Tales of Canterbury and other high school stories
I’ve got this poem stuck in my head. you see, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about podcasting. What I’ve thought about is testing the waters and learning the ropes by doing a podcast of poetry. I have been known to write a line or two in the distant past (a small sample can be found here). It seems that all these thoughts of poetry have brought back something from high school. I went to Ridgeway High School back in Memphis. For senior English we had this very “no nonsense”, “tell it like it is” teacher by the name of Harry Raney. Some people said he was crazy, but I always just thought he really cared about preparing us to go to college. One of the first (of many) big assignments Mr Raney would give every year was memorizing the prologue to Chanucer’s “The Canterbury Tales“. “Memorize it you say, that ain’t so bad”! Well, it does get worse. The reason why you had to memorize is so you could recite the whole thing in front of the class, in Old English.
Here’s the first few of the over 800 lines from this prologue:
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
I don’t remember how much of this Mr. Raney had us recite. What I’ve put above is all I remember. I’m trying to decide if it is unfortunate or exciting that remember that even.
My wife and I saw Mr. Raney a couple of years ago. He had retired and was working on his “second career”. He seemed happy enough, but it also seemed that he might be missing being up in front of a class preparing them for what awaits after graduation. It unfortunate that he’ not teaching anymore as he was a great teacher.
As for the Canterbury Tales, don’t expect to hear me talking about it on iTunes anytime soon. But I suspect my voice may be coming down in a feed near you soon!
Technorati Tags: Chaucer, highschool, poetry, english, schools
October 30th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I stumbled across this blog while doing a Google search for Mr. Raney. I graduated from Ridgeway in the 1980s — and, yes, I can still recite the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Old English.
Anyway, I was wondering where you saw Mr. Raney. I moved back to Memphis a couple of years ago, but haven’t been able to track him down. I would love to thank him again for all he did as a teacher. Feel free to drop me an e-mail or just reply to my comment. Thanks!
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:26 am
Eric - You’ve got mail…..
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I graduated from Ridgeway in 1982 and to this day I also remember the first 18 lines from the Canterbury Tales. However, my understanding from Mr. Raney was that it was written in Middle English, not Old English.
I also remember some of the lines from the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and others from English Lit that we were required to memorize, such as “Hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 am
(GASP!) You’re right Andy, it is Middle English. How could I have missed that one?