‘Kultour’ Meets Cul: More wordplay in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale

All readers of the Miller's Tale will recall the point at which Absolon borrows a 'hoote kultour' (3776) from his friend Gervays the smith. Belatedly asking 'What wol ye do therwith?' (3782), Gervays is fobbed off in his attempt to discover what the reader may already be beginning to suspect. Absolon intends to use it against Alison, who has tricked him into kissing her naked arse. Indeed, being red-hot, the implement testifies to the displacement by anger of Absolon's formerly 'hoote' love (3754)—a passion that is now 'coold and al yqueynt' (3754). As explained in the OED (coulter, colter, n.), culter was Latin for 'knife'. This is what it meant in Old English. In Middle English, too, the word could be used for a knife, but its chief reference was to the foremost (vertical) blade of a ploughshare. It might be said that the word is leaned upon in the Miller's Tale because, while it does not appear elsewhere in Chaucer, it is used in the Tale a total of four times within 150 lines (at ll. 3763, 3776, 3785, and 3812). As I have argued elsewhere, the fact that the instrument of Absolon's revenge was such a blade is in comic harmony with his knife-based occupation as a barber-surgeon. But Absolon's instrument (which distinguishes him from the equivalent character in the most relevant analogue) also involves a pun. Rather surprisingly, given that, as observed in the most recent article on the subject by Jennifer Bryan, 'it is ... generally accepted that puns are part of the [Miller's] tale's distinctive humor and rhetorical texture', this particular instance appears to have fallen beneath the radar to date.

It depends upon the first syllable of Chaucer's 'koulter', a syllable which is the equivalent of (and was frequently spelled as) 'cul'. This coincides with the Middle English 'cule'—a long-obsolete word for, according to the OED definition (under 'cule, n.') 'the rump; a buttock'. It is defined as 'rump' in the MED—which supplies several citations via the unedifying formula 'thristen in [cule]', for 'to shove up one's anus'. It derived, ultimately, from the Latin cūlus, meaning 'arse', or 'anus'. It seems to have entered English from French in the thirteenth century. Indeed, it appears in the title of a thirteenth-century French fabliau generally cited as an analogue and even as a possible source of the Miller's Tale, Bèrenger au lonc cul.

Interestingly, the cul is notable by its absence (or, to be precise, its occlusion) in this tale of a cowardly husband who cannot endure knightly encounters. In order to preserve his reputation with his wife, the husband goes into the forest, and beats dents into his armour before returning home as if from combat. Suspicious, his wife rides into the forest disguised as a knight. Coming upon 'him' as a stranger, the husband seeks to avoid conflict by promising to do whatever 'he' asks of him. The 'knight' agrees to let the husband go on condition that he kiss her (or, as the husband believes, his) arse. What the husband beholds when she (or, as the husband believes, he) disrobes is, however, a combination of cul and (to draw on a companion vocabulary item that features in the Miller's Tale) 'queynt', or cunt. Failing to understand what he is looking at, the husband is astounded by the extent of what he still believes to be a male's cul—and which he goes on to kiss. His wife, identifying herself before her departure as the knight 'Bèrenger of the Long Arse', will later inform her husband that the same Bèrenger has passed on to her the story of his (the husband's) humiliation, a story that she threatens to tell if ever he were to chide her for her sexual promiscuity.

As intimated above, Absolon intends to use his terrible instrument upon Alison. If Nicholas had not inserted himself into her place at the window, Absalon might well have burned not her cul but her 'queynt'. Nicholas's literal presumption ensures (to the relief, I think, of most readers) that a 'queynt' ceases to exist as a possible target. What his presumption serves to ensure is that he receives his just deserts—in the form of the painful conjunction of Absolon's coulter with his (Nicholas's) cul. As I see it, then, the coulter, by virtue of its nominal designation, anticipates (as—and so much of the humour depends upon this—neither Absalon nor Nicholas manage to do) its destination. Without wanting to labour the point, it could be said that the word 'coulter' proves in the Miller's Tale to be (as Chaucer the narrator puts it in his defence of crude language in the General Prologue) 'cosyn to the dede' (742)—the deed, that is, that it is used to perform. Of course, since Nicholas's arse is never referred to as his cul or (English) 'cule' (although that is, in fact, what it is), the pun is less than obvious. In this respect, however, it is typical of Chaucer's word play—which, as Bryan has shrewdly observed, is often performed over the heads not only of his characters but even of his narrators.