He then asked the
skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on
interlarded fish-days.
skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on
interlarded fish-days.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
This, however, with submission to
better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first
master of arts in this world. For, if you believe that fire is the great
master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself;
alas! Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury
to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old,
you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's sentence, that affirms
Master Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true. With him peacefully
resided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine
Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble
child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.
We were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty
sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible;
you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.
He does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of
silence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so
Gaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.
He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by
everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs. Neither
will he admit the least let or delay in his summons. You say that when a
lion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as
his roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering. This is written, it is
true, I have seen it. I assure you that at Master Gaster's command the very
heavens tremble, and all the earth shakes. His command is called, Do this
or die. Needs must when the devil drives; there's no gainsaying of it.
The pilot was telling us how, on a certain time, after the manner of the
members that mutinied against the belly, as Aesop describes it, the whole
kingdom of the Somates went off into a direct faction against Gaster,
resolving to throw off his yoke; but they soon found their mistake, and
most humbly submitted, for otherwise they had all been famished.
What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or
superiority; he still goes first, though kings, emperors, or even the pope,
were there. So he held the first place at the council of Basle; though
some will tell you that the council was tumultuous by the contention and
ambition of many for priority.
Everyone is busied and labours to serve him, and indeed, to make amends for
this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts,
machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts
which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws,
chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching
them to utter human language, speak, and sing; and all for the gut. He
reclaims and tames eagles, gerfalcons, falcons gentle, sakers, lanners,
goshawks, sparrowhawks, merlins, haggards, passengers, wild rapacious
birds; so that, setting them free in the air whenever he thinks fit, as
high and as long as he pleases, he keeps them suspended, straying, flying,
hovering, and courting him above the clouds. Then on a sudden he makes
them stoop, and come down amain from heaven next to the ground; and all for
the gut.
Elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, mares, and dogs, he teaches
to dance, prance, vault, fight, swim, hide themselves, fetch and carry what
he pleases; and all for the gut.
Salt and fresh-water fish, whales, and the monsters of the main, he brings
them up from the bottom of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,
bears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the
ground, and all for the gut.
In short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;
as was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the
Sertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews
besieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut. When
his regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut
up, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,
obeys, and has no law. All shun her, in every place choosing rather to
expose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,
caves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.
Chapter 4. LVIII.
How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the
Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.
At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two
sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much
detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.
The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and
for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the
Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and
Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles. In the holy decrees, 26,
qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in
Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid. , as men who speak from
the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. These were soothsayers,
enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give
answers from the mouth, but from the belly.
Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an
Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite
number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of
the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very
distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of
curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all
manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to
have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.
This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming
pleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to
answer. If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent
answers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to
come, then the devil was gravelled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can
trot. Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer
letting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and
uncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.
As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and
gangs. Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others
louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to
business, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing
nothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod
saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch.
Others were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done
you good to have seen them.
There's a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature
appears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the
configuration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours,
streaks, and inimitable shapes. I protest the variety we perceived in the
dresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less. They all owned
Gaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices
as to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and
honoured him above all things.
You would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said
(Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you
even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is
destruction, whose God is their belly. Pantagruel compared them to the
Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus: I only
sacrifice to myself--not to the gods--and to this belly of mine, the
greatest of all the gods.
Chapter 4. LIX.
Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters
sacrifice to their ventripotent god.
While we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these
lounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a
musical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in
rank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office,
degree, and seniority.
In this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young,
lusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden
statue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one
as Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it. At Lyons during the
Carnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call'd this Manduce.
It was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little
children; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all
the rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of
wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier,
which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden
staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against
another; as they do at Metz with St. Clement's dragon.
Coming near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of
fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes,
wallets, pots, and kettles. Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and
singing I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening
their baskets and pots, they offered their god:
White hippocras, Fricassees, nine Cold loins of veal,
with dry toasts. sorts. with spice.
White bread. Monastical brewis. Zinziberine.
Brown bread. Gravy soup. Beatille pies.
Carbonadoes, six Hotch-pots. Brewis.
sorts. Soft bread. Marrow-bones, toast,
Brawn. Household bread. and cabbage.
Sweetbreads. Capirotadoes. Hashes.
Eternal drink intermixed. Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret
and champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled
and offered in large silver cups. Then they offered:
Chitterlings, gar- Chines and peas. Hams.
nished with mus- Hog's haslets. Brawn heads.
tard. Scotch collops. Powdered venison,
Sausages. Puddings. with turnips.
Neats' tongues. Cervelats. Pickled olives.
Hung beef. Bologna sausages.
All this associated with sempiternal liquor. Then they housed within his
muzzle:
Legs of mutton, with Ribs of pork, with Caponets.
shallots. onion sauce. Caviare and toast.
Olias. Roast capons, basted Fawns, deer.
Lumber pies, with with their own Hares, leverets.
hot sauce. dripping. Plovers.
Partridges and young Flamingoes. Herons, and young
partridges. Cygnets. herons.
Dwarf-herons. A reinforcement of Olives.
Teals. vinegar intermixed. Thrushes.
Duckers. Venison pasties. Young sea-ravens.
Bitterns. Lark pies. Geese, goslings.
Shovellers. Dormice pies. Queests.
Curlews. Cabretto pasties. Widgeons.
Wood-hens. Roebuck pasties. Mavises.
Coots, with leeks. Pigeon pies. Grouses.
Fat kids. Kid pasties. Turtles.
Shoulders of mutton, Capon pies. Doe-coneys.
with capers. Bacon pies. Hedgehogs.
Sirloins of beef. Soused hog's feet. Snites.
Breasts of veal. Fried pasty-crust. Then large puffs.
Pheasants and phea- Forced capons. Thistle-finches.
sant poots. Parmesan cheese. Whore's farts.
Peacocks. Red and pale hip- Fritters.
Storks. pocras. Cakes, sixteen sorts.
Woodcocks. Gold-peaches. Crisp wafers.
Snipes. Artichokes. Quince tarts.
Ortolans. Dry and wet sweet- Curds and cream.
Turkey cocks, hen meats, seventy- Whipped cream.
turkeys, and turkey eight sorts. Preserved mirabo-
poots. Boiled hens, and fat lans.
Stock-doves, and capons marinated. Jellies.
wood-culvers. Pullets, with eggs. Welsh barrapyclids.
Pigs, with wine sauce. Chickens. Macaroons.
Blackbirds, ousels, and Rabbits, and sucking Tarts, twenty sorts.
rails. rabbits. Lemon cream, rasp-
Moorhens. Quails, and young berry cream, &c.
Bustards, and bustard quails. Comfits, one hundred
poots. Pigeons, squabs, and colours.
Fig-peckers. squeakers. Cream wafers.
Young Guinea hens. Fieldfares. Cream cheese.
Vinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy;
also toasts to scour the grinders.
Chapter 4. LX.
What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days.
Pantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their
manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon
prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce.
He then asked the
skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on
interlarded fish-days. For his first course, said the skipper, they gave
him:
Caviare. tops, bishop's-cods, Red herrings.
Botargoes. celery, chives, ram- Pilchards.
Fresh butter. pions, jew's-ears (a Anchovies.
Pease soup. sort of mushrooms Fry of tunny.
Spinach. that sprout out of Cauliflowers.
Fresh herrings, full old elders), spara- Beans.
roed. gus, wood-bind, Salt salmon.
Salads, a hundred and a world of Pickled grigs.
varieties, of cres- others. Oysters in the shell.
ses, sodden hop-
Then he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this,
therefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting. Which being
done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:
Gurnards. Thornbacks. Fried oysters.
Salmon trouts. Sleeves. Cockles.
Barbels, great and Sturgeons. Prawns.
small. Sheath-fish. Smelts.
Roaches. Mackerels. Rock-fish.
Cockerels. Maids. Gracious lords.
Minnows. Plaice. Sword-fish.
Skate-fish. Sharplings. Soles.
Lamprels. Tunnies. Mussels.
Jegs. Silver eels. Lobsters.
Pickerels. Chevins. Great prawns.
Golden carps. Crayfish. Dace.
Burbates. Pallours. Bleaks.
Salmons. Shrimps. Tenches.
Salmon-peels. Congers. Ombres.
Dolphins. Porpoises. Fresh cods.
Barn trouts. Bases. Dried melwels.
Miller's-thumbs. Shads. Darefish.
Precks. Murenes, a sort of Fausens, and grigs.
Bret-fish. lampreys. Eel-pouts.
Flounders. Graylings. Tortoises.
Sea-nettles. Smys. Serpents, i. e. wood-
Mullets. Turbots. eels.
Gudgeons. Trout, not above a Dories.
Dabs and sandings. foot long. Moor-game.
Haddocks. Salmons. Perches.
Carps. Meagers. Loaches.
Pikes. Sea-breams. Crab-fish.
Bottitoes. Halibuts. Snails and whelks.
Rochets. Dog's tongue, or kind Frogs.
Sea-bears. fool.
If, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not
immediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him
off in a trice. Special care is taken to antidote his godship with
vine-tree syrup. Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack,
minglemangled, mismashed, &c.
Eggs fried, beaten, sliced, roasted in Green-fish.
buttered, poached, the embers, tossed Sea-batts.
hardened, boiled, in the chimney, &c. Cod's sounds.
broiled, stewed, Stock-fish. Sea-pikes.
Which to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied. For
the latter part of their sacrifices they offer:
Rice milk, and hasty Stewed prunes, and Raisins.
pudding. baked bullace. Dates.
Buttered wheat, and Pistachios, or fistic Chestnut and wal-
flummery. nuts. nuts.
Water-gruel, and Figs. Filberts.
milk-porridge. Almond butter. Parsnips.
Frumenty and bonny Skirret root. Artichokes.
clamber. White-pot.
Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.
It was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs
was not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices,
better yet than Heliogabalus's idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in
Babylon, under King Belshazzar. Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he
was no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature. And as King Antigonus,
first of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially
princes) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt
him for his son, said to him: My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my
groom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very
civilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to
see, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they
could pick out of his sir-reverence.
Chapter 4. LXI.
How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn.
Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded
the famous master of arts, Gaster. You know that, by the institution of
nature, bread has been assigned him for provision and food; and that, as an
addition to this blessing, he should never want the means to get bread.
Accordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry
to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and
the art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of
mathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in
safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he
invented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind
corn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the
use of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more
diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.
He found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to
mark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he
contrived means to convey some out of one country into another.
He had the wit to pimp for asses and mares, animals of different species,
that they might copulate for the generation of a third, which we call
mules, more strong and fit for hard service than the other two. He
invented carts and waggons to draw him along with greater ease; and as seas
and rivers hindered his progress, he devised boats, galleys, and ships (to
the astonishment of the elements) to waft him over to barbarous, unknown,
and far distant nations, thence to bring, or thither to carry corn.
Besides, seeing that when he had tilled the ground, some years the corn
perished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted or was
drowned by its excess, sometimes spoiled by hail, eat by worms in the ear,
or beaten down by storms, and so his stock was destroyed on the ground; we
were told that ever since the days of yore he has found out a way to
conjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting certain grass, common
enough in the field, yet known to very few, some of which was then shown
us. I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being
dipped by Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain on the Lycian mountain in
Arcadia, in time of drought raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and
then dissolved into rain that kindly moistened the whole country.
Our master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in
the air, and make it to fall into the sea; also to annihilate the hail,
suppress the winds, and remove storms as the Methanensians of Troezene used
to do. And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and
took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he
invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure
that staff of life. On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and
hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles,
and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the
Hesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish
forts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams,
ballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well
understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius;
as Master Philibert de l'Orme, King Megistus's principal architect, has
owned to us.
And seeing that sometimes all these tools of destruction were baffled by
the cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of
fortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards,
basiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls,
some of them outweighing huge anvils. This by the means of a most dreadful
powder, whose hellish compound and effect has even amazed nature, and made
her own herself outdone by art, the Oxydracian thunders, hails, and storms
by which the people of that name immediately destroyed their enemies in the
field being but mere potguns to these. For one of our great guns when used
is more dreadful, more terrible, more diabolical, and maims, tears, breaks,
slays, mows down, and sweeps away more men, and causes a greater
consternation and destruction than a hundred thunderbolts.
Chapter 4. LXII.
How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls.
Gaster having secured himself with his corn within strongholds, has
sometimes been attacked by enemies; his fortresses, by that thrice
threefold cursed instrument, levelled and destroyed; his dearly beloved
corn and bread snatched out of his mouth and sacked by a titanic force;
therefore he then sought means to preserve his walls, bastions, rampiers,
and sconces from cannon-shot, and to hinder the bullets from hitting him,
stopping them in their flight, or at least from doing him or the besieged
walls any damage. He showed us a trial of this which has been since used
by Fronton, and is now common among the pastimes and harmless recreations
of the Thelemites. I will tell you how he went to work, and pray for the
future be a little more ready to believe what Plutarch affirms to have
tried. Suppose a herd of goats were all scampering as if the devil drove
them, do but put a bit of eringo into the mouth of the hindmost nanny, and
they will all stop stock still in the time you can tell three.
Thus Gaster, having caused a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient
quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up
with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with
twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion;
then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have
hit him on the breast. About sixty strides off the piece, halfway between
it and the page in a right line, he hanged on a gibbet by a rope a very
large siderite or iron-like stone, otherwise called herculean, formerly
found on Ida in Phrygia by one Magnes, as Nicander writes, and commonly
called loadstone; then he gave fire to the prime on the piece's touch-hole,
which in an instant consuming the powder, the ball and hail-shot were with
incredible violence and swiftness hurried out of the gun at its muzzle,
that the air might penetrate to its chamber, where otherwise would have
been a vacuum, which nature abhors so much, that this universal machine,
heaven, air, land, and sea, would sooner return to the primitive chaos than
admit the least void anywhere. Now the ball and small shot, which
threatened the page with no less than quick destruction, lost their
impetuosity and remained suspended and hovering round the stone; nor did
any of them, notwithstanding the fury with which they rushed, reach the
page.
Master Gaster could do more than all this yet, if you will believe me; for
he invented a way how to cause bullets to fly backwards, and recoil on
those that sent them with as great a force, and in the very numerical
parallel for which the guns were planted. And indeed, why should he have
thought this difficult? seeing the herb ethiopis opens all locks
whatsoever, and an echinus or remora, a silly weakly fish, in spite of all
the winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the
midst of a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain stock still, as
if she were becalmed or the blustering tribe had blown their last. Nay,
and with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out
of the deepest well that was ever sounded with a plummet; for it will
certainly draw up the precious metal, since Democritus affirmed it.
Theophrastus believed and experienced that there was an herb at whose
single touch an iron wedge, though never so far driven into a huge log of
the hardest wood that is, would presently come out; and it is this same
herb your hickways, alias woodpeckers, use, when with some mighty axe
anyone stops up the hole of their nests, which they industriously dig and
make in the trunk of some sturdy tree. Since stags and hinds, when deeply
wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called
dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the
shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved
byblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by
Juturna, Turnus's sister. Since the very wind of laurels, fig-trees, or
sea-calves makes the thunder sheer off insomuch that it never strikes them.
Since at the sight of a ram, mad elephants recover their former senses.
Since mad bulls coming near wild fig-trees, called caprifici, grow tame,
and will not budge a foot, as if they had the cramp. Since the venomous
rage of vipers is assuaged if you but touch them with a beechen bough.
Since also Euphorion writes that in the isle of Samos, before Juno's temple
was built there, he has seen some beasts called neades, whose voice made
the neighbouring places gape and sink into a chasm and abyss. In short,
since elders grow of a more pleasing sound, and fitter to make flutes, in
such places where the crowing of cocks is not heard, as the ancient sages
have writ and Theophrastus relates; as if the crowing of a cock dulled,
flattened, and perverted the wood of the elder, as it is said to astonish
and stupify with fear that strong and resolute animal, a lion. I know that
some have understood this of wild elder, that grows so far from towns or
villages that the crowing of cocks cannot reach near it; and doubtless that
sort ought to be preferred to the stenching common elder that grows about
decayed and ruined places; but others have understood this in a higher
sense, not literal, but allegorical, according to the method of the
Pythagoreans, as when it was said that Mercury's statue could not be made
of every sort of wood; to which sentence they gave this sense, that God is
not to be worshipped in a vulgar form, but in a chosen and religious
manner. In the same manner, by this elder which grows far from places
where cocks are heard, the ancients meant that the wise and studious ought
not to give their minds to trivial or vulgar music, but to that which is
celestial, divine, angelical, more abstracted, and brought from remoter
parts, that is, from a region where the crowing of cocks is not heard; for,
to denote a solitary and unfrequented place, we say cocks are never heard
to crow there.
Chapter 4. LXIII.
How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems
proposed to be solved when he waked.
The next day, merrily pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island
of Chaneph, where Pantagruel's ship could not arrive, the wind chopping
about, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get
ahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard,
though to our sails we added drabblers.
With this accident we were all out of sorts, moping, drooping,
metagrabolized, as dull as dun in the mire, in C sol fa ut flat, out of
tune, off the hinges, and I-don't-know-howish, without caring to speak one
single syllable to each other.
Pantagruel was taking a nap, slumbering and nodding on the quarter-deck by
the cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand; for still it was his custom to
sleep better by book than by heart.
Epistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were
in.
Friar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the
spits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it
might then be.
Panurge (sweet baby! ) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his
tongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.
Gymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.
Ponocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make
himself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not
itch.
Carpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that's a card in
Gascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card
longways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of
the nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.
Eusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers
as if it had been a trump-marine.
Rhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole,
was making himself a velvet purse.
Xenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk's
jesses.
Our pilot (good man! ) was pulling maggots out of the seamen's noses.
At last Friar John, returning from the forecastle, perceived that
Pantagruel was awake. Then breaking this obstinate silence, he briskly and
cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time, and raise good weather,
during a calm at sea.
Panurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently,
and asked for a pill to purge melancholy.
Epistemon also came on, and asked how a man might be ready to bepiss
himself with laughing when he has no heart to be merry.
Gymnast, arising, demanded a remedy for a dimness of eyes.
better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first
master of arts in this world. For, if you believe that fire is the great
master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself;
alas! Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury
to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old,
you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's sentence, that affirms
Master Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true. With him peacefully
resided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine
Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble
child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.
We were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty
sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible;
you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.
He does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of
silence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so
Gaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.
He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by
everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs. Neither
will he admit the least let or delay in his summons. You say that when a
lion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as
his roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering. This is written, it is
true, I have seen it. I assure you that at Master Gaster's command the very
heavens tremble, and all the earth shakes. His command is called, Do this
or die. Needs must when the devil drives; there's no gainsaying of it.
The pilot was telling us how, on a certain time, after the manner of the
members that mutinied against the belly, as Aesop describes it, the whole
kingdom of the Somates went off into a direct faction against Gaster,
resolving to throw off his yoke; but they soon found their mistake, and
most humbly submitted, for otherwise they had all been famished.
What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or
superiority; he still goes first, though kings, emperors, or even the pope,
were there. So he held the first place at the council of Basle; though
some will tell you that the council was tumultuous by the contention and
ambition of many for priority.
Everyone is busied and labours to serve him, and indeed, to make amends for
this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts,
machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts
which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws,
chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching
them to utter human language, speak, and sing; and all for the gut. He
reclaims and tames eagles, gerfalcons, falcons gentle, sakers, lanners,
goshawks, sparrowhawks, merlins, haggards, passengers, wild rapacious
birds; so that, setting them free in the air whenever he thinks fit, as
high and as long as he pleases, he keeps them suspended, straying, flying,
hovering, and courting him above the clouds. Then on a sudden he makes
them stoop, and come down amain from heaven next to the ground; and all for
the gut.
Elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, mares, and dogs, he teaches
to dance, prance, vault, fight, swim, hide themselves, fetch and carry what
he pleases; and all for the gut.
Salt and fresh-water fish, whales, and the monsters of the main, he brings
them up from the bottom of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,
bears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the
ground, and all for the gut.
In short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;
as was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the
Sertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews
besieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut. When
his regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut
up, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,
obeys, and has no law. All shun her, in every place choosing rather to
expose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,
caves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.
Chapter 4. LVIII.
How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the
Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.
At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two
sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much
detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.
The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and
for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the
Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and
Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles. In the holy decrees, 26,
qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in
Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid. , as men who speak from
the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. These were soothsayers,
enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give
answers from the mouth, but from the belly.
Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an
Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite
number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of
the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very
distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of
curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all
manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to
have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.
This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming
pleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to
answer. If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent
answers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to
come, then the devil was gravelled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can
trot. Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer
letting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and
uncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.
As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and
gangs. Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others
louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to
business, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing
nothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod
saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch.
Others were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done
you good to have seen them.
There's a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature
appears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the
configuration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours,
streaks, and inimitable shapes. I protest the variety we perceived in the
dresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less. They all owned
Gaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices
as to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and
honoured him above all things.
You would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said
(Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you
even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is
destruction, whose God is their belly. Pantagruel compared them to the
Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus: I only
sacrifice to myself--not to the gods--and to this belly of mine, the
greatest of all the gods.
Chapter 4. LIX.
Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters
sacrifice to their ventripotent god.
While we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these
lounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a
musical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in
rank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office,
degree, and seniority.
In this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young,
lusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden
statue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one
as Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it. At Lyons during the
Carnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call'd this Manduce.
It was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little
children; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all
the rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of
wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier,
which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden
staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against
another; as they do at Metz with St. Clement's dragon.
Coming near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of
fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes,
wallets, pots, and kettles. Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and
singing I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening
their baskets and pots, they offered their god:
White hippocras, Fricassees, nine Cold loins of veal,
with dry toasts. sorts. with spice.
White bread. Monastical brewis. Zinziberine.
Brown bread. Gravy soup. Beatille pies.
Carbonadoes, six Hotch-pots. Brewis.
sorts. Soft bread. Marrow-bones, toast,
Brawn. Household bread. and cabbage.
Sweetbreads. Capirotadoes. Hashes.
Eternal drink intermixed. Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret
and champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled
and offered in large silver cups. Then they offered:
Chitterlings, gar- Chines and peas. Hams.
nished with mus- Hog's haslets. Brawn heads.
tard. Scotch collops. Powdered venison,
Sausages. Puddings. with turnips.
Neats' tongues. Cervelats. Pickled olives.
Hung beef. Bologna sausages.
All this associated with sempiternal liquor. Then they housed within his
muzzle:
Legs of mutton, with Ribs of pork, with Caponets.
shallots. onion sauce. Caviare and toast.
Olias. Roast capons, basted Fawns, deer.
Lumber pies, with with their own Hares, leverets.
hot sauce. dripping. Plovers.
Partridges and young Flamingoes. Herons, and young
partridges. Cygnets. herons.
Dwarf-herons. A reinforcement of Olives.
Teals. vinegar intermixed. Thrushes.
Duckers. Venison pasties. Young sea-ravens.
Bitterns. Lark pies. Geese, goslings.
Shovellers. Dormice pies. Queests.
Curlews. Cabretto pasties. Widgeons.
Wood-hens. Roebuck pasties. Mavises.
Coots, with leeks. Pigeon pies. Grouses.
Fat kids. Kid pasties. Turtles.
Shoulders of mutton, Capon pies. Doe-coneys.
with capers. Bacon pies. Hedgehogs.
Sirloins of beef. Soused hog's feet. Snites.
Breasts of veal. Fried pasty-crust. Then large puffs.
Pheasants and phea- Forced capons. Thistle-finches.
sant poots. Parmesan cheese. Whore's farts.
Peacocks. Red and pale hip- Fritters.
Storks. pocras. Cakes, sixteen sorts.
Woodcocks. Gold-peaches. Crisp wafers.
Snipes. Artichokes. Quince tarts.
Ortolans. Dry and wet sweet- Curds and cream.
Turkey cocks, hen meats, seventy- Whipped cream.
turkeys, and turkey eight sorts. Preserved mirabo-
poots. Boiled hens, and fat lans.
Stock-doves, and capons marinated. Jellies.
wood-culvers. Pullets, with eggs. Welsh barrapyclids.
Pigs, with wine sauce. Chickens. Macaroons.
Blackbirds, ousels, and Rabbits, and sucking Tarts, twenty sorts.
rails. rabbits. Lemon cream, rasp-
Moorhens. Quails, and young berry cream, &c.
Bustards, and bustard quails. Comfits, one hundred
poots. Pigeons, squabs, and colours.
Fig-peckers. squeakers. Cream wafers.
Young Guinea hens. Fieldfares. Cream cheese.
Vinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy;
also toasts to scour the grinders.
Chapter 4. LX.
What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days.
Pantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their
manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon
prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce.
He then asked the
skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on
interlarded fish-days. For his first course, said the skipper, they gave
him:
Caviare. tops, bishop's-cods, Red herrings.
Botargoes. celery, chives, ram- Pilchards.
Fresh butter. pions, jew's-ears (a Anchovies.
Pease soup. sort of mushrooms Fry of tunny.
Spinach. that sprout out of Cauliflowers.
Fresh herrings, full old elders), spara- Beans.
roed. gus, wood-bind, Salt salmon.
Salads, a hundred and a world of Pickled grigs.
varieties, of cres- others. Oysters in the shell.
ses, sodden hop-
Then he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this,
therefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting. Which being
done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:
Gurnards. Thornbacks. Fried oysters.
Salmon trouts. Sleeves. Cockles.
Barbels, great and Sturgeons. Prawns.
small. Sheath-fish. Smelts.
Roaches. Mackerels. Rock-fish.
Cockerels. Maids. Gracious lords.
Minnows. Plaice. Sword-fish.
Skate-fish. Sharplings. Soles.
Lamprels. Tunnies. Mussels.
Jegs. Silver eels. Lobsters.
Pickerels. Chevins. Great prawns.
Golden carps. Crayfish. Dace.
Burbates. Pallours. Bleaks.
Salmons. Shrimps. Tenches.
Salmon-peels. Congers. Ombres.
Dolphins. Porpoises. Fresh cods.
Barn trouts. Bases. Dried melwels.
Miller's-thumbs. Shads. Darefish.
Precks. Murenes, a sort of Fausens, and grigs.
Bret-fish. lampreys. Eel-pouts.
Flounders. Graylings. Tortoises.
Sea-nettles. Smys. Serpents, i. e. wood-
Mullets. Turbots. eels.
Gudgeons. Trout, not above a Dories.
Dabs and sandings. foot long. Moor-game.
Haddocks. Salmons. Perches.
Carps. Meagers. Loaches.
Pikes. Sea-breams. Crab-fish.
Bottitoes. Halibuts. Snails and whelks.
Rochets. Dog's tongue, or kind Frogs.
Sea-bears. fool.
If, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not
immediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him
off in a trice. Special care is taken to antidote his godship with
vine-tree syrup. Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack,
minglemangled, mismashed, &c.
Eggs fried, beaten, sliced, roasted in Green-fish.
buttered, poached, the embers, tossed Sea-batts.
hardened, boiled, in the chimney, &c. Cod's sounds.
broiled, stewed, Stock-fish. Sea-pikes.
Which to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied. For
the latter part of their sacrifices they offer:
Rice milk, and hasty Stewed prunes, and Raisins.
pudding. baked bullace. Dates.
Buttered wheat, and Pistachios, or fistic Chestnut and wal-
flummery. nuts. nuts.
Water-gruel, and Figs. Filberts.
milk-porridge. Almond butter. Parsnips.
Frumenty and bonny Skirret root. Artichokes.
clamber. White-pot.
Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.
It was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs
was not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices,
better yet than Heliogabalus's idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in
Babylon, under King Belshazzar. Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he
was no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature. And as King Antigonus,
first of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially
princes) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt
him for his son, said to him: My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my
groom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very
civilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to
see, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they
could pick out of his sir-reverence.
Chapter 4. LXI.
How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn.
Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded
the famous master of arts, Gaster. You know that, by the institution of
nature, bread has been assigned him for provision and food; and that, as an
addition to this blessing, he should never want the means to get bread.
Accordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry
to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and
the art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of
mathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in
safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he
invented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind
corn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the
use of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more
diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.
He found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to
mark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he
contrived means to convey some out of one country into another.
He had the wit to pimp for asses and mares, animals of different species,
that they might copulate for the generation of a third, which we call
mules, more strong and fit for hard service than the other two. He
invented carts and waggons to draw him along with greater ease; and as seas
and rivers hindered his progress, he devised boats, galleys, and ships (to
the astonishment of the elements) to waft him over to barbarous, unknown,
and far distant nations, thence to bring, or thither to carry corn.
Besides, seeing that when he had tilled the ground, some years the corn
perished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted or was
drowned by its excess, sometimes spoiled by hail, eat by worms in the ear,
or beaten down by storms, and so his stock was destroyed on the ground; we
were told that ever since the days of yore he has found out a way to
conjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting certain grass, common
enough in the field, yet known to very few, some of which was then shown
us. I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being
dipped by Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain on the Lycian mountain in
Arcadia, in time of drought raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and
then dissolved into rain that kindly moistened the whole country.
Our master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in
the air, and make it to fall into the sea; also to annihilate the hail,
suppress the winds, and remove storms as the Methanensians of Troezene used
to do. And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and
took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he
invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure
that staff of life. On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and
hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles,
and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the
Hesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish
forts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams,
ballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well
understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius;
as Master Philibert de l'Orme, King Megistus's principal architect, has
owned to us.
And seeing that sometimes all these tools of destruction were baffled by
the cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of
fortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards,
basiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls,
some of them outweighing huge anvils. This by the means of a most dreadful
powder, whose hellish compound and effect has even amazed nature, and made
her own herself outdone by art, the Oxydracian thunders, hails, and storms
by which the people of that name immediately destroyed their enemies in the
field being but mere potguns to these. For one of our great guns when used
is more dreadful, more terrible, more diabolical, and maims, tears, breaks,
slays, mows down, and sweeps away more men, and causes a greater
consternation and destruction than a hundred thunderbolts.
Chapter 4. LXII.
How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls.
Gaster having secured himself with his corn within strongholds, has
sometimes been attacked by enemies; his fortresses, by that thrice
threefold cursed instrument, levelled and destroyed; his dearly beloved
corn and bread snatched out of his mouth and sacked by a titanic force;
therefore he then sought means to preserve his walls, bastions, rampiers,
and sconces from cannon-shot, and to hinder the bullets from hitting him,
stopping them in their flight, or at least from doing him or the besieged
walls any damage. He showed us a trial of this which has been since used
by Fronton, and is now common among the pastimes and harmless recreations
of the Thelemites. I will tell you how he went to work, and pray for the
future be a little more ready to believe what Plutarch affirms to have
tried. Suppose a herd of goats were all scampering as if the devil drove
them, do but put a bit of eringo into the mouth of the hindmost nanny, and
they will all stop stock still in the time you can tell three.
Thus Gaster, having caused a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient
quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up
with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with
twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion;
then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have
hit him on the breast. About sixty strides off the piece, halfway between
it and the page in a right line, he hanged on a gibbet by a rope a very
large siderite or iron-like stone, otherwise called herculean, formerly
found on Ida in Phrygia by one Magnes, as Nicander writes, and commonly
called loadstone; then he gave fire to the prime on the piece's touch-hole,
which in an instant consuming the powder, the ball and hail-shot were with
incredible violence and swiftness hurried out of the gun at its muzzle,
that the air might penetrate to its chamber, where otherwise would have
been a vacuum, which nature abhors so much, that this universal machine,
heaven, air, land, and sea, would sooner return to the primitive chaos than
admit the least void anywhere. Now the ball and small shot, which
threatened the page with no less than quick destruction, lost their
impetuosity and remained suspended and hovering round the stone; nor did
any of them, notwithstanding the fury with which they rushed, reach the
page.
Master Gaster could do more than all this yet, if you will believe me; for
he invented a way how to cause bullets to fly backwards, and recoil on
those that sent them with as great a force, and in the very numerical
parallel for which the guns were planted. And indeed, why should he have
thought this difficult? seeing the herb ethiopis opens all locks
whatsoever, and an echinus or remora, a silly weakly fish, in spite of all
the winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the
midst of a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain stock still, as
if she were becalmed or the blustering tribe had blown their last. Nay,
and with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out
of the deepest well that was ever sounded with a plummet; for it will
certainly draw up the precious metal, since Democritus affirmed it.
Theophrastus believed and experienced that there was an herb at whose
single touch an iron wedge, though never so far driven into a huge log of
the hardest wood that is, would presently come out; and it is this same
herb your hickways, alias woodpeckers, use, when with some mighty axe
anyone stops up the hole of their nests, which they industriously dig and
make in the trunk of some sturdy tree. Since stags and hinds, when deeply
wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called
dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the
shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved
byblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by
Juturna, Turnus's sister. Since the very wind of laurels, fig-trees, or
sea-calves makes the thunder sheer off insomuch that it never strikes them.
Since at the sight of a ram, mad elephants recover their former senses.
Since mad bulls coming near wild fig-trees, called caprifici, grow tame,
and will not budge a foot, as if they had the cramp. Since the venomous
rage of vipers is assuaged if you but touch them with a beechen bough.
Since also Euphorion writes that in the isle of Samos, before Juno's temple
was built there, he has seen some beasts called neades, whose voice made
the neighbouring places gape and sink into a chasm and abyss. In short,
since elders grow of a more pleasing sound, and fitter to make flutes, in
such places where the crowing of cocks is not heard, as the ancient sages
have writ and Theophrastus relates; as if the crowing of a cock dulled,
flattened, and perverted the wood of the elder, as it is said to astonish
and stupify with fear that strong and resolute animal, a lion. I know that
some have understood this of wild elder, that grows so far from towns or
villages that the crowing of cocks cannot reach near it; and doubtless that
sort ought to be preferred to the stenching common elder that grows about
decayed and ruined places; but others have understood this in a higher
sense, not literal, but allegorical, according to the method of the
Pythagoreans, as when it was said that Mercury's statue could not be made
of every sort of wood; to which sentence they gave this sense, that God is
not to be worshipped in a vulgar form, but in a chosen and religious
manner. In the same manner, by this elder which grows far from places
where cocks are heard, the ancients meant that the wise and studious ought
not to give their minds to trivial or vulgar music, but to that which is
celestial, divine, angelical, more abstracted, and brought from remoter
parts, that is, from a region where the crowing of cocks is not heard; for,
to denote a solitary and unfrequented place, we say cocks are never heard
to crow there.
Chapter 4. LXIII.
How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems
proposed to be solved when he waked.
The next day, merrily pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island
of Chaneph, where Pantagruel's ship could not arrive, the wind chopping
about, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get
ahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard,
though to our sails we added drabblers.
With this accident we were all out of sorts, moping, drooping,
metagrabolized, as dull as dun in the mire, in C sol fa ut flat, out of
tune, off the hinges, and I-don't-know-howish, without caring to speak one
single syllable to each other.
Pantagruel was taking a nap, slumbering and nodding on the quarter-deck by
the cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand; for still it was his custom to
sleep better by book than by heart.
Epistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were
in.
Friar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the
spits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it
might then be.
Panurge (sweet baby! ) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his
tongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.
Gymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.
Ponocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make
himself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not
itch.
Carpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that's a card in
Gascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card
longways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of
the nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.
Eusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers
as if it had been a trump-marine.
Rhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole,
was making himself a velvet purse.
Xenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk's
jesses.
Our pilot (good man! ) was pulling maggots out of the seamen's noses.
At last Friar John, returning from the forecastle, perceived that
Pantagruel was awake. Then breaking this obstinate silence, he briskly and
cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time, and raise good weather,
during a calm at sea.
Panurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently,
and asked for a pill to purge melancholy.
Epistemon also came on, and asked how a man might be ready to bepiss
himself with laughing when he has no heart to be merry.
Gymnast, arising, demanded a remedy for a dimness of eyes.
