Imitate those great
examples
if you can; for my part I cannot.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
I can
leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon. I am, said Xenomanes,
full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and
will now make shift to bear a steady sail. Said Carpalin, A truce with
thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are
stronger. I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound
lighter. I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry
as a beggar. For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true
thing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper
Silenus of blessed memory, that--
The man's emphatically mad,
Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.
We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,
with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare
dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,
and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.
But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;
which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather. Since you ask no more
than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you
satisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,
if you will.
Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised. Have we not
raised it? Look up and see our full topsails. Hark how the wind whistles
through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows. Observe the rattling of
the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the
force of the wind puts them upon the stretch. While we passed our time
merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses
to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.
Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:
While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--
That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.
Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.
Chapter 4. LXVI.
How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.
This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you
see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount
Parnassus in Phocis? I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of
Ganabim. Have you a mind to go ashore there? No, returned Pantagruel.
You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in
the place. The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in
the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.
Your fleet may take in wood and water there.
He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be
so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers. You may take my
word for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly
were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater
Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of
thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than
raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the
college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.
As you love yourself, do not go among 'em. If you go you'll come off but
bluely, if you come off at all. If you will not believe me, at least
believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if
they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us
alive. Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to
hell. Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most
dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the
commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle. Let's
sheer off.
Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world
of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me,
quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but
ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what
becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. A pox on
grinning honour, say I. Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!
thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils
anatomize thy cockle brain. The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he
berays himself for fear every day. If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not
go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam
Proserpine's petticoat.
Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in
an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the
musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.
Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest: I feel a pressing retraction
in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there. Whenever I
have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding
what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;
and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.
As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so
celebrated among the Academics. Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the
ship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport? Panurge is got down
somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a
mouse in a cranny. Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun
over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of
this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it. You are in
the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.
The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done. The
gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,
hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a
horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our
ears.
Chapter 4. LXVII.
How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which
he took for a puny devil.
Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the
bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his
stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;
his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been
over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his
other stocking. In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's
a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,
and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting
by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him
heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty
bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke
loose.
Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my
ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their
feast to-day, man. Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such
preparations in thy life for an infernal feast. Dost thou see the smoke of
hell's kitchens? (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder
above the ships. ) Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast
born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are
Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been
English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,
near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by
the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of
smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;
which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was
dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive
faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the
arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear
which he had been in during his fantastic visions. Add to this the
thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks
than above. Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the
symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the
cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time. Let's illustrate
this noble theme with some examples.
Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to
Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the
stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non
son andato del corpo. Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi
paura. (I have not had a stool since I left Rome. I pray thee take this
pitchfork and fright me. ) Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he
would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese
said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di
adoperarli piu guagliardamente. (If thou dost not go another way to work,
thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more
briskly. ) With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the
pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down
fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide
straggling over his poll. Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed
laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,
Signore Italiano. Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.
'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;
for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was
the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating
arch-lubbers. Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously
gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel
messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. (I
thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a
clyster. )
I'll give you another example of Edward V. , King of England. Master
Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his
favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king,
being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to
him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none
of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.
Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health
your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks
after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat
costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository
or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the
purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of
them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as
much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they
were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently
conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of
the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be
in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But
henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A silly cockney am I not,
As ever did from Paris come?
And with a rope and sliding knot
My neck shall know what weighs my bum.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,
to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber
before you come into this closet. By'r lady, at first I thought your
close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed
very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But
now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a
noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the
mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on
the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,
cop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a
close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with
the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,
seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,
berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not
choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this
cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think
it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking
instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as
thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil
take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to
the life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers. With this he threw his
boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a
clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried
Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more
hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had
swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris
from Midsummer to Christmas. But what's this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil
came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,
dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,
sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or
spyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish
saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let's
drink.
THE FIFTH BOOK
The Author's Prologue.
Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give
me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly
striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why
is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in
the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,
jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose
cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether
you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically
may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?
How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what
dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were they fools? How
should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly
fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made 'em
fools? Who a God's name made 'em wise? Who d'ye think are most, those
that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it
been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?
Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later?
Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse
for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How
should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new
wisdom be started up and established?
Now answer me, an't please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,
reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least
uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five
bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;
then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For
I swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that
if you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already
do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and
gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you?
I'faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an
answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the
business, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter
by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,
wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d'ye think the old
fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.
The jubilee's year, when all like fools were shorn,
Is about thirty supernumerary.
O want of veneration! fools they seemed,
But, persevering, with long breves, at last
No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.
For they shall shell the shrub's delicious fruit,
Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.
Now you have it, what do you make on't? The seer is ancient, the style
laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of
matters dark enough in themselves. The best commentators on that good
father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are
included in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every
fifty years). Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.
The fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot
like a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall
have an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae
infinitae sunt species. Having been driven back and hidden towards the
centre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface,
and buds out like the trees. This is as plain as a nose in a man's face;
you know it by experience; you see it. And it was formerly found out by
that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c. This
world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and
blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,
bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to
keep them company.
Whole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,
and gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,
soporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as
those of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of
Pythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,
have seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered
to the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their
destiny, and to this they were predestinated.
In their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and
fructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of
the following jubilee's period; to the study of which writings all people
have given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.
Now I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,
and be the better for it. Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to
your pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!
since we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves. Oh!
they will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold. For I
hereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business
on free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope's end
providently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher
of the law.
Now, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and
shake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your
scrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden
thigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for
a truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he
enjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a
certain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of
Camelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,
the rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,
rumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota. For the duncical dog-leech was
so selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his
poor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should
overload their squeamish stomachs.
To the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid
us the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books. They seem to follow the
example of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome
memory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut
voluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,
filthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have
the stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so
much after it.
So those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms
of mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and
like toads spit their venom upon them.
Now, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse
and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and
trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous
foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my
plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,
rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent
orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other
under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of
herding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve
to fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,
and pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up
of the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are
tickled in the right place.
Having taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my
Diogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example. I
see a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,
Drouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having
commenced masters in Apollo's academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk
brimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised
our vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure. Their
works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they
treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult
matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style. Their writings
are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.
Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of
the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a
profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent
and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.
Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot. Everyone,
you know, cannot go to Corinth. When Solomon built the temple, all could
not give gold by handfuls.
Since then 'tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as
they, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban: I'll wait on the
masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and
since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live
and die the admirer of their divine writings.
As for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you'll
soon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some
well-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the
admiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough. While I
here solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine
mistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with
that of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain
Moses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments
no ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the
teeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such
mouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,
barren, and contemptible as they pretend. Nor ought I to be afraid of I
know not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred
times clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing
but new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the
muddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant
as they are often uncertain. Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as
when formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical
exchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the
office of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire
higher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff
follower of the sect of Pyreicus.
I dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so
good-natured, and so generous, that they'll ne'er boggle at so small a
request. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully
enjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,
and observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular
profit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with
the books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.
O rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!
Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,
you take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as
soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those
beans, but e'en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be
in you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,
what good they do to all clever shellers of beans.
Here is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your
worships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the
former came. So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was
ever paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat
better against next visit the swallows give us.
THE FIFTH BOOK.
Chapter 5. I.
How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we
heard.
Pursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on
the fourth we made land. Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,
and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that
seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,
middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as 'tis customary at Paris,
Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we
came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.
Some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called
Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on
Memnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to
be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands. But this did
not square with chorography.
I do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may
be taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this
dingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of
Cybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back. Let's hearken. When we
were nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we
heard the singing, as we thought, of some men. For this reason, before we
offered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we
should go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an
hermitage and a little garden. There we found a diminutive old hermit,
whose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay. He gave us a full account of all
the jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong
days did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into
the Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,
or ember weeks. As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand
this riddle. Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;
for while we fast we are only puffed up with wind. Pray now, good father
hermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is
somewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace
holidays and those fasting times of yours. In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,
I could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and
the future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.
That time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the
preter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (? ) and odd cases.
Patience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog. Saith the hermit: It is, as I
told you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and
wants nothing but fire and faggot, that's certain. To deal plainly with
you, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet
than being warm, and being drowned than being burned.
Well, however, let us fast, a God's name; yet I have fasted so long that it
has quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this
bodily fort of mine will fall to ruin. Besides, I am much more afraid of
vexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand
anything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have
told me, and I am apt to believe them. For my part, I have no great
stomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade
of which anybody may set up; there needs no tools. I am much more inclined
not to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and
some tools are set a-work. No matter, since you are so steadfast, and
would have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in
the name of famine. Now we are come to these esurial idle days. I vow I
had quite put them out of my head long ago. If we must fast, said
Pantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,
as we would out of a bad way. I'll in that space of time somewhat look
over my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at
land. For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him
to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a
barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.
To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most
hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second
at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds: such
was the order of the fairies.
Chapter 5. II.
How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become
birds.
Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he
called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge
greeting him called him Master Antitus. He was a little queer old fellow,
bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a
card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap. He made us all very
welcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I
have told you.
When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was
remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by
the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,
you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.
There I had a full account of all that Atteius Capito, Paulus, Marcellus,
A. Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius, and others had writ of the
Siticines and Sicinnists; and then we thought we might as easily believe
the transmutations of Nectymene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus,
and other birds. Nor did we think it more reasonable to doubt of the
transmogrification of the Macrobian children into swans, or that of the men
of Pallene in Thrace into birds, as soon as they had bathed themselves in
the Tritonic lake. After this the devil a word could we get out of him but
of birds and cages.
The cages were spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable
architecture. The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as
like the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and
drank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like
men, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men,
but somewhat oftener: in short, had you seen and examined them from top to
toe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men.
However, they were nothing less, as Master Aedituus told us; assuring us,
at the same time, that they were neither secular nor laic; and the truth
is, the diversity of their feathers and plumes did not a little puzzle us.
Some of them were all over as white as swans, others as black as crows,
many as grey as owls, others black and white like magpies, some all red
like red-birds, and others purple and white like some pigeons. He called
the males clerg-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-hawks, bish-hawks,
cardin-hawks, and one pope-hawk, who is a species by himself. He called
the females clerg-kites, nun-kites, priest-kites, abbess-kites, bish-kites,
cardin-kites, and pope-kites.
However, said he, as hornets and drones will get among the bees, and there
do nothing but buzz, eat, and spoil everything; so, for these last three
hundred years, a vast swarm of bigottelloes flocked, I do not know how,
among these goodly birds every fifth full moon, and have bemuted, berayed,
and conskited the whole island. They are so hard-favoured and monstrous
that none can abide them. For their wry necks make a figure like a crooked
billet; their paws are hairy, like those of rough-footed pigeons; their
claws and pounces, belly and breech, like those of the Stymphalid harpies.
Nor is it possible to root them out, for if you get rid of one, straight
four-and-twenty new ones fly thither.
There had been need of another monster-hunter such as was Hercules; for
Friar John had like to have run distracted about it, so much he was nettled
and puzzled in the matter. As for the good Pantagruel, he was even served
as was Messer Priapus, contemplating the sacrifices of Ceres, for want of
skin.
Chapter 5. III.
How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island.
We then asked Master Aedituus why there was but one pope-hawk among such
venerable birds multiplied in all their species. He answered that such was
the first institution and fatal destiny of the stars that the clerg-hawks
begot the priest-hawks and monk-hawks without carnal copulation, as some
bees are born of a young bull; the priest-hawks begat the bish-hawks, the
bish-hawks the stately cardin-hawks, and the stately cardin-hawks, if they
live long enough, at last come to be pope-hawk.
Of this last kind there never is more than one at a time, as in a beehive
there is but one king, and in the world is but one sun.
When the pope-hawk dies, another arises in his stead out of the whole brood
of cardin-hawks, that is, as you must understand it all along, without
carnal copulation. So that there is in that species an individual unity,
with a perpetuity of succession, neither more or less than in the Arabian
phoenix.
'Tis true that, about two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, two
pope-hawks were seen upon the face of the earth; but then you never saw in
your lives such a woeful rout and hurly-burly as was all over this island.
For all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all
that time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a
fair way of being left without inhabitants. Some stood up for this
pope-hawk, some for t'other. Some, struck with a dumbness, were as mute as
so many fishes; the devil a note was to be got out of them; part of the
merry bells here were as silent as if they had lost their tongues, I mean
their clappers.
During these troublesome times they called to their assistance the
emperors, kings, dukes, earls, barons, and commonwealths of the world that
live on t'other side the water; nor was this schism and sedition at an end
till one of them died, and the plurality was reduced to a unity.
We then asked what moved those birds to be thus continually chanting and
singing. He answered that it was the bells that hung on the top of their
cages. Then he said to us, Will you have me make these monk-hawks whom you
see bardocuculated with a bag such as you use to still brandy, sing like
any woodlarks? Pray do, said we. He then gave half-a-dozen pulls to a
little rope, which caused a diminutive bell to give so many ting-tangs; and
presently a parcel of monk-hawks ran to him as if the devil had drove 'em,
and fell a-singing like mad.
Pray, master, cried Panurge, if I also rang this bell could I make those
other birds yonder, with red-herring-coloured feathers, sing? Ay, marry
would you, returned Aedituus. With this Panurge hanged himself (by the
hands, I mean) at the bell-rope's end, and no sooner made it speak but
those smoked birds hied them thither and began to lift up their voices and
make a sort of untowardly hoarse noise, which I grudge to call singing.
Aedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish, like the herns
and cormorants of the world, and that they were a fifth kind of cucullati
newly stamped.
He added that he had been told by Robert Valbringue, who lately passed that
way in his return from Africa, that a sixth kind was to fly hither out of
hand, which he called capus-hawks, more grum, vinegar-faced, brain-sick,
froward, and loathsome than any kind whatsoever in the whole island.
Africa, said Pantagruel, still uses to produce some new and monstrous
thing.
Chapter 5. IV.
How the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers.
Since you have told us, said Pantagruel, how the pope-hawk is begot by the
cardin-hawks, the cardin-hawks by the bish-hawks, and the bish-hawks by the
priest-hawks, and the priest-hawks by the clerg-hawks, I would gladly know
whence you have these same clerg-hawks. They are all of them passengers,
or travelling birds, returned Aedituus, and come hither from t'other world;
part out of a vast country called Want-o'-bread, the rest out of another
toward the west, which they style Too-many-of-'em. From these two
countries flock hither, every year, whole legions of these clerg-hawks,
leaving their fathers, mothers, friends, and relations.
This happens when there are too many children, whether male or female, in
some good family of the latter country; insomuch that the house would come
to nothing if the paternal estate were shared among them all (as reason
requires, nature directs, and God commands). For this cause parents use to
rid themselves of that inconveniency by packing off the younger fry, and
forcing them to seek their fortune in this isle Bossart (Crooked Island).
I suppose he means L'Isle Bouchart, near Chinon, cried Panurge. No,
replied t'other, I mean Bossart (Crooked), for there is not one in ten
among them but is either crooked, crippled, blinking, limping,
ill-favoured, deformed, or an unprofitable load to the earth.
'Twas quite otherwise among the heathens, said Pantagruel, when they used
to receive a maiden among the number of vestals; for Leo Antistius affirms
that it was absolutely forbidden to admit a virgin into that order if she
had any vice in her soul or defect in her body, though it were but the
smallest spot on any part of it. I can hardly believe, continued Aedituus,
that their dams on t'other side the water go nine months with them; for
they cannot endure them nine years, nay, scarce seven sometimes, in the
house, but by putting only a shirt over the other clothes of the young
urchins, and lopping off I don't well know how many hairs from their
crowns, mumbling certain apostrophized and expiatory words, they visibly,
openly, and plainly, by a Pythagorical metempsychosis, without the least
hurt, transmogrify them into such birds as you now see; much after the
fashion of the Egyptian heathens, who used to constitute their isiacs by
shaving them and making them put on certain linostoles, or surplices.
However, I don't know, my good friends, but that these she-things, whether
clerg-kites, monk-kites, and abbess-kites, instead of singing pleasant
verses and charisteres, such as used to be sung to Oromasis by Zoroaster's
institution, may be bellowing out such catarates and scythropys (cursed
lamentable and wretched imprecations) as were usually offered to the
Arimanian demon; being thus in devotion for their kind friends and
relations that transformed them into birds, whether when they were maids,
or thornbacks, in their prime, or at their last prayers.
But the greatest numbers of our birds came out of Want-o'-bread, which,
though a barren country, where the days are of a most tedious lingering
length, overstocks this whole island with the lower class of birds. For
hither fly the asapheis that inhabit that land, either when they are in
danger of passing their time scurvily for want of belly-timber, being
unable, or, what's more likely, unwilling to take heart of grace and follow
some honest lawful calling, or too proud-hearted and lazy to go to service
in some sober family. The same is done by your frantic inamoradoes, who,
when crossed in their wild desires, grow stark staring mad, and choose this
life suggested to them by their despair, too cowardly to make them swing,
like their brother Iphis of doleful memory. There is another sort, that
is, your gaol-birds, who, having done some rogue's trick or other heinous
villainy, and being sought up and down to be trussed up and made to ride
the two or three-legged mare that groans for them, warily scour off and
come here to save their bacon; because all these sorts of birds are here
provided for, and grow in an instant as fat as hogs, though they came as
lean as rakes; for having the benefit of the clergy, they are as safe as
thieves in a mill within this sanctuary.
But, asked Pantagruel, do these birds never return to the world where they
were hatched? Some do, answered Aedituus; formerly very few, very seldom,
very late, and very unwillingly; however, since some certain eclipses, by
the virtue of the celestial constellations, a great crowd of them fled back
to the world. Nor do we fret or vex ourselves a jot about it; for those
that stay wisely sing, The fewer the better cheer; and all those that fly
away, first cast off their feathers here among these nettles and briars.
Accordingly we found some thrown by there; and as we looked up and down, we
chanced to light on what some people will hardly thank us for having
discovered; and thereby hangs a tale.
Chapter 5. V.
Of the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island.
These words were scarce out of his mouth when some five-and-twenty or
thirty birds flew towards us; they were of a hue and feather like which we
had not seen anything in the whole island. Their plumes were as changeable
as the skin of the chameleon, and the flower of tripolion, or teucrion.
They had all under the left wing a mark like two diameters dividing a
circle into equal parts, or, if you had rather have it so, like a
perpendicular line falling on a right line. The marks which each of them
bore were much of the same shape, but of different colours; for some were
white, others green, some red, others purple, and some blue. Who are
those? asked Panurge; and how do you call them? They are mongrels, quoth
Aedituus.
We call them knight-hawks, and they have a great number of rich
commanderies (fat livings) in your world. Good your worship, said I, make
them give us a song, an't please you, that we may know how they sing. They
scorn your words, cried Aedituus; they are none of your singing-birds; but,
to make amends, they feed as much as the best two of them all. Pray where
are their hens? where are their females? said I. They have none, answered
Aedituus. How comes it to pass then, asked Panurge, that they are thus
bescabbed, bescurfed, all embroidered o'er the phiz with carbuncles,
pushes, and pock-royals, some of which undermine the handles of their
faces? This same fashionable and illustrious disease, quoth Aedituus, is
common among that kind of birds, because they are pretty apt to be tossed
on the salt deep.
He then acquainted us with the occasion of their coming. This next to us,
said he, looks so wistfully upon you to see whether he may not find among
your company a stately gaudy kind of huge dreadful birds of prey, which yet
are so untoward that they ne'er could be brought to the lure nor to perch
on the glove. They tell us that there are such in your world, and that
some of them have goodly garters below the knee with an inscription about
them which condemns him (qui mal y pense) who shall think ill of it to be
berayed and conskited. Others are said to wear the devil in a string
before their paunches; and others a ram's skin. All that's true enough,
good Master Aedituus, quoth Panurge; but we have not the honour to be
acquainted with their knightships.
Come on, cried Aedituus in a merry mood, we have had chat enough o'
conscience! let's e'en go drink. And eat, quoth Panurge. Eat, replied
Aedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill
like tinkers. Pull away and save tide, for nothing is so dear and precious
as time; therefore we will be sure to put it to a good use.
He would fain have carried us first to bathe in the bagnios of the
cardin-hawks, which are goodly delicious places, and have us licked over
with precious ointments by the alyptes, alias rubbers, as soon as we should
come out of the bath. But Pantagruel told him that he could drink but too
much without that. He then led us into a spacious delicate refectory, or
fratery-room, and told us: Braguibus the hermit made you fast four days
together; now, contrariwise, I'll make you eat and drink of the best four
days through stitch before you budge from this place. But hark ye me, cried
Panurge, may not we take a nap in the mean time? Ay, ay, answered Aedituus;
that is as you shall think good; for he that sleeps, drinks. Good Lord! how
we lived! what good bub! what dainty cheer! O what a honest cod was this
same Aedituus!
Chapter 5. VI.
How the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island.
Pantagruel looked I don't know howish, and seemed not very well pleased
with the four days' junketting which Aedituus enjoined us. Aedituus, who
soon found it out, said to him, You know, sir, that seven days before
winter, and seven days after, there is no storm at sea; for then the
elements are still out of respect for the halcyons, or king-fishers, birds
sacred to Thetis, which then lay their eggs and hatch their young near the
shore. Now here the sea makes itself amends for this long calm; and
whenever any foreigners come hither it grows boisterous and stormy for four
days together. We can give no other reason for it but that it is a piece
of its civility, that those who come among us may stay whether they will or
no, and be copiously feasted all the while with the incomes of the ringing.
Therefore pray don't think your time lost; for, willing, nilling, you'll be
forced to stay, unless you are resolved to encounter Juno, Neptune, Doris,
Aeolus, and his fluster-busters, and, in short, all the pack of ill-natured
left-handed godlings and vejoves. Do but resolve to be cheery, and fall-to
briskly.
After we had pretty well stayed our stomachs with some tight snatches,
Friar John said to Aedituus, For aught I see, you have none but a parcel of
birds and cages in this island of yours, and the devil a bit of one of them
all that sets his hand to the plough, or tills the land whose fat he
devours; their whole business is to be frolic, to chirp it, to whistle it,
to warble it, tossing it, and roar it merrily night and day. Pray then, if
I may be so bold, whence comes this plenty and overflowing of all dainty
bits and good things which we see among you? From all the other world,
returned Aedituus, if you except some part of the northern regions, who of
late years have stirred up the jakes. Mum! they may chance ere long to rue
the day they did so; their cows shall have porridge, and their dogs oats;
there will be work made among them, that there will. Come, a fig for't,
let's drink. But pray what countrymen are you? Touraine is our country,
answered Panurge. Cod so, cried Aedituus, you were not then hatched of an
ill bird, I will say that for you, since the blessed Touraine is your
mother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of
good things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to
touch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine's income will not afford
him to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between
Moses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal
to these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it,
cram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing
our puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat
capons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl. Come, box it
about; tope on, my friends. Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are
perched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the
income that Touraine yields us! And in faith they sing rarely for their
good founders, that is the truth on't. You never saw any Arcadian birds
mumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt
batons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their
cages. Drink on, sirs, whip it away. Verily, friends, 'tis very fine
drinking to-day, and so 'tis every day o' the week; then drink on, toss it
about, here's to you with all my soul. You are most heartily welcome;
never spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and
belly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth
of iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were
to continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt. Let
us then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the
creature.
Woons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on't in this world!
Psha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t'other;
the Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot. Come, in
the meantime let us drink here; come, here's to thee, old fuddlecap.
Your first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a
means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so
few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together--I mean, a
paradise in this life, and another in the next. Sure you were born wrapt
in your mother's smickets! O happy creatures! O more than men! Would I
had the luck to fare like you! (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter
VI. )
Chapter 5. VII.
How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass.
When we had crammed and crammed again, Aedituus took us into a chamber that
was well furnished, hung with tapestry, and finely gilt. Thither he caused
to be brought store of mirobolans, cashou, green ginger preserved, with
plenty of hippocras, and delicious wine. With those antidotes, that were
like a sweet Lethe, he invited us to forget the hardships of our voyage;
and at the same time he sent plenty of provisions on board our ship that
rid in the harbour.
leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon. I am, said Xenomanes,
full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and
will now make shift to bear a steady sail. Said Carpalin, A truce with
thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are
stronger. I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound
lighter. I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry
as a beggar. For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true
thing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper
Silenus of blessed memory, that--
The man's emphatically mad,
Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.
We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,
with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare
dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,
and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.
But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;
which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather. Since you ask no more
than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you
satisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,
if you will.
Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised. Have we not
raised it? Look up and see our full topsails. Hark how the wind whistles
through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows. Observe the rattling of
the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the
force of the wind puts them upon the stretch. While we passed our time
merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses
to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.
Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:
While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--
That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.
Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.
Chapter 4. LXVI.
How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.
This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you
see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount
Parnassus in Phocis? I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of
Ganabim. Have you a mind to go ashore there? No, returned Pantagruel.
You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in
the place. The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in
the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.
Your fleet may take in wood and water there.
He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be
so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers. You may take my
word for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly
were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater
Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of
thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than
raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the
college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.
As you love yourself, do not go among 'em. If you go you'll come off but
bluely, if you come off at all. If you will not believe me, at least
believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if
they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us
alive. Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to
hell. Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most
dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the
commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle. Let's
sheer off.
Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world
of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me,
quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but
ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what
becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. A pox on
grinning honour, say I. Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!
thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils
anatomize thy cockle brain. The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he
berays himself for fear every day. If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not
go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam
Proserpine's petticoat.
Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in
an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the
musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.
Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest: I feel a pressing retraction
in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there. Whenever I
have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding
what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;
and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.
As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so
celebrated among the Academics. Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the
ship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport? Panurge is got down
somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a
mouse in a cranny. Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun
over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of
this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it. You are in
the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.
The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done. The
gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,
hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a
horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our
ears.
Chapter 4. LXVII.
How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which
he took for a puny devil.
Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the
bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his
stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;
his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been
over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his
other stocking. In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's
a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,
and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting
by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him
heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty
bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke
loose.
Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my
ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their
feast to-day, man. Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such
preparations in thy life for an infernal feast. Dost thou see the smoke of
hell's kitchens? (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder
above the ships. ) Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast
born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are
Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been
English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,
near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by
the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of
smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;
which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was
dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive
faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the
arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear
which he had been in during his fantastic visions. Add to this the
thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks
than above. Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the
symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the
cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time. Let's illustrate
this noble theme with some examples.
Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to
Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the
stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non
son andato del corpo. Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi
paura. (I have not had a stool since I left Rome. I pray thee take this
pitchfork and fright me. ) Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he
would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese
said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di
adoperarli piu guagliardamente. (If thou dost not go another way to work,
thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more
briskly. ) With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the
pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down
fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide
straggling over his poll. Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed
laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,
Signore Italiano. Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.
'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;
for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was
the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating
arch-lubbers. Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously
gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel
messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. (I
thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a
clyster. )
I'll give you another example of Edward V. , King of England. Master
Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his
favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king,
being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to
him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none
of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.
Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health
your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks
after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat
costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository
or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the
purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of
them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as
much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they
were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently
conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of
the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be
in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But
henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A silly cockney am I not,
As ever did from Paris come?
And with a rope and sliding knot
My neck shall know what weighs my bum.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,
to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber
before you come into this closet. By'r lady, at first I thought your
close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed
very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But
now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a
noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the
mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on
the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,
cop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a
close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with
the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,
seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,
berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not
choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this
cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think
it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking
instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as
thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil
take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to
the life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers. With this he threw his
boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a
clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried
Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more
hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had
swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris
from Midsummer to Christmas. But what's this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil
came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,
dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,
sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or
spyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish
saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let's
drink.
THE FIFTH BOOK
The Author's Prologue.
Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give
me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly
striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why
is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in
the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,
jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose
cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether
you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically
may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?
How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what
dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were they fools? How
should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly
fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made 'em
fools? Who a God's name made 'em wise? Who d'ye think are most, those
that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it
been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?
Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later?
Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse
for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How
should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new
wisdom be started up and established?
Now answer me, an't please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,
reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least
uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five
bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;
then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For
I swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that
if you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already
do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and
gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you?
I'faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an
answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the
business, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter
by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,
wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d'ye think the old
fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.
The jubilee's year, when all like fools were shorn,
Is about thirty supernumerary.
O want of veneration! fools they seemed,
But, persevering, with long breves, at last
No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.
For they shall shell the shrub's delicious fruit,
Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.
Now you have it, what do you make on't? The seer is ancient, the style
laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of
matters dark enough in themselves. The best commentators on that good
father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are
included in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every
fifty years). Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.
The fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot
like a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall
have an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae
infinitae sunt species. Having been driven back and hidden towards the
centre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface,
and buds out like the trees. This is as plain as a nose in a man's face;
you know it by experience; you see it. And it was formerly found out by
that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c. This
world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and
blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,
bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to
keep them company.
Whole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,
and gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,
soporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as
those of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of
Pythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,
have seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered
to the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their
destiny, and to this they were predestinated.
In their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and
fructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of
the following jubilee's period; to the study of which writings all people
have given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.
Now I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,
and be the better for it. Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to
your pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!
since we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves. Oh!
they will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold. For I
hereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business
on free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope's end
providently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher
of the law.
Now, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and
shake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your
scrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden
thigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for
a truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he
enjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a
certain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of
Camelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,
the rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,
rumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota. For the duncical dog-leech was
so selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his
poor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should
overload their squeamish stomachs.
To the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid
us the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books. They seem to follow the
example of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome
memory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut
voluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,
filthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have
the stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so
much after it.
So those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms
of mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and
like toads spit their venom upon them.
Now, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse
and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and
trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous
foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my
plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,
rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent
orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other
under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of
herding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve
to fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,
and pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up
of the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are
tickled in the right place.
Having taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my
Diogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example. I
see a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,
Drouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having
commenced masters in Apollo's academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk
brimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised
our vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure. Their
works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they
treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult
matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style. Their writings
are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.
Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of
the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a
profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent
and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.
Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot. Everyone,
you know, cannot go to Corinth. When Solomon built the temple, all could
not give gold by handfuls.
Since then 'tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as
they, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban: I'll wait on the
masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and
since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live
and die the admirer of their divine writings.
As for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you'll
soon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some
well-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the
admiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough. While I
here solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine
mistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with
that of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain
Moses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments
no ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the
teeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such
mouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,
barren, and contemptible as they pretend. Nor ought I to be afraid of I
know not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred
times clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing
but new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the
muddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant
as they are often uncertain. Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as
when formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical
exchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the
office of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire
higher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff
follower of the sect of Pyreicus.
I dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so
good-natured, and so generous, that they'll ne'er boggle at so small a
request. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully
enjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,
and observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular
profit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with
the books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.
O rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!
Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,
you take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as
soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those
beans, but e'en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be
in you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,
what good they do to all clever shellers of beans.
Here is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your
worships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the
former came. So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was
ever paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat
better against next visit the swallows give us.
THE FIFTH BOOK.
Chapter 5. I.
How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we
heard.
Pursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on
the fourth we made land. Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,
and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that
seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,
middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as 'tis customary at Paris,
Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we
came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.
Some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called
Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on
Memnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to
be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands. But this did
not square with chorography.
I do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may
be taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this
dingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of
Cybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back. Let's hearken. When we
were nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we
heard the singing, as we thought, of some men. For this reason, before we
offered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we
should go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an
hermitage and a little garden. There we found a diminutive old hermit,
whose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay. He gave us a full account of all
the jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong
days did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into
the Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,
or ember weeks. As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand
this riddle. Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;
for while we fast we are only puffed up with wind. Pray now, good father
hermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is
somewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace
holidays and those fasting times of yours. In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,
I could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and
the future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.
That time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the
preter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (? ) and odd cases.
Patience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog. Saith the hermit: It is, as I
told you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and
wants nothing but fire and faggot, that's certain. To deal plainly with
you, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet
than being warm, and being drowned than being burned.
Well, however, let us fast, a God's name; yet I have fasted so long that it
has quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this
bodily fort of mine will fall to ruin. Besides, I am much more afraid of
vexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand
anything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have
told me, and I am apt to believe them. For my part, I have no great
stomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade
of which anybody may set up; there needs no tools. I am much more inclined
not to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and
some tools are set a-work. No matter, since you are so steadfast, and
would have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in
the name of famine. Now we are come to these esurial idle days. I vow I
had quite put them out of my head long ago. If we must fast, said
Pantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,
as we would out of a bad way. I'll in that space of time somewhat look
over my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at
land. For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him
to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a
barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.
To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most
hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second
at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds: such
was the order of the fairies.
Chapter 5. II.
How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become
birds.
Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he
called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge
greeting him called him Master Antitus. He was a little queer old fellow,
bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a
card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap. He made us all very
welcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I
have told you.
When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was
remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by
the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,
you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.
There I had a full account of all that Atteius Capito, Paulus, Marcellus,
A. Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius, and others had writ of the
Siticines and Sicinnists; and then we thought we might as easily believe
the transmutations of Nectymene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus,
and other birds. Nor did we think it more reasonable to doubt of the
transmogrification of the Macrobian children into swans, or that of the men
of Pallene in Thrace into birds, as soon as they had bathed themselves in
the Tritonic lake. After this the devil a word could we get out of him but
of birds and cages.
The cages were spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable
architecture. The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as
like the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and
drank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like
men, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men,
but somewhat oftener: in short, had you seen and examined them from top to
toe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men.
However, they were nothing less, as Master Aedituus told us; assuring us,
at the same time, that they were neither secular nor laic; and the truth
is, the diversity of their feathers and plumes did not a little puzzle us.
Some of them were all over as white as swans, others as black as crows,
many as grey as owls, others black and white like magpies, some all red
like red-birds, and others purple and white like some pigeons. He called
the males clerg-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-hawks, bish-hawks,
cardin-hawks, and one pope-hawk, who is a species by himself. He called
the females clerg-kites, nun-kites, priest-kites, abbess-kites, bish-kites,
cardin-kites, and pope-kites.
However, said he, as hornets and drones will get among the bees, and there
do nothing but buzz, eat, and spoil everything; so, for these last three
hundred years, a vast swarm of bigottelloes flocked, I do not know how,
among these goodly birds every fifth full moon, and have bemuted, berayed,
and conskited the whole island. They are so hard-favoured and monstrous
that none can abide them. For their wry necks make a figure like a crooked
billet; their paws are hairy, like those of rough-footed pigeons; their
claws and pounces, belly and breech, like those of the Stymphalid harpies.
Nor is it possible to root them out, for if you get rid of one, straight
four-and-twenty new ones fly thither.
There had been need of another monster-hunter such as was Hercules; for
Friar John had like to have run distracted about it, so much he was nettled
and puzzled in the matter. As for the good Pantagruel, he was even served
as was Messer Priapus, contemplating the sacrifices of Ceres, for want of
skin.
Chapter 5. III.
How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island.
We then asked Master Aedituus why there was but one pope-hawk among such
venerable birds multiplied in all their species. He answered that such was
the first institution and fatal destiny of the stars that the clerg-hawks
begot the priest-hawks and monk-hawks without carnal copulation, as some
bees are born of a young bull; the priest-hawks begat the bish-hawks, the
bish-hawks the stately cardin-hawks, and the stately cardin-hawks, if they
live long enough, at last come to be pope-hawk.
Of this last kind there never is more than one at a time, as in a beehive
there is but one king, and in the world is but one sun.
When the pope-hawk dies, another arises in his stead out of the whole brood
of cardin-hawks, that is, as you must understand it all along, without
carnal copulation. So that there is in that species an individual unity,
with a perpetuity of succession, neither more or less than in the Arabian
phoenix.
'Tis true that, about two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, two
pope-hawks were seen upon the face of the earth; but then you never saw in
your lives such a woeful rout and hurly-burly as was all over this island.
For all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all
that time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a
fair way of being left without inhabitants. Some stood up for this
pope-hawk, some for t'other. Some, struck with a dumbness, were as mute as
so many fishes; the devil a note was to be got out of them; part of the
merry bells here were as silent as if they had lost their tongues, I mean
their clappers.
During these troublesome times they called to their assistance the
emperors, kings, dukes, earls, barons, and commonwealths of the world that
live on t'other side the water; nor was this schism and sedition at an end
till one of them died, and the plurality was reduced to a unity.
We then asked what moved those birds to be thus continually chanting and
singing. He answered that it was the bells that hung on the top of their
cages. Then he said to us, Will you have me make these monk-hawks whom you
see bardocuculated with a bag such as you use to still brandy, sing like
any woodlarks? Pray do, said we. He then gave half-a-dozen pulls to a
little rope, which caused a diminutive bell to give so many ting-tangs; and
presently a parcel of monk-hawks ran to him as if the devil had drove 'em,
and fell a-singing like mad.
Pray, master, cried Panurge, if I also rang this bell could I make those
other birds yonder, with red-herring-coloured feathers, sing? Ay, marry
would you, returned Aedituus. With this Panurge hanged himself (by the
hands, I mean) at the bell-rope's end, and no sooner made it speak but
those smoked birds hied them thither and began to lift up their voices and
make a sort of untowardly hoarse noise, which I grudge to call singing.
Aedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish, like the herns
and cormorants of the world, and that they were a fifth kind of cucullati
newly stamped.
He added that he had been told by Robert Valbringue, who lately passed that
way in his return from Africa, that a sixth kind was to fly hither out of
hand, which he called capus-hawks, more grum, vinegar-faced, brain-sick,
froward, and loathsome than any kind whatsoever in the whole island.
Africa, said Pantagruel, still uses to produce some new and monstrous
thing.
Chapter 5. IV.
How the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers.
Since you have told us, said Pantagruel, how the pope-hawk is begot by the
cardin-hawks, the cardin-hawks by the bish-hawks, and the bish-hawks by the
priest-hawks, and the priest-hawks by the clerg-hawks, I would gladly know
whence you have these same clerg-hawks. They are all of them passengers,
or travelling birds, returned Aedituus, and come hither from t'other world;
part out of a vast country called Want-o'-bread, the rest out of another
toward the west, which they style Too-many-of-'em. From these two
countries flock hither, every year, whole legions of these clerg-hawks,
leaving their fathers, mothers, friends, and relations.
This happens when there are too many children, whether male or female, in
some good family of the latter country; insomuch that the house would come
to nothing if the paternal estate were shared among them all (as reason
requires, nature directs, and God commands). For this cause parents use to
rid themselves of that inconveniency by packing off the younger fry, and
forcing them to seek their fortune in this isle Bossart (Crooked Island).
I suppose he means L'Isle Bouchart, near Chinon, cried Panurge. No,
replied t'other, I mean Bossart (Crooked), for there is not one in ten
among them but is either crooked, crippled, blinking, limping,
ill-favoured, deformed, or an unprofitable load to the earth.
'Twas quite otherwise among the heathens, said Pantagruel, when they used
to receive a maiden among the number of vestals; for Leo Antistius affirms
that it was absolutely forbidden to admit a virgin into that order if she
had any vice in her soul or defect in her body, though it were but the
smallest spot on any part of it. I can hardly believe, continued Aedituus,
that their dams on t'other side the water go nine months with them; for
they cannot endure them nine years, nay, scarce seven sometimes, in the
house, but by putting only a shirt over the other clothes of the young
urchins, and lopping off I don't well know how many hairs from their
crowns, mumbling certain apostrophized and expiatory words, they visibly,
openly, and plainly, by a Pythagorical metempsychosis, without the least
hurt, transmogrify them into such birds as you now see; much after the
fashion of the Egyptian heathens, who used to constitute their isiacs by
shaving them and making them put on certain linostoles, or surplices.
However, I don't know, my good friends, but that these she-things, whether
clerg-kites, monk-kites, and abbess-kites, instead of singing pleasant
verses and charisteres, such as used to be sung to Oromasis by Zoroaster's
institution, may be bellowing out such catarates and scythropys (cursed
lamentable and wretched imprecations) as were usually offered to the
Arimanian demon; being thus in devotion for their kind friends and
relations that transformed them into birds, whether when they were maids,
or thornbacks, in their prime, or at their last prayers.
But the greatest numbers of our birds came out of Want-o'-bread, which,
though a barren country, where the days are of a most tedious lingering
length, overstocks this whole island with the lower class of birds. For
hither fly the asapheis that inhabit that land, either when they are in
danger of passing their time scurvily for want of belly-timber, being
unable, or, what's more likely, unwilling to take heart of grace and follow
some honest lawful calling, or too proud-hearted and lazy to go to service
in some sober family. The same is done by your frantic inamoradoes, who,
when crossed in their wild desires, grow stark staring mad, and choose this
life suggested to them by their despair, too cowardly to make them swing,
like their brother Iphis of doleful memory. There is another sort, that
is, your gaol-birds, who, having done some rogue's trick or other heinous
villainy, and being sought up and down to be trussed up and made to ride
the two or three-legged mare that groans for them, warily scour off and
come here to save their bacon; because all these sorts of birds are here
provided for, and grow in an instant as fat as hogs, though they came as
lean as rakes; for having the benefit of the clergy, they are as safe as
thieves in a mill within this sanctuary.
But, asked Pantagruel, do these birds never return to the world where they
were hatched? Some do, answered Aedituus; formerly very few, very seldom,
very late, and very unwillingly; however, since some certain eclipses, by
the virtue of the celestial constellations, a great crowd of them fled back
to the world. Nor do we fret or vex ourselves a jot about it; for those
that stay wisely sing, The fewer the better cheer; and all those that fly
away, first cast off their feathers here among these nettles and briars.
Accordingly we found some thrown by there; and as we looked up and down, we
chanced to light on what some people will hardly thank us for having
discovered; and thereby hangs a tale.
Chapter 5. V.
Of the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island.
These words were scarce out of his mouth when some five-and-twenty or
thirty birds flew towards us; they were of a hue and feather like which we
had not seen anything in the whole island. Their plumes were as changeable
as the skin of the chameleon, and the flower of tripolion, or teucrion.
They had all under the left wing a mark like two diameters dividing a
circle into equal parts, or, if you had rather have it so, like a
perpendicular line falling on a right line. The marks which each of them
bore were much of the same shape, but of different colours; for some were
white, others green, some red, others purple, and some blue. Who are
those? asked Panurge; and how do you call them? They are mongrels, quoth
Aedituus.
We call them knight-hawks, and they have a great number of rich
commanderies (fat livings) in your world. Good your worship, said I, make
them give us a song, an't please you, that we may know how they sing. They
scorn your words, cried Aedituus; they are none of your singing-birds; but,
to make amends, they feed as much as the best two of them all. Pray where
are their hens? where are their females? said I. They have none, answered
Aedituus. How comes it to pass then, asked Panurge, that they are thus
bescabbed, bescurfed, all embroidered o'er the phiz with carbuncles,
pushes, and pock-royals, some of which undermine the handles of their
faces? This same fashionable and illustrious disease, quoth Aedituus, is
common among that kind of birds, because they are pretty apt to be tossed
on the salt deep.
He then acquainted us with the occasion of their coming. This next to us,
said he, looks so wistfully upon you to see whether he may not find among
your company a stately gaudy kind of huge dreadful birds of prey, which yet
are so untoward that they ne'er could be brought to the lure nor to perch
on the glove. They tell us that there are such in your world, and that
some of them have goodly garters below the knee with an inscription about
them which condemns him (qui mal y pense) who shall think ill of it to be
berayed and conskited. Others are said to wear the devil in a string
before their paunches; and others a ram's skin. All that's true enough,
good Master Aedituus, quoth Panurge; but we have not the honour to be
acquainted with their knightships.
Come on, cried Aedituus in a merry mood, we have had chat enough o'
conscience! let's e'en go drink. And eat, quoth Panurge. Eat, replied
Aedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill
like tinkers. Pull away and save tide, for nothing is so dear and precious
as time; therefore we will be sure to put it to a good use.
He would fain have carried us first to bathe in the bagnios of the
cardin-hawks, which are goodly delicious places, and have us licked over
with precious ointments by the alyptes, alias rubbers, as soon as we should
come out of the bath. But Pantagruel told him that he could drink but too
much without that. He then led us into a spacious delicate refectory, or
fratery-room, and told us: Braguibus the hermit made you fast four days
together; now, contrariwise, I'll make you eat and drink of the best four
days through stitch before you budge from this place. But hark ye me, cried
Panurge, may not we take a nap in the mean time? Ay, ay, answered Aedituus;
that is as you shall think good; for he that sleeps, drinks. Good Lord! how
we lived! what good bub! what dainty cheer! O what a honest cod was this
same Aedituus!
Chapter 5. VI.
How the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island.
Pantagruel looked I don't know howish, and seemed not very well pleased
with the four days' junketting which Aedituus enjoined us. Aedituus, who
soon found it out, said to him, You know, sir, that seven days before
winter, and seven days after, there is no storm at sea; for then the
elements are still out of respect for the halcyons, or king-fishers, birds
sacred to Thetis, which then lay their eggs and hatch their young near the
shore. Now here the sea makes itself amends for this long calm; and
whenever any foreigners come hither it grows boisterous and stormy for four
days together. We can give no other reason for it but that it is a piece
of its civility, that those who come among us may stay whether they will or
no, and be copiously feasted all the while with the incomes of the ringing.
Therefore pray don't think your time lost; for, willing, nilling, you'll be
forced to stay, unless you are resolved to encounter Juno, Neptune, Doris,
Aeolus, and his fluster-busters, and, in short, all the pack of ill-natured
left-handed godlings and vejoves. Do but resolve to be cheery, and fall-to
briskly.
After we had pretty well stayed our stomachs with some tight snatches,
Friar John said to Aedituus, For aught I see, you have none but a parcel of
birds and cages in this island of yours, and the devil a bit of one of them
all that sets his hand to the plough, or tills the land whose fat he
devours; their whole business is to be frolic, to chirp it, to whistle it,
to warble it, tossing it, and roar it merrily night and day. Pray then, if
I may be so bold, whence comes this plenty and overflowing of all dainty
bits and good things which we see among you? From all the other world,
returned Aedituus, if you except some part of the northern regions, who of
late years have stirred up the jakes. Mum! they may chance ere long to rue
the day they did so; their cows shall have porridge, and their dogs oats;
there will be work made among them, that there will. Come, a fig for't,
let's drink. But pray what countrymen are you? Touraine is our country,
answered Panurge. Cod so, cried Aedituus, you were not then hatched of an
ill bird, I will say that for you, since the blessed Touraine is your
mother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of
good things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to
touch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine's income will not afford
him to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between
Moses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal
to these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it,
cram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing
our puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat
capons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl. Come, box it
about; tope on, my friends. Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are
perched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the
income that Touraine yields us! And in faith they sing rarely for their
good founders, that is the truth on't. You never saw any Arcadian birds
mumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt
batons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their
cages. Drink on, sirs, whip it away. Verily, friends, 'tis very fine
drinking to-day, and so 'tis every day o' the week; then drink on, toss it
about, here's to you with all my soul. You are most heartily welcome;
never spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and
belly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth
of iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were
to continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt. Let
us then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the
creature.
Woons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on't in this world!
Psha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t'other;
the Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot. Come, in
the meantime let us drink here; come, here's to thee, old fuddlecap.
Your first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a
means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so
few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together--I mean, a
paradise in this life, and another in the next. Sure you were born wrapt
in your mother's smickets! O happy creatures! O more than men! Would I
had the luck to fare like you! (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter
VI. )
Chapter 5. VII.
How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass.
When we had crammed and crammed again, Aedituus took us into a chamber that
was well furnished, hung with tapestry, and finely gilt. Thither he caused
to be brought store of mirobolans, cashou, green ginger preserved, with
plenty of hippocras, and delicious wine. With those antidotes, that were
like a sweet Lethe, he invited us to forget the hardships of our voyage;
and at the same time he sent plenty of provisions on board our ship that
rid in the harbour.
