"Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford

a riche gnof, that gestes heeld to bord" - i.e. a wealthy coot who took lodgers. Taking lodgers - such as I am this year - is a long tradition in Oxford (though my landlady is hardly a coot!). Where I am living was "whilom" not Oxford at all, but the countryside close by an outlying leper house and its chapel, called Bartelmas. Whilom, that is, as when the Miller in Geoffery Chaucer's Canterbury Tales opens his story to his fellow pilgrims with the lines I quote above. The Miller's Tale was part of our reading for class today, our first this term in the second half of our year-long survey of the Greatest Hits of the Western World (Integrative Studies 6).

For today's class, we were back at New College (see the second post, below). I should mention here that the college is "New" in that it was the second one built under the (official) name of "College of St. Mary." (The first College of St. Mary today goes more commonly under the name "Oriel," but that's another tale.) New College was founded in 1379 to educate a new generation of priests, of which there was a hard-felt shortage following the almost unthinkable devastation of the Black Death, here and across Europe and Asia, in the 1340s. So the first buildings at New College were just going up as Chaucer wrote the Miller's Tale (sometime between 1387 or so and 1400).

This morning, we were in the Conduit Room, just off the Front Quadrangle, laughing along with the Miller under the gazes of some of the College's past Fellows. The framed portraits each bore a caption, and - along with someone nicknamed "The Shirt" (?!) - there was one poor old soul identified as the "First Married." He appeared less than thrilled with the life, looking like one imagines the old coot of a landlord did by the end of the Miller's Tale. There, the riche gnof "hadde wedded newe a wyf" who was "wilde and yong," as the Miller tells us, and the apple of many an eye around Oxenford. One of her suitors was the "hende Nicholas," a gallant studying at one of the local colleges and the couple's lodger, who takes advantage of his landlord's absence one Monday when the latter goes off to do business at "Osneye." Hilarity ensues.

Osney today is just about a fifteen minute walk to the west of Oxford's town center, out over the river and canal to the west. It's also where most of the Shimer contingent have their lodgings this year. And while I'm not promising anything as memorably racy as the goings-on in the Miller's story, come back now and then this Spring, as we'll have further "new" tales of whilom around Oxenford.