Nineteen ninety-three saw Ten Summoner’s Tales—a pun on Sting’s real surname, Sumner, and also a reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. That fifteenth-century tome includes stories told by, among other figures, a summoner, i.e., a court figure charged with calling others to appear before royalty or for some other important, formal function.
The included musical tale “St. Augustine in Hell” found its protagonist caught in his own “eternal fire” of uncontrollable sexual attraction to a woman dating his best friend. In his pique, he proposes a corresponding rightfully earned torturous eternity for cardinals, archbishops, accountants who misuse the investment funds entrusted to them ... and music critics.
Augustine’s own prayer to God in the face of temptation, as quoted in the song, was exactly “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet.”
[From Rock & Holy Rollers: The Spiritual Beliefs of Chart-Topping Rock Stars in Their Lives and Lyrics by Geoffrey D. Falk.]
Nineteen ninety-three saw Ten Summoner’s Tales—a pun on Sting’s real surname, Sumner, and also a reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. That fifteenth-century tome includes stories told by, among other figures, a summoner, i.e., a court figure charged with calling others to appear before royalty or for some other important, formal function. The included musical tale “St. Augustine in Hell” found its protagonist caught in his own “eternal fire” of uncontrollable sexual attraction to a woman dating his best friend. In his pique, he proposes a corresponding rightfully earned torturous eternity for cardinals, archbishops, accountants who misuse the investment funds entrusted to them ... and music critics. Augustine’s own prayer to God in the face of temptation, as quoted in the song, was exactly “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet.”
[From Rock & Holy Rollers: The Spiritual Beliefs of Chart-Topping Rock Stars in Their Lives and Lyrics by Geoffrey D. Falk.]