Gargantua and Pantagruel
what was recommended to their discretion. This is hoped will suffice to
assure the ingenuous Reader that in no treatise of the translator’s,
whether original or translatitious, shall willingly be offered the meanest
rub to the reputation of any worthy gentleman, and that, however providence
dispose of him, no misfortune shall be able to induce his mind to any
complacency in the disparagement of another.
Again.
The Pentateuch of Rabelais mentioned in the title-page of the first book of
this translation being written originally in the French tongue (as it
comprehendeth some of its brusquest dialects), with so much ingeniosity and
wit, that more impressions have been sold thereof in that language than of
any other book that hath been set forth at any time within these fifteen
hundred years; so difficult nevertheless to be turned into any other speech
that many prime spirits in most of the nations of Europe, since the year
1573, which was fourscore years ago, after having attempted it, were
constrained with no small regret to give it over as a thing impossible to
be done, is now in its translation thus far advanced, and the remainder
faithfully undertaken with the same hand to be rendered into English by a
person of quality, who (though his lands be sequestered, his house
garrisoned, his other goods sold, and himself detained a prisoner of war at
London, for his having been at Worcester fight) hath, at the most earnest
entreaty of some of his especial friends well acquainted with his
inclination to the performance of conducible singularities, promised,
besides his version of these two already published, very speedily to offer
up unto this Isle of Britain the virginity of the translation of the other
three most admirable books of the aforesaid author; provided that by the
plurality of judicious and understanding men it be not declared he hath
already proceeded too far, or that the continuation of the rigour whereby
he is dispossessed of all his both real and personal estate, by pressing
too hard upon him, be not an impediment thereto, and to other more eminent
undertakings of his, as hath been oftentimes very fully mentioned by the
said translator in several original treatises of his own penning, lately by
him so numerously dispersed that there is scarce any, who being skilful in
the English idiom, or curious of any new ingenious invention, hath not
either read them or heard of them.
Mr. Hugh Salel to Rabelais.
If profit mixed with pleasure may suffice
T’ extol an author’s worth above the skies,
Thou certainly for both must praised be:
I know it; for thy judgment hath in the
Contexture of this book set down such high
Contentments, mingled with utility,
That (as I think) I see Democritus
Laughing at men as things ridiculous.
Insist in thy design; for, though we prove
Ungrate on earth, thy merit is above.
The Author’s Prologue.
Most illustrious and thrice valorous champions, gentlemen and others, who
willingly apply your minds to the entertainment of pretty conceits and
honest harmless knacks of wit; you have not long ago seen, read, and
understood the great and inestimable Chronicle of the huge and mighty giant
Gargantua, and, like upright faithfullists, have firmly believed all to be
true that is contained in them, and have very often passed your time with
them amongst honourable ladies and gentlewomen, telling them fair long
stories, when you were out of all other talk, for which you are worthy of
great praise and sempiternal memory. And I do heartily wish that every man
would lay aside his own business, meddle no more with his profession nor
trade, and throw all affairs concerning himself behind his back, to attend
this wholly, without distracting or troubling his mind with anything else,
until he have learned them without book; that if by chance the art of
printing should cease, or in case that in time to come all books should
perish, every man might truly teach them unto his children, and deliver
them over to his successors and survivors from hand to hand as a religious
cabal; for there is in it more profit than a rabble of great pocky
loggerheads are able to discern, who surely understand far less in these
little merriments than the fool Raclet did in the Institutions of
Justinian.
I have known great and mighty lords, and of those not a few, who, going
a-deer-hunting, or a-hawking after wild ducks, when the chase had not
encountered with the blinks that were cast in her way to retard her course,
or that the hawk did but plain and smoothly fly without moving her wings,
perceiving the prey by force of flight to have gained bounds of her, have
been much chafed and vexed, as you understand well enough; but the comfort
unto which they had refuge, and that they might not take cold, was to
relate the inestimable deeds of the said Gargantua. There are others in
the world--these are no flimflam stories, nor tales of a tub--who, being
much troubled with the toothache, after they had spent their goods upon
physicians without receiving at all any ease of their pain, have found no
more ready remedy than to put the said Chronicles betwixt two pieces of
linen cloth made somewhat hot, and so apply them to the place that
smarteth, sinapizing them with a little powder of projection, otherwise
called doribus.
But what shall I say of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and
the gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were
anointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the
keyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of
little organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed
from their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have
driven in and overthrown amongst the toils,--what did they then? All their
consolation was to have some page of the said jolly book read unto them.
And we have seen those who have given themselves to a hundred puncheons of
old devils, in case that they did not feel a manifest ease and assuagement
of pain at the hearing of the said book read, even when they were kept in a
purgatory of torment; no more nor less than women in travail use to find
their sorrow abated when the life of St. Margaret is read unto them. Is
this nothing? Find me a book in any language, in any faculty or science
whatsoever, that hath such virtues, properties, and prerogatives, and I
will be content to pay you a quart of tripes. No, my masters, no; it is
peerless, incomparable, and not to be matched; and this am I resolved for
ever to maintain even unto the fire exclusive. And those that will
pertinaciously hold the contrary opinion, let them be accounted abusers,
predestinators, impostors, and seducers of the people. It is very true
that there are found in some gallant and stately books, worthy of high
estimation, certain occult and hid properties; in the number of which are
reckoned Whippot, Orlando Furioso, Robert the Devil, Fierabras, William
without Fear, Huon of Bordeaux, Monteville, and Matabrune: but they are not
comparable to that which we speak of, and the world hath well known by
infallible experience the great emolument and utility which it hath
received by this Gargantuine Chronicle, for the printers have sold more of
them in two months’ time than there will be bought of Bibles in nine years.
I therefore, your humble slave, being very willing to increase your solace
and recreation yet a little more, do offer you for a present another book
of the same stamp, only that it is a little more reasonable and worthy of
credit than the other was. For think not, unless you wilfully will err
against your knowledge, that I speak of it as the Jews do of the Law. I
was not born under such a planet, neither did it ever befall me to lie, or
affirm a thing for true that was not. I speak of it like a lusty frolic
onocrotary (Onocratal is a bird not much unlike a swan, which sings like an
ass’s braying.), I should say crotenotary (Crotenotaire or notaire crotte,
croquenotaire or notaire croque are but allusions in derision of
protonotaire, which signifieth a pregnotary.) of the martyrized lovers, and
croquenotary of love. Quod vidimus, testamur. It is of the horrible and
dreadful feats and prowesses of Pantagruel, whose menial servant I have
been ever since I was a page, till this hour that by his leave I am
permitted to visit my cow-country, and to know if any of my kindred there
be alive.
And therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give myself to a
hundred panniersful of fair devils, body and soul, tripes and guts, in case
that I lie so much as one single word in this whole history; after the like
manner, St. Anthony’s fire burn you, Mahoom’s disease whirl you, the
squinance with a stitch in your side and the wolf in your stomach truss
you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of
wild-fire, as slender and thin as cow’s hair strengthened with quicksilver,
enter into your fundament, and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah, may you
fall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly
believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.
THE SECOND BOOK.
Chapter 2.I.
Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel.
It will not be an idle nor unprofitable thing, seeing we are at leisure, to
put you in mind of the fountain and original source whence is derived unto
us the good Pantagruel. For I see that all good historiographers have thus
handled their chronicles, not only the Arabians, Barbarians, and Latins,
but also the gentle Greeks, who were eternal drinkers. You must therefore
remark that at the beginning of the world--I speak of a long time; it is
above forty quarantains, or forty times forty nights, according to the
supputation of the ancient Druids--a little after that Abel was killed by
his brother Cain, the earth, imbrued with the blood of the just, was one
year so exceeding fertile in all those fruits which it usually produceth to
us, and especially in medlars, that ever since throughout all ages it hath
been called the year of the great medlars; for three of them did fill a
bushel. In it the kalends were found by the Grecian almanacks. There was
that year nothing of the month of March in the time of Lent, and the middle
of August was in May. In the month of October, as I take it, or at least
September, that I may not err, for I will carefully take heed of that, was
the week so famous in the annals, which they call the week of the three
Thursdays; for it had three of them by means of their irregular leap-years,
called Bissextiles, occasioned by the sun’s having tripped and stumbled a
little towards the left hand, like a debtor afraid of sergeants, coming
right upon him to arrest him: and the moon varied from her course above
five fathom, and there was manifestly seen the motion of trepidation in the
firmament of the fixed stars, called Aplanes, so that the middle Pleiade,
leaving her fellows, declined towards the equinoctial, and the star named
Spica left the constellation of the Virgin to withdraw herself towards the
Balance, known by the name of Libra, which are cases very terrible, and
matters so hard and difficult that astrologians cannot set their teeth in
them; and indeed their teeth had been pretty long if they could have
reached thither.
However, account you it for a truth that everybody then did most heartily
eat of these medlars, for they were fair to the eye and in taste delicious.
But even as Noah, that holy man, to whom we are so much beholding, bound,
and obliged, for that he planted to us the vine, from whence we have that
nectarian, delicious, precious, heavenly, joyful, and deific liquor which