This is Lady Fortune or Fortuna as the Romans knew her and I have a copy of this very image on one of the backdrops that hangs inside my storytelling tent. She stands blindfold behind her great wheel, unable to see, unswayed by age, gender, wealth or status...
She turns the wheel. A great wheel that we all ride upon. That's right, you are sitting astride her wheel right now. You may not know it, but you are on there and you are all subject to it. For some will be having good luck and so are riding high upon the wheel. But others among you are having bad luck and are descending as I write. It is the way of things....
And so it was in times past, especially in stories And that's the reason I have a copy of it in my tent, for there isn't a story that I can think of where the the fortunes of one character do not influence the misfortunes of another; as this my first story of many will surely show...
The Friar and the Butcher
Adapted from an early 16th Century French Tale
One of many tales from the late medieval period that mocked religious men for their greed
Once there lived a grey friar. A man of the Franciscan order. A man who was supposed to lead a simple life, but who instead followed his belly. He was a stout fellow who was as big in the middle as he was tall; so large was he that his habit would have covered three of the leaner Brothers of his order.
Once, the fat friar journeyed with a fellow friar, a lean, serious man who followed the rule of his order to the letter and was a bit dull for all that. They were traveling to the great friary at Norwich, but nightfall came and so they sought lodgings at the house of a butcher and his wife. Their home was small, most travelers would have slept in the barn, but the butcher’s wife was a pious woman who held their order in high esteem. So instead, she guided them up stairs to the bed chamber. The bedchamber of the woman and her husband, but tonight it would be where the grey friars took their rest.
Downstairs the butcher returned from the market. He was a gruff man and a completely different cut of meat to his goodly wife. For he was a man who cared little for friars or monks and believed that they lived far to well for men of God, besides the butcher was more concerned with putting food on the table than with worrying about heaven or hell. So great was his dislike of such men that he called his two pigs, his ‘fat grey friars’ for he saw very little difference between them. The thin friar climbed into bed and was soon asleep, but the fat friar didn’t, for he had noticed that all that separated the chamber above from the kitchen below, were thin wooden boards, badly joined and desired to hear the talk between husband and wife and perhaps, a little more! So he set his ear to the boards and listened.
The butcher having no suspicion of his guest upstairs talked to his wife about the following day’s work. Wife says he, Wife. Tomorrow we must go to our fat grey friars, for I have noticed that one of them is very fat indeed. We will kill him, salt his flesh and sell it at market. Then the butcher laughed, for he knew his words would upset his pious wife. But she did not laugh, for she had warned him on many occasions that no good would come of his insults. For she felt certain that if he kept calling his pigs ‘fat grey friars’, then he would have the wrath of God upon him. And the fat grey friar upstairs did not laugh, for hearing the butcher’s words and believing them to tell of his own doom, he leapt into the bed and trembling with fear, confessed to his lean brother all that he had heard.
The thin friar began to moan, for although he had no fear of death he was not yet ready to give up this life. They couldn't leave by the door lest they pass through the kitchen where the butcher now lay; they must escape through the window, for as the thin friar said, We shall suffer no more grievous a death by falling than we would by being gutted by the butcher. The thin friar lowered himself from the window and dropped lightly to the ground, but then he ran away as fast he might. The fat friar, seeing he had been left to his fate, leapt from the window without care; landing with a mighty thud and much swearing besides, for he had broken his leg. And now the butchers dog began to bark, but the friar couldn’t walk let alone run and so it was he crawled to the only hiding place nearby, a pigsty and prayed that help might come.
Dawn broke, and it found the butcher and his wife already up. The butcher's wife cooking breakfast, the butcher sharpening his biggest knife! He bade his wife to come with him, so that she might help kill their fattest pig; the ‘fat grey friar'. Once again his wife warned him that no good would come of his insults, but the butcher just laughed and as they arrived at the pig sty, he called out… Come out, come out master grey friar for it is my fixed intent this very day to taste your chitterlins. But it was not a pig that came out of the pigsty this day, instead it was the fat grey friar crawling on his hands and knees and begging for mercy… Please don’t kill me, he pleaded. Please don’t salt my flesh and sell it at market.
But the butcher did not reply, for the butcher was no longer there, for if the friar was in great terror for his life, the butcher was in no less and it seemed that he did indeed have the wrath of God upon him. And so the butcher ran and ran and he ran. Some say that he ran to the nearest priory where he spent the rest of his days praying for his eternal soul.Some say that he ran until his feet were but bloody stumps and he fell over. But there are others who say that after a while he stopped running and realising his mistake he took to sea, had many adventures and was responsible for introducing the sausage to Italy!
The end
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