134 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



For, also sicker as In principio 

 Mulier est hominis confusio ; 



translating it for her thus : — 



Madam, the sentence of this Latin is — 

 Woman is mannes joy and all his blis, 



while she tells him he needs a pill for his liver in 

 spite of the fact that he wears a beard. It is fine 

 scorn, but passing sad, following so close upon 

 the old English love song that Chauntecleer was 

 wont to wake up singing. 



It is here, at this critical juncture of the nature- 

 story, that Chaucer pauses to remark seriously: — 



For thilke tyme, as I have understonde, 

 Bestes and briddes coulde speke and singe. 



Certainly they could ; and " speking and singing 

 in thilke tyme " seems much more natural for 

 "bestes and briddes" than many of the things 

 they do nowadays. 



Here, again, is Izaak Walton, as honest a man as 

 Chaucer — a lover of nature, a writer on angling ; 

 who knew little about angling, and less about na- 

 ture ; whose facts are largely fancies ; but — what 

 of it*? Walton quotes, as a probable fact, that 

 pickerel hatch out of the seeds of the pickerel- 



