The Canon's Yeoman's Tale

The Canon and his Yeoman are not mentioned in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, where most of the other pilgrims are described, but they arrive later after riding fast to catch up with the group.

It is believed it was one of the last tales to be written and it seems to many scholars that Chaucer must have had a real person in mind while writing such a lively attack on alchemists.

[3] Chaucer probably got much of the technical detail from Speculum Naturale (Mirror of Nature) by Vincent of Beauvais, and Arnold of Villanova is mentioned within the tale itself although he may have read many other alchemical texts.

He describes how the Canon works to discover the philosopher's stone and many of the processes he goes through but how in the end the pot breaks and they lose most of the metal they had.

The Canon's Yeoman tells how he was once a happy man who wore fine clothing, but has now degraded into poverty – he must wear his stocking for a cap; he is so deep in debt that he can never repay loans no matter how long he lives or how "talented" he is; his face is grey and the colour of lead, implying that his pursuit of alchemy has left him suffering from lead poisoning and mortally ill. Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist bears many similarities to Chaucer's tale.