The Somnour's Prologue
Gratuitous vulgarity is what recommends this piece as a starting point; pure pandering, and part of the Chaucer style. The source of this vulgarity also surprizes; members of the religious estate, a friar and a somnour, between whom there is no love lost.
A Summoner(Somnour) was a bailiff for an ecclesiastic court of an archdeacon, and as such he summoned accused citizens to trial for infractions of ecclesiastical law: vice crimes, prostitution, adultery, cursing or making oaths, or the non-payment of tithes, the church tax. The Somnour himself could bargain for payment of fines, out of which he kept a share. This readily lead to abuses, so that Somnours were commonly considered little more than extortionists, shaking down local pimps for the names of a couple of their customers, and then extorting from these Johns a penance — at least according to the Friar.
The Friar has just finished telling his tale, which ends with a Somnour being dragged off to hell by a devil for trying to extort money from a poor old widow.

The somnour begins his requital with this humorous prologue, whose own vulgarity reflects the character of the somnour himself.