The Canterbury Fails
David Coley and Matt Hussey
Reading marginal, minor, and absolutely unread Old and Middle English poetry, paired with a thematically appropriate cocktail.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 2, 2025 • 56min
Thre Prestis of Peblis: Threefold Bait and Switch with a Mid Whisky Sour
The set up is so juicy: dissolution, gluttony, corruption--but no, it's a moral Scottish march through politics, ethics, and penance, with a 3x3 drink that does what it should but not what it could.
Apr 17, 2025 • 52min
Proverb from Winfrid's Time: A Macronic Prosimetric Shorty with a Burly and Surly Complexity of a Drink
Buried in an eighth-century Latin letter from a monk who keeps his name a secret is a two-line maybe heroic nugget of juicy maybe heroic wisdom. We read it.
Apr 5, 2025 • 40min
Money, Money, Money: A Dour maybe-anti-Money poem and a gross drink you might have had stealing liquor from your parents
Matt and David try to grapple with a late Middle English anti-money tract, but there isn't much to work with, and the cocktail is a citrusy paean to sadness.
Mar 15, 2025 • 51min
Ælfric's Mid-Lent Sunday: Stirring Metaphors and a Stirred Drink
A reflective reading of Jesus and his loaves and fishes, chock full of allegorical goodness, and a world class Old Fashiouned (TM): thank you Canada!
Mar 2, 2025 • 39min
Insta-Fails: Four Middle English Lyrics and Four Breweries
A very special stunt episode where Matt and David read unseen (by them, but no doubt Furnivall has read them all) and give their gut reactions / hot takes, as they peregrinate through breweries in Port Moody. Chaos, 80s music, and revelry ensue.
Feb 15, 2025 • 51min
The Rime of King William: Chonky Anglais Fizz and Angry Rhyming Couplets
A poem in Old English that is wildly ambivalent but brutally clever coupled with a vegetation-rich perversion of an English classic.
Jan 18, 2025 • 46min
The Fraternity of Drinkers: Initiation Rites with Quarts of English Ale
A gentle tail-rhymed parody about a brotherhood of drinkers that no one has every written about: a perfect Fail.
Nov 30, 2024 • 52min
Ælfric's Homily on the Nativity: Invisible Wolf and Thicc-Dranks
Ælfric gets all teacherly about Jesus's birth and Matt and David suck down 3000 calories in 5 minutes. It's great.
Nov 16, 2024 • 49min
On the Corruptions of the Times: Bad Poetry, Matt Weeps, and a Pencil Shaving Cocktail
The vaguest and most general milquetoast fifteenth-century poetry on how bad things are (they are bad people!) with a drink that makes Matt and David question their credibility.
Nov 1, 2024 • 51min
A Voice Crying Out and a Fortified City: Old English Prose Psalm 30
Alfred shouts out his sorrows while Matt and David (both the Biblical and the actual) knock back a Bob Dylan x vermouth fanfic love fest. With fire. And a monastic chaser.
