What is perhaps remarkable about the Prioress’ tale is not that it is juxtaposed with her delicate nature with such violence against a child. Or that in telling that tale, she reveals something hidden deep within her nature that she is totally unaware of (antisemitism).
What’s remarkable is the ease with which she tells her story — with a matter-of-factness that should surprise all of us with her lack of feeling around such violence.
Think about it. This is a story about a seven-year-old boy who learns to love a hymn to the Virgin Mary: the Alma Redemptoris Mater, sung entirely in Latin. He’s too young to read yet, so he can’t study it the way the older boys do. He simply wants to learn it, and asks an older classmate to teach it to him word by word, note by note, “till he knew the opening verse by rote,” as the tale puts it.
Translated, the hymn is genuine:
“Loving Mother of the Redeemer, who remains the open gate of heaven and the star of the sea, help your falling people who strive to rise again. You who gave birth to the wonder of nature, to your own holy Creator, Virgin before and after, who received that ‘Ave’ from Gabriel’s mouth — have mercy on sinners.”
It’s a plea for mercy, addressed to Mary on behalf of everyone who’s ever needed mercy. Not just Christians. Anyone.
“Alma” means nourishing, or kind. “Star of the sea” is an old, common medieval image for Mary as a guide, the way a lighthouse guides a ship safely home. The hymn is never actually reproduced in the tale itself — not in Latin, not in translation. The Prioress tells us the boy sings it, constantly, everywhere, but she never gives us the words. Jimmy gave you the translation when we read the tale for a reason: context.
The child didn’t know the Latin. He just loved the song. So he sang it. Everywhere. Maybe some people thought him a little nuts. There’s a young man in the grocery store we go to where we live that collects the carts that people leave in the racks, or in the parking spaces. Every time we see him, he’s singing something. Not the same song like the boy in the story, but singing. And smiling. He is happy. Some people look at him strangely. Others, like us, smile and wish him “Good day!”
In the story, the hymn wouldn’t need reciting because everyone (Christians at least) knew the song. What the tale does give us, instead of the words, is the boy’s devotion to those words — total, uncomprehending, and completely unguarded. And therein lies the conflict in the story: he sings it everywhere — including on his daily walk through the town’s Jewish ghetto, oblivious to the fact that this hymn celebrates one faith. He isn’t being provocative. He’s seven. He just likes it.
According to the Prioress, some of the men in that ghetto — portrayed in her telling as villainous, agents of Satan himself, who she says has “his nest of hornets in Jews’ hearts” — become enraged by the boy’s singing and hire a murderer to kill him. Can you imagine that? You hate someone for singing a particular song? Hmm.
The man who kills the boy is never identified as Jewish when he’s hired. Not when he waits in the alley. The identification arrives at one moment, and one moment only — the instant of the killing itself:
“This Jew seized on him, and held him fast, / And slit his neck, and threw his body in a pit.”
That’s not accidental. Remember who is narrating the story. And perhaps why. And remember the narrator can use ANY word(s) to deliver the tale. Not just the topic, but the way that topic is unfolded.
Notice, too, the tale doesn’t say “the Jews.” It says “the cursed Jews conspired this innocent boy out of the world to chase.” Cursed. That’s not a neutral word, is it? It is a verdict, delivered in the same breath as the accusation, before any court in the story has weighed in.
Adjectives carry judgment. Timing carries judgment. Holding the word back until the exact moment it will land with the most force isn’t how a storyteller conveys neutral information. It’s how a storyteller aims a word for maximum effect — and it tells us about the Prioress choosing that timing, doesn’t it?