Going Blackberrying: Swearing in "The Pardoner's Tale" (The Canterbury Tales Part 2.5)

WARNING: Contains strong language.

In this Subcast minisode, I look at what would have been considered foul language in the Middle Ages.  If you are of a sensitive disposition or a delicate constitution, if you are prone to the vapors or simply upright in your rectitude,  might I suggest that you listen to this episode with your fingers plugged firmly into your ears?  It may be helpful to also hum a happy tune.

Transcript

Hello, again, and welcome to the podcast.  I’ve got another minisode for you.  I hope you’ve heard the recent episode 11 on the Pardoner from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  If not, I highly recommend doing so soon – quite informative, but not arcane – the host has a very charming way about him, knowledgeable but affable.  

Anyway, there was one topic from the Pardoner’s texts that I had wanted to discuss, but I couldn’t really find a smooth way to work it into the script – it always felt like I was forcing it in, like getting a hippo into a wetsuit.  But it’s an interesting little topic – at least I think so – and so I decided to send it out as a stand-alone bonus episode.  Let that hippo skinny dip!

At issue today is the nature and use of strong language – swearing, profanity. So fair warning, gentle listener, this minisode will contain naughty words.  Kids, if you’re listening (first, thank you) and second: you may want to get your parents out of the room.  I’ll give you a few moments to put them to bed.  OK, are they gone?  Good.  For though we, in the 21st century, may not notice it at all, the Pardoner’s Tale is a seething cesspool of execration. 

Here’s how I first came to think about it.  There’s a point in the Pardoner’s Prologue where he admits to his travelling companions that he only preaches to win money, that he doesn’t care about purifying souls.  He says: “Once dead what matter how their souls may fare?  They can go blackberrying for all I care!”

What a curious, curious line.  “Blackberrying”?  What the heck is that? Surely it is something of a euphemism, a less offensive way of saying “go to hell.”  But why would the Pardoner – an admitted thief and fraudster, drunkard and fornicator – suddenly go precious about a bit of mildly salty language?

Well, after a good deal of snooping, I found out that that particular idiom was just the medieval equivalent of our “go jump in the lake.”  It’s just a phrase in common use.  But then I read about an old legend that says when St. Michael the Archangel defeated Satan and God flung him from heaven down to the earth, the Devil landed in a prickly, brambly blackberry bush, and so you’d best not pick any blackberries after Michaelmas because he’ll get you!  I also happened across the fact that blackberries (presumably picked before Michaelmas) were used as a medieval cure for snakebite – so apparently whatever fruit Adam and Eve picked at the serpent’s urging was not of the genus Rubus L.

But “blackberrying” still seems a rather prim way of damning someone, especially considering how offensive the language of the rioters from the Pardoner’s tale really is.

Oh, did you not notice?  Yeah, because swearing, profanity, prohibited language, is not a constant over time.  What we find offensive is peculiar to our own cultural milieu, our own values.

Here’s the thing.  When we think of cuss words, we generally think of the great 4-letter words or George Carlin’s infamous dirty seven.  Those words have to do with the human body and bodily functions, usually excretory or sexual: pooping, peeing, and screwing.  But even these have dramatically lost their power to offend in the last couple of decades.  One may think you impolite if you say “shit” at the church social, but I’ll wager nobody thinks you are morally evil.

No, today, the language that we think marks someone as morally evil is derogatory ethnic or racial words.  It is not merely gauche to utter a racist slur, it is wicked. It testifies to one’s moral turpitude. One may not even refer to such words by name in classrooms, print, or podcasts.  

But in the Middle Ages, in Chaucer’s lifetime, racial language offended few and most were not at all troubled by “ass” or “cock” or any other body part.  This was an England that was overwhelmingly racially homogenous and a world that lacked privacy.  Peasants in one room hovels, or even nobles who roomed with a coterie of servants, were all too used to seeing people shit and piss and fuck.  If the actions didn’t offend, why should the words?

No, for the medieval mind, swearing was swearing, literally.  Making an oath by God, or by parts of God.  Sacred language, ironically, was profane.  The medieval mind took seriously the commandment in the Book of Exodus: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.  In the Gospels, Jesus says, “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no.  Anything else is from the Evil One.”

So it was wicked in the Middle Ages to misuse God’s name, title, or attributes.  In the 14th century, to say “By God’s Precious Heart” would be roughly equivalent to our using a slur.  It would shock and disturb, not simply annoy.

But the rioters in the Pardoner’s Tale constantly use such language.  It’s a barrage of imprecation: By God’s arms, God’s blessed bones, God’s dignity, by God, by God and the Holy Sacrament, God’s precious dignity.  I can only imagine, if medieval sensibilities were even marginally analogous to our own, how uncomfortable people must have been back then reading or hearing this tale. “Many and grisly were the oaths they swore, tearing Christ’s blessed body to a shred.”

Why “grisly”? Because medieval believed that if you swore by God’s teeth, for example, or God’s arms, in some way you were actually separating his teeth or arms from the rest of the body, calling only upon them to credit your oath.  Hacking God to pieces with your words.

So we came up with what are called “minced oaths.”  Rather an unfortunate adjective there, given the conditions that gave rise to them.  You’ve heard them, though nowadays people only say them when they’re being consciously old-fashioned: Zounds, ‘Struth, Gadzooks!  These are contracted, euphemistic ways of swearing without swearing and mean, in order: God’s wounds, God’s Truth, and God’s Hooks (the crucifixion nails).  Perhaps instead of mincing Christ’s blessed body we decided to mince the oaths.

So swearing has quite an interesting little history.  In our tongue, the prohibited language started out based in the religious sphere.  But then, after the Protestant Reformation contributed to the desacralizing of language along with the rise in personal privacy afforded by economic developments, the prohibited language found its site in the body and its functions.  Now, as we become more accustomed to ideas of body and sex positivity, we concomitantly have become concerned with the dignity of marginalized peoples and have proscribed any language of coarseness concerning them.

OK, that’s it.  Just wanted to get that out.  Please take a moment, if you would, to subscribe and rate the podcast.  Every little bit of publicity helps.  Also please consider a small financial contribution by clicking the “Support the Show” button.  Email me at classicenglishliterature@gmail.com, and find me on all fine social media platforms.

You can have the rest of the evening to yourself.  Doesn’t matter to me what you do – you can go blackberrying for all I care.