely that Chaucer really did at one time go upon this pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, for it was a very favorite one.  Not only was the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury very beautiful in those days, but it was also within easy distance of London.  Neither costing much nor lasting long, it was a journey which well-to-do merchantmen and others like them could well afford.

Chaucer tells us that it was when the first sunshiny days of April came that people began to think of such pilgrimages:—­

    “When that April with his showers sweet,
    The drought of March hath pierced to the root,”

when the soft wind “with his sweet breath inspired hath in every holt and heath the tender crops”; when the little birds make new songs, then “longen folk to go on pilgrimages, and palmers for to seeken strange lands, and especially from every shire’s end of England, to Canterbury they wend.”

So one day in April a company of pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn on the south side of the Thames, not far from London Bridge.  A tabard, or coat without sleeves, was the sign of the inn; hence its name.  In those days such a coat would often be worn by workmen for ease in working, but it has come down to us only as the gayly colored coat worn by heralds.

At the Tabard Inn twenty-nine “of sundry folk,” besides Chaucer himself, were gathered.  They were all strangers to each other, but they were all bound on the same errand.  Every one was willing to be friendly with his neighbor, and Chaucer in his cheery way had soon made friends with them all.

    “And shortly when the sun was to rest,
    So had I spoke with them every one.”

And having made their acquaintance, Chaucer begins to describe them all so that we may know them too.  He describes them so well that he makes them all living to us.  Some we grow to love; some we smile upon and have a kindly feeling for, for although they are not fine folk, they are so very human we cannot help but like them; and some we do not like at all, for they are rude and rough, as the poet meant them to be.