"The Prioress's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It follows "The Shipman's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales. Because of fragmentation of the manuscripts, it is impossible to tell where it comes in ordinal sequence, but it is second in group B2, followed by Chaucer's "Tale of Sir Topas". The General Prologue names the prioress as Madame Eglantine, and describes her impeccable table manners and soft-hearted ways. Her portrait suggests she is likely in religious life as a means of social advancement, given her aristocratic manners and mispronounced French. She maintains a secular lifestyle, including keeping lap dogs that she privileges over people, a fancy rosary and a brooch inscribed with ('Love Conquers All'). Her story is of a child martyr killed by Jews, a common theme in Medieval Christianity, and much later criticism focuses on the tale's antisemitism. Plot The story is introduced with an invocation to the Virgin Mary, then sets the scene in Asia, where a community of Jews live in a Christian city. A seven-year-old school-boy, son of a widow, is brought up to revere Mary. He teaches himself to sing the first verse of the popular medieval hymn ("Nurturing Mother of the Redeemer"); although he does not understand the words, an older classmate tells him it is about Mary, the mother of Jesus. He begins to sing it every day as he walks through the local Jewish ghetto to school. Satan, "That hath (built) in Jewes' heart his waspe's nest", incites some Jews to murder the child and throw his body into a public cesspit. His mother searches for him and eventually finds his body, which miraculously begins to sing the . The Christians call in the city magistrate, who has some of the guilty Jews drawn by wild horses and then hanged. The boy continues to sing throughout his own Requiem Mass until the local abbot asks him how he is able to do so. He replies that although his throat is cut, Mary appeared to him and laid a grain on his tongue, saying he could keep singing until it was removed and she would come for him. The abbot removes the grain and the boy finally becomes silent and dies. The story ends with a reference to Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, another child martyr whose death was blamed on Jews. Genre The story is an example of a