Heloise: A Canterbury Tales Pilgrim

Prologue:

I, next, would like to share a tale.

So long have I lived in a convent alone

Apart from a man, my one true love.

I tried to conform to the nunnery life

Praying and singing, singing and praying

I performed the motions and tried to devote

Myself to studying how to serve the lord.

But my days were filled with such despair

Pining after my life’s one love,

My friend and teacher and true soul mate.

Decades and decades have passed

Since last I saw my Abelard.

But in our letters it seems like

Never were we ripped apart.

These past few years have I lived

An abbess of a new establishment

Arranged by Abelard my love

When of my convent’s demise he learned.

Despite the kindness that he showed

By finding my sisters and self a new home,

I can no longer bear the life of an abbess

Thinking always of my Abelard somewhere.

Having tasted true love, life now seems a waste

Separated from love by time and space.

For this reason I have set out

To find my love and reunite

And remedy this forced loneliness

Brought on by my family’s violence.

Now deceased they cannot object

To a marital union of Abelard and myself.

Where exactly he lives, I do not know

Yet I refuse to waste any more of my life

Sitting and waiting inside stone walls

Much better to journey and seek him out.

Fortunate am I to have met all of you

With whom travel is safe and conversation is lively.

Now to my story I will turn

And share with you a tale of a time long ago

When across the land such creatures did roam

That scarce a person can imagine

Ever called the Earth home.

Tale:

Once there was a maiden fair

Born in a cottage on the verge

Of a deep and darkened woods.

As the girl grew, her family oft told

She was not allowed to venture out alone.

But, one night, when she had grown,

The stars were bright and spritely moonbeams
Crept through her window on tiptoe.

They woke her up and urged her to roam,

To explore the night and dance under the sky.

Once she obeyed, tree leaves whispered

Calling her into the velvet-dark forest.

Through the trees, the stars looked on

As the young woman wandered and wondered

At nature’s night-hidden secrets.

Bushes rustled, but the girl felt no fear,

As out stepped a creature with a beard.

His face and chest were like a man’s

But his body was covered with mahogany hair.

So too were his four legs and tail.

The centaur halted and bashfully spoke,

 And quickly the two with love were took.

As the years passed the girl’s parents grew

Tired of her rejecting suitors young and old, short and tall.
“Why,” they begged, “can you not just choose

One of the many men who call on you?

Beggars can’t be choosers. It doesn’t matter which,

Just find someone who will be your groom!”

Seeing their despair she was moved to tell

Of her secret moonlight love affair.

He was mostly man, and for a marriage they wished,

So surely they would be happy she had found a man to marry.

But, upon meeting their daughter’s chosen man,

The girl’s mother shrieked and fainted

And her father grabbed up his sword.

Not understanding the unusual love,

He assumed evil and cut the groom in two.

Part man, part horse lay upon the grass

Leaving the girl filled with shock and dismay.

Tears fell on the body as she cried and cried,

And soon she was met with a surprise.

Upon her love’s body there quickly grew

A bright-eyed and snorting horse’s head.

Up the beast jumped and faced the girl

The two locked eyes and immediately understood.

They could no longer be together but always would share

A mutual love and deep desolation.

For years the horse through the wild ran

Thinking of the girl forced to give her hand

To a foolish man and a loveless marriage.

Her days were sad, but nights were bright

When she dreamt of her stallion and heart’s one desire.