Get thee to Goosebridge

“Get thee to Goosebridge” is Solomon’s deliberately oblique counsel to Giosefo, who seeks advice about his difficult marriage. The phrase becomes intelligible only after Giosefo witnesses a muleteer driving a balking mule across a bridge and interprets the scene as a lesson in controlling his wife. Its literal destination, practical inference, and comic bluntness make the saying memorable; its setting within a tale about male authority also exposes the severity of the advice it appears to endorse.

The saying and its narrative frame

The expression occurs in a story told by the queen on the ninth day of the Decameron. Before beginning, she presents a general argument that women should be humble, patient, and obedient to men, whom she describes as their governors. She connects this claim to Pampinea’s earlier account of Talano’s wife, treating that story as an example of a husband’s failure to correct his wife. This framing prepares the audience to hear Giosefo’s problem not simply as a private disagreement, but as a question of how a husband should enforce authority.

The tale pairs Giosefo with Melisso, another young man seeking Solomon’s counsel. Melisso is rich, keeps open house, and entertains his fellow townsmen, yet says he cannot find anyone who wishes him well. Giosefo, by contrast, says that prayers and blandishments have not corrected his wife’s conduct. Their concerns are distinct: Melisso asks how to become loved, while Giosefo asks how to change a spouse. Solomon answers Melisso with the single word “Love.” To Giosefo he gives the command “Get thee to Goosebridge,” then dismisses each petitioner without explanation. The contrast makes one answer immediately legible and the other an interpretive puzzle.

The bridge and the mule

The two men leave Jerusalem thinking Solomon has mocked them. After travelling for several days, they reach a river crossed by a fine bridge. A caravan of pack-mules and sumpter-horses is passing, so they must wait. Near the end of the crossing, one mule takes fright and refuses to proceed. Its muleteer first beats it moderately, then strikes harder as it shies from side to side and turns back rather than crossing.

Melisso and Giosefo object that the man will injure the animal and urge him to use gentle treatment, which they think would make it move sooner. The muleteer rejects their advice: they know horses, he says, while he knows his mule. He resumes beating it, striking its head, flanks, and hindquarters until it finally passes over the bridge. The physical outcome is plain, but its lesson is not yet imposed by Solomon’s words; Giosefo supplies that connection himself.

When the men are about to continue, Giosefo asks a poor man at the bridge-head for the place’s name. Told that it is Goosebridge, he suddenly understands Solomon’s instruction. He tells Melisso that he had not known how to beat his wife and that the muleteer has shown him what to do. The name thus works in two registers: it first identifies the place literally, then becomes the key that lets Giosefo attach Solomon’s cryptic command to the witnessed beating. The episode’s turn depends on a chain of concrete details—the balking animal, the dispute over gentle handling, the muleteer’s claim of particular knowledge, and the bridge’s name—rather than on any further explanation from the king.

Applying the counsel at home

After several more days, the companions reach Antioch, where Giosefo keeps Melisso as a guest for a day or two. The first test of the newly interpreted advice comes at supper. Giosefo asks his wife to prepare the meal as Melisso directs, but she does nearly the opposite, as she has done before. When Giosefo asks why she ignored the instruction, she answers haughtily that she chose to do things her own way and that he can eat if he wishes or leave it alone if he does not.

Melisso is astonished and reproaches her. Giosefo says she remains as she has always been and announces that he will make her change her ways. He then asks Melisso to stay and watch, warning him not to interfere; to explain that request, he recalls the muleteer’s insistence that the travellers should leave him to handle his own mule. This parallel carries the saying from interpretation toward action: Giosefo treats the scene at Goosebridge as a model for the encounter in his household. The supplied episode ends with his announced intention and appeal to Melisso, before showing what he does next, so the consequences of this threatened discipline cannot be stated here.

Meaning and limits

The expression’s force comes from its delayed conversion of a place-name into a rule of conduct. Solomon does not spell out the connection, and the muleteer does not address marriage; Giosefo joins those separate scenes and draws the harsh conclusion. His reasoning also echoes the muleteer’s claim that outsiders do not know how best to manage his animal, shifting the question from persuasion to a husband’s asserted right to act within his own household.

The queen’s introductory argument supports that reading by presenting obedience as a social norm, while the episode’s vivid animal-handling scene gives that norm a coercive image. At the same time, the advice is transmitted through a comic riddle: the king offers no direct instruction, and its meaning emerges through coincidence, observation, and Giosefo’s interpretation. “Get thee to Goosebridge” therefore names both the journey that solves the riddle and the violent lesson Giosefo believes he has learned; the available passage establishes that interpretation and its intended application, but not their final outcome.