The stories here discussed may be read in a modernized form at https://www.exclassics.com/skelton/skel007.htm.
Numbers in parentheses refer to the
stories according to that source.
John Skelton was
capable of scholarship, witnessed by his
translation of Diodoris Siculus, as well as of the magnificent rhetoric of Magnificence
and the serious social and religious engagement of “Why Came Ye nat to
Courte?”, but he is doubtless best known to those who have not read his
complete works as a merry humorist. His
poems in this vein range from the “coarse” satire of “The Tunnyng of Elynoare
Rummynge” to the delicate wit of “Phyllyp Sparowe” and jeux d’esprit
such as “Jolly Butterkin.” Apart from
his writings, though, a significant factor in his reception was the publication
a generation after the poet’s death of Merie Tales of
Skelton (1566). This collection of
anecdotes is in part similar to other joke books such as the Hundred Mery
Talys (1526) and Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres (1530), but it bears
a resemblance as well to the celebrity stories that remain popular on
television and in magazines today. Skelton was
close to the Tudor court and a sufficiently well-known figure that his supposed
characteristics could form the basis for popularly circulating stories, either
based in reality like anecdotes of Wilde’s wit or simply the basis for gags
like Jack Benny’s tightfistedness.
Though the stories are largely if not entirely fabricated of whole
cloth, they do reveal the era’s taste in humor as well as indicating Skelton’s
reputation a generation after his death.
Most of
the stories depict Skelton as a clever trickster, a sort of epigone of a character familiar from myth and folklore. He
calls “fire!” in an inn simply in order to get a drink at night (1), convinces
a fellow traveler to pay his way to London by pretending to cure him of disease
(2), displaces a friar from his bed after shitting on him and making him think
he had soiled himself (9), and harasses a cobbler (12) and a miller (13) for
his own entertainment. Two are standard
gags on the theme of gender: the macaronic epitaph for Swanborn the hen-pecked
“knave” who had been often beaten by his wife (5) and the cowardly cobbler who
suggests his wife would be a likelier warrior (12). Another is a simple “man-bites dog” reversal
with an ostler who bites the horse that had bitten him (11).
The casual
cruelty of comedy in which everything is played for laughs, exemplified by
people swatting and kicking each other in Chaplin’s silent films and Wile E.
Coyote suffering multiple defeats, any of which would have been lethal in a
more realistic desert, is evident in all his deceptions, most transgressively
perhaps when he shits on the friar’s sleeping body. More likely to disturb a modern reader,
though, is his putting the miller who cheated him through a series of
challenges and, toward the end, still thinking ”it better that such a false
knave should lose his head than to live” (13).
Other episodes
rely on what must have been elements of Skelton’s public personality. Some imply a bossy arrogance (8, 12,
13). Skelton is represented as jealously
defending the territory of his own parish (8), and having little patience with
religious questioners (3). His conflicts
with ecclesiastical authorities are foregrounded repeatedly (6, 7, 10, 14). Several stories (1, 15) indicate his fondness
for drink, though a third suggests the opposite (4).
Of the fifteen
sketches in the Mery Tales two have value beyond being examples of
Renaissance humor and clues to Skelton’s image, if not his true
personality. One draws attention by its
length alone. Skelton’s miller who gives
short weight (13) is part of a long tradition, including Chaucer’s pilgrim
miller of whom his antagonist the reeve says:
A theef he was for sothe of corn and mele,
And that a sly, and usaunt for to stele.
(“Reeve’s
Tale,” 3939-3940)
The miller’s habitual sharp practices are assumed in Merie
Tales and the plot concerns his gaining forgiveness from Skelton by his
craftiness which allows him to accomplish a series of apparently impossible
tasks. The development of the tale is
leisurely enough to more closely resemble a folktale than a joke. In the course of detailing the miller’s four
labors the narrator manages to indulge in scatology as well as ridiculing a
priest before concluding with a grisly artifice involving the head of an executed
criminal. All three somewhat shocking
elements sustain the narrative development and all may be forgotten when, in
the end, Skelton does pardon the fellow.
Surely for most
readers the most charming story is that of Skelton’s presenting his child to
his congregation in church (7, appended).
Priestly celibacy, of course, had not been a dogma in the early church
and was not required until the eleventh century. Differences on the issue were one factor is
the Great Schism. After celibacy was
asked of priests, enforcement remained very uneven. Some priests, even after being reprimanded
for keeping lovers and children, went then for years without changing their
ways or losing their responsibility for the souls under their care.
The story might
possibly be a version of a real event,
but, whether it is or not, it is told with such an appealing innocence and such
natural wholesome confidence that it is memorable regardless of
historicity. Rather than reacting
defensively, Skelton’s response is proud, accusing those who had complained of
him to the bishop of jealousy and boasting of the beauty of both his wife and
child and showing off the little one naked before the people, declaring “"How
say you, neighbours all? is not this child as fair as is the best of all yours?
It hath nose, eyes, hands, and feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a
pig, nor a calf, nor like no fowl nor no monstrous beast.”
He meets their
secret denunciation of him not with a defense but by accusing his detractors of
arrogance and predicting that those who exalt themselves shall be humbled. He concludes with a witty turn by telling how
he had to cure the presumption of his student hood which he tamed by making of
it breeches (to wear upon his rear). Only
after he had taught the garment a lesson by this treatment, could he resume
wearing it on his head. After this
whimsy the passage appropriately concludes “It is merry in the hall, when
beards wag all.” The reader would very
much like to believe in the veracity of this account.
The Merie Tales
then illustrate several common varieties of comic story, one of which derives
humor from a reversal, such as the trickster getting the better of an
adversary, a woman beating her husband, or a man biting an animal. Other stories are generated with the psychic
energy invested in taboo topics, such as sexuality, excretion, and
drinking. As the book appeared only a
generation after Skelton’s death, some stories may have arisen from incidents
or traits associated with him during his life, among which one may number his
susceptibility to the pleasures of the bottle and the flesh, his dislike of the
church hierarchy and the mendicant orders, and his possessiveness about his own
parish. Living at the same age as the
great Continentally-influenced sonneteers Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, Skelton
composed idiosyncratic, more wholly English verse in forms sometimes of his own
invention while also acquiring enough celebrity status to attract legends after
his passing. His own poetry remains well
worth reading, but readers who scan the amusing anecdotes of the Merie Tales
will enjoy as well a curious sidelong glance illuminating both the poet and
his age.
How Skelton, when he
came from the bishop, made a sermon. [Tale vii.]
Skelton the next Sunday after went into the pulpit to
preach, and said, "Vos estis, vos estis, that is to say, You
be, you be. And what be you?" said Skelton: "I say, that you be a
sort of knaves, yea, and a man might say worse than knaves; and why, I shall
show you. You have complained of me to the bishop that I do keep a fair wench in
my house: I do tell you, if you had any fair wives, it were some what to help
me at need; I am a man as you be: you have foul wives, and I have a fair wench,
of the which I have begotten a fair boy, as I do think, and as you all shall
see. Thou wife," said Skelton, "that hast my child, be not afraid;
bring me hither my child to me:" the which was done. And he, showing his
child naked to all the parish, said, "How say you, neighbours all? is not
this child as fair as is the best of all yours? It hath nose, eyes, hands, and
feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a pig, nor a calf, nor like no
fowl nor no monstrous beast. If I had," said Skelton, "brought forth
this child without arms or legs, or that it were deformed, being a monstrouus
thing, I would never have blamed you to have complained to the bishop of me;
but to complain without a cause, I say, as I said before in my antetheme, vos
estis, you be, and have be, and will and shall be knaves, to complain of me
without a cause reasonable. For you be presumptuous, and do exalt yourselves,
and therefore you shall be made low: as I shall show you a familiar example of
a parish priest, the which did make a sermon in Rome. And he did take that for
his antetheme, the which of late days is named a theme, and said, Qui se
exaltat humiliabitur, et qui see humiliat exaltabitur, that is to say, he
that doth exalt himself or doth extol himself shall be made meek, and he that
doth humble himself or is meek, shall be exalted, extolled, or elevated, or
sublimated, or such like; and that I will show you by this my cap. This cap was
first my hood, when that I was student in Jucalico, and then it was so proud
that it would not be contented, but it would slip and fall from my shoulders. I
perceiving this that he was proud, what then did I? shortly to conclude, I did
make of him a pair of breeches to my hose, to bring him low. And when that I
did see, know, or perceive that he was in that case, and allmost worn clean
out, what did I then to extol him up again? you all may see that this my cap
was made of it that was my breeches. Therefore, said Skelton, vos estis,
therefore you be, as I did say before: if that you exalt yourself, and cannot
be contented that I have my wench still, some of you shall wear horns; and
therefore vos estis: and so farewell." It is merry in the hall,
when beards wag all.
