1. Bawdy Tales Episode 1 - The Monk's Tale


    Date: 11/18/2015, Categories: Straight Sex, Author: Will_greybeard, Rating: 8, Source: LushStories

    Introduction In the late Middle Ages the Black Death, the greatest and most deadly outbreak of infectious disease in history, ravaged Europe, eventually killing between one third and a half of the population. The disease, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was carried by fleas living on the rats that were found in ports and on board ships, and humans were infected by the bite of a flea. Transmission may also occur via the respiratory route in droplets containing bacteria emitted by infected individuals through coughing or sneezing. The first cases of bubonic plague were seen in 1346 in the Genoan port of Caffa, in the Crimea, and the disease was carried to Europe on the merchant vessels plying their trade between Italy and the Black Sea ports. The first case was seen in England in June 1348 in the port of Weymouth, Dorset, in a sailor from Gascony. By autumn the disease had reached London, and the rest of the country by summer 1349, before dying down by December. It is estimated that in England alone more than 1.4 million people died in the space of a few months. At the time the disease was generally called the Great Pestilence or the Great Mortality, and was not given the name by which it is known today until the seventeenth century. The disease received its name bubonic plague because of the appearance of swellings in the groin, neck and armpits, known as buboes, which oozed pus and blood when opened. The appearance of buboes was followed by fever, malaise ...
    and vomiting of blood, and 80% of victims died within two to seven days of being infected. The Italian writer Boccaccio lived through the plague as it swept through the city of Florence in 1348, and the experience inspired him to write The Decameron, the story of seven men and three women who escape the disease by fleeing to a villa outside the city. This story is inspired by Boccaccio, and imagines a similar and equally diverse group of people in Yorkshire in 1349, and the tales they tell to amuse each other as they travel south in search of a new life. ***** Prologue Cawood, April 24th in the year of grace 1349 - yesterday perchance I found myself in the great city of York, just three leagues from here. I was there with my wife Godgifu to attend the festivities attending on the feast of St George.Yesterday Sir Miles Stapleton, Lord of Bedale and Knight of the Garter - a new order of chivalry instituted last year under the banner of St George by our glorious king Edward III by the grace of God - was in attendance at the Minster to give thanks for his recent magnificent victories in the tourney. As a true son of Yorkshire, I sought to combine business with pleasure, and after the service in the Minster I sought out Will, a timber merchant of my acquaintance, in the tavern of the White Hart, as I needed to order some wood for erection of stands for the Mayday celebrations in our village - I am a joiner and carpenter by trade, and also the village undertaker. While I was taking a ...
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