But o thyng he hym preyede outrely,
That he to no wight, though men wolde enquere,
Sholde nat telle whos children that they were.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Clerk’s Tale. Walter sends a letter to the husband of his sister in Bologna, with whom his two children were secretly placed, to bring his son and daughter home. But he instructs that there is to be no mention of whose children they are. This is part of Walter’s new test for his wife.