Gargantua and Pantagruel
Mondam, that first invented madam’s sauce, and for that discovery was thus
called in the Scotch-French dialect.
Loblolly. Sloven. Trencher-man.
Slabber-chops. Swallow-pitcher. Goodman Goosecap.
Scum-pot. Wafer-monger. Munch-turnip.
Gully-guts. Snap-gobbet. Pudding-bag.
Rinse-pot. Scurvy-phiz. Pig-sticker.
Drink-spiller.
Robert. He invented Robert’s sauce, so good and necessary for roasted
coneys, ducks, fresh pork, poached eggs, salt fish, and a thousand other
such dishes.
Cold-eel. Frying-pan. Big-snout.
Thornback. Man of dough. Lick-finger.
Gurnard. Sauce-doctor. Tit-bit.
Grumbling-gut. Waste-butter. Sauce-box.
Alms-scrip. Shitbreech. All-fours.
Taste-all. Thick-brawn. Whimwham.
Scrap-merchant. Tom T--d. Baste-roast.
Belly-timberman. Mouldy-crust. Gaping-hoyden.
Hashee. Hasty. Calf’s-pluck.
Frig-palate. Red-herring. Leather-breeches.
Powdering-tub. Cheesecake.
All these noble cooks went into the sow, merry, cheery, hale, brisk, old
dogs at mischief, and ready to fight stoutly. Friar John ever and anon
waving his huge scimitar, brought up the rear, and double-locked the doors
on the inside.
Chapter 4.XLI.
How Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees.
The Chitterlings advanced so near that Pantagruel perceived that they
stretched their arms and already began to charge their lances, which caused
him to send Gymnast to know what they meant, and why they thus, without the
least provocation, came to fall upon their old trusty friends, who had
neither said nor done the least ill thing to them. Gymnast being advanced
near their front, bowed very low, and said to them as loud as ever he
could: We are friends, we are friends; all, all of us your friends, yours,
and at your command; we are for Carnival, your old confederate. Some have
since told me that he mistook, and said cavernal instead of carnival.
Whatever it was, the word was no sooner out of his mouth but a huge little
squab Sausage, starting out of the front of their main body, would have
griped him by the collar. By the helmet of Mars, said Gymnast, I will
swallow thee; but thou shalt only come in in chips and slices; for, big as
thou art, thou couldst never come in whole. This spoke, he lugs out his
trusty sword, Kiss-mine-arse (so he called it) with both his fists, and cut
the Sausage in twain. Bless me, how fat the foul thief was! it puts me in
mind of the huge bull of Berne, that was slain at Marignan when the drunken
Swiss were so mauled there. Believe me, it had little less than four
inches’ lard on its paunch.
The Sausage’s job being done, a crowd of others flew upon Gymnast, and had
most scurvily dragged him down when Pantagruel with his men came up to his
relief. Then began the martial fray, higgledy-piggledy. Maul-chitterling
did maul chitterlings; Cut-pudding did cut puddings; Pantagruel did break
the Chitterlings at the knees; Friar John played at least in sight within
his sow, viewing and observing all things; when the Pattipans that lay in
ambuscade most furiously sallied out upon Pantagruel.
Friar John, who lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout
and hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his
merry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons,
racks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs,
dripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array,
like so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most
frightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan. Thus shouting and hooting
they fought like dragons, and charged through the Pattipans and Sausages.
The Chitterlings perceiving this fresh reinforcement, and that the others
would be too hard for ‘em, betook themselves to their heels, scampering off
with full speed, as if the devil had come for them. Friar John, with an
iron crow, knocked them down as fast as hops; his men, too, were not
sparing on their side. Oh, what a woeful sight it was! the field was all
over strewed with heaps of dead or wounded Chitterlings; and history
relates that had not heaven had a hand in it, the Chitterling tribe had
been totally routed out of the world by the culinary champions. But there
happened a wonderful thing, you may believe as little or as much of it as
you please.
From the north flew towards us a huge, fat, thick, grizzly swine, with long
and large wings, like those of a windmill; its plumes red crimson, like
those of a phenicoptere (which in Languedoc they call flaman); its eyes
were red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin
emerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its
feet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and
of the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick’s used to be at
Toulouse in the days of yore. About its neck it wore a gold collar, round
which were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two words,
US ATHENAN, hog-teaching Minerva.
The sky was clear before; but at that monster’s appearance it changed so
mightily for the worse that we were all amazed at it. As soon as the
Chitterlings perceived the flying hog, down they all threw their weapons
and fell on their knees, lifting up their hands joined together, without
speaking one word, in a posture of adoration. Friar John and his party
kept on mincing, felling, braining, mangling, and spitting the Chitterlings
like mad; but Pantagruel sounded a retreat, and all hostility ceased.
The monster having several times hovered backwards and forwards between the
two armies, with a tail-shot voided above twenty-seven butts of mustard on
the ground; then flew away through the air, crying all the while, Carnival,
Carnival, Carnival.
Chapter 4.XLII.
How Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings.
The monster being out of sight, and the two armies remaining silent,
Pantagruel demanded a parley with the lady Niphleseth, Queen of the
Chitterlings, who was in her chariot by the standards; and it was easily
granted. The queen alighted, courteously received Pantagruel, and was glad
to see him. Pantagruel complained to her of this breach of peace; but she
civilly made her excuse, telling him that a false information had caused
all this mischief; her spies having brought her word that Shrovetide, their
mortal foe, was landed, and spent his time in examining the urine of
physeters.
She therefore entreated him to pardon them their offence, telling him that
sir-reverence was sooner found in Chitterlings than gall; and offering, for
herself and all her successors, to hold of him and his the whole island and
country; to obey him in all his commands, be friends to his friends, and
foes to his foes; and also to send every year, as an acknowledgment of
their homage, a tribute of seventy-eight thousand royal Chitterlings, to
serve him at his first course at table six months in the year; which was
punctually performed. For the next day she sent the aforesaid quantity of
royal Chitterlings to the good Gargantua, under the conduct of young
Niphleseth, infanta of the island.
The good Gargantua made a present of them to the great King of Paris. But
by change of air, and for want of mustard (the natural balsam and restorer
of Chitterlings), most of them died. By the great king’s particular grant
they were buried in heaps in a part of Paris to this day called La Rue
pavee d’Andouilles, the street paved with Chitterlings. At the request of
the ladies at his court young Niphleseth was preserved, honourably used,
and since that married to heart’s content; and was the mother of many
children, for which heaven be praised.
Pantagruel civilly thanked the queen, forgave all offences, refused the
offer she had made of her country, and gave her a pretty little knife.
After that he asked several nice questions concerning the apparition of
that flying hog. She answered that it was the idea of Carnival, their
tutelary god in time of war, first founder and original of all the
Chitterling race; for which reason he resembled a hog, for Chitterlings
drew their extraction from hogs.
Pantagruel asking to what purpose and curative indication he had voided so
much mustard on the earth, the queen replied that mustard was their
sanc-greal and celestial balsam, of which, laying but a little in the wounds
of the fallen Chitterlings, in a very short time the wounded were healed and
the dead restored to life. Pantagruel held no further discourse with the
queen, but retired a-shipboard. The like did all the boon companions, with
their implements of destruction and their huge sow.
Chapter 4.XLIII.
How Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach.
Two days after we arrived at the island of Ruach; and I swear to you, by
the celestial hen and chickens, that I found the way of living of the
people so strange and wonderful that I can’t, for the heart’s blood of me,
half tell it you. They live on nothing but wind, eat nothing but wind, and
drink nothing but wind. They have no other houses but weathercocks. They
sow no other seeds but the three sorts of windflowers, rue, and herbs that
may make one break wind to the purpose; these scour them off carefully.
The common sort of people to feed themselves make use of feather, paper, or
linen fans, according to their abilities. As for the rich, they live by
the means of windmills.
When they would have some noble treat, the tables are spread under one or
two windmills. There they feast as merry as beggars, and during the meal
their whole talk is commonly of the goodness, excellency, salubrity, and
rarity of winds; as you, jolly topers, in your cups philosophize and argue
upon wines. The one praises the south-east, the other the south-west; this
the west and by south, and this the east and by north; another the west,
and another the east; and so of the rest. As for lovers and amorous
sparks, no gale for them like a smock-gale. For the sick they use bellows
as we use clysters among us.
Oh! said to me a little diminutive swollen bubble, that I had now but a
bladderful of that same Languedoc wind which they call Cierce. The famous
physician, Scurron, passing one day by this country, was telling us that it
is so strong that it will make nothing of overturning a loaded waggon. Oh!
what good would it not do my Oedipodic leg. The biggest are not the best;
but, said Panurge, rather would I had here a large butt of that same good
Languedoc wine that grows at Mirevaux, Canteperdrix, and Frontignan.
I saw a good likely sort of a man there, much resembling Ventrose, tearing
and fuming in a grievous fret with a tall burly groom and a pimping little
page of his, laying them on, like the devil, with a buskin. Not knowing
the cause of his anger, at first I thought that all this was by the
doctor’s advice, as being a thing very healthy to the master to be in a
passion and to his man to be banged for it. But at last I heard him taxing
his man with stealing from him, like a rogue as he was, the better half of
a large leathern bag of an excellent southerly wind, which he had carefully
laid up, like a hidden reserve, against the cold weather.
They neither exonerate, dung, piss, nor spit in that island; but, to make
amends, they belch, fizzle, funk, and give tail-shots in abundance. They
are troubled with all manner of distempers; and, indeed, all distempers are
engendered and proceed from ventosities, as Hippocrates demonstrates, lib.
De Flatibus. But the most epidemical among them is the wind-cholic. The