The Friar and the Butcher

Adapted from an early 16 th Century French tale

Once there lived a grey friar, a man of the Franciscan order, a man supposed to lead a simple life, but who instead followed a life of luxury. He was a stout fellow who was as big in the middle as he was tall, so large was he that his habit would have covered three of the leaner Brothers of his order.

Once, the fat friar journeyed with a fellow friar, a lean, serious man who followed the rule of his order to the letter and was a bit dull for all that. They were travelling to the great friary at Norwich, but nightfall came and so they sought lodgings at the house of a butcher and his wife. Their home was small, most travellers would have slept in the barn, but the butcher's wife was a pious woman who held their order in high esteem. So instead, she guided them up stairs to the bed chamber of the woman and her husband, tonight it would be where the grey friars took their rest.

Downstairs the butcher returned from the market. He was a gruff man, a completely different cut of meat to his goodly wife. For he was a man who cared little for friars or monks and believed that they lived far to well for men of God, besides the butcher was more concerned with putting food on the table than with worrying about heaven or hell. So great was his dislike of such men that he called his two pigs, his ‘fat grey friars' for he saw very little difference between them.

The thin friar climbed into bed and was soon asleep, but the fat friar didn't, for he had noticed that all that separated the chamber above from the kitchen below were thin wooden boards, badly joined. He desired to hear the talk between husband and wife and perhaps, a little more! So he set his ear to the boards and listened. The butcher having no suspicion of his guest upstairs talked to his wife about the following day's work.

“Tomorrow we must go to our fat grey friars, for I have noticed that one of them is very fat indeed. We will kill him, salt his flesh and sell it at market”

then the butcher laughed, for he knew his words would upset his pious wife, who had warned him on many occasions that no good would come of his insults. For she felt certain that if he kept calling his pigs ‘grey friars', then he would have the wrath of God upon him.

But, the fat grey friar upstairs did not laugh, for hearing the butcher's words and believing them to tell of his own doom, he leapt into the bed and trembling with fear, confessed to his lean brother all that he had heard. The thin friar began to moan, for although he had no fear of death he was not yet ready to give up this life. They couldn't leave by the door lest they pass through the kitchen where the butcher now lay; they must escape through the window, for as the thin friar now said,

“We shall suffer no more grievous a death by falling than we would by being gutted by the butcher,”

 the thin friar jumped first and ran away as fast he might. The fat friar, now seeing he had been left to his fate, leapt from the window landing with a mighty thud and much swearing besides, for he had broken his leg. He couldn't walk, so the friar crawled to the only hiding place nearby, a pigsty and prayed that help might come.

Dawn broke, but the butcher and his wife were already up. The butcher bade his wife to come with him, so that she might help kill their fattest pig, the ‘grey friar'. Once again his wife warned him that no good would come of his insults, but the butcher just laughed and as they arrived at the pig sty, he called out…

“ Come out, come out master grey friar for it is my fixed intent this very day to taste your chitterlins”,

but it was not a pig that came out, instead it was the fat grey friar crawling on his hands and knees begging for mercy…

“please don't kill me ” he pleaded. “Please don't salt my flesh and sell it at market”

but the butcher did not reply for the butcher was no longer there, for if the friar was in great terror the butcher was in no less, for now it seemed that he did indeed have the wrath of God upon him. And so the butcher ran and ran, people said he ran to the nearest priory where he spent the rest of his days praying for his eternal soul.

But others say he took to sea, had many adventures and was responsible for introducing the sausage to Italy !

Past Imagined 2005