The Summoner’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Friar and the Summoner are bitter rivals. This Tale is the Summoner’s revenge for the one previously told by the Friar

The two least pleasant of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” characters are the Friar and the Summoner, both of whom earn their livings by deceit, and who are also shown as being at each other’s throats for at least part of the pilgrimage journey. When they come to tell their tales, the Friar recounts the story of a rascally summoner who meets the Devil and whose dishonest behaviour leads to him being carried off to Hell, and the Summoner is then determined to reply in like manner.

The Summoner’s prologue consists of him insulting the Friar by, in effect, telling a mini-tale of a friar who has a vision of being shown round Hell by an angel. Seeing no fellow friars, our Friar assumes that this must be because friars never go to Hell. The angel then shows him Satan himself and asks him to lift his tail. When Satan does so, twenty thousand friars fly out of his backside like bees from a hive.

Having told this crude joke at the Friar’s expense, the Summoner proceeds with his tale, which, not surprisingly, concerns a friar and, again not surprisingly, is highly insulting. These people really do not like each other!