Ribaldry

“ Then, in Rabelais you have another symbolism of ecstasy—the shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; how grossness is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion of the unspeakable. ”

“ Then the giant thought of a stratagem, and said, “I have got warm with fighting, and so hast thou. We will bathe in the river, and cool ourselves before we begin again.” The King’s son, who knew nothing of falsehood, went with him to the water, and pulled off with his clothes the ring also from his arm, and sprang into the river. The giant instantly snatched the ring, and ran away with it, but the lion, which had observed the theft, pursued the giant, tore the ring out of his hand, and brought it back to its master. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rabelais, whose wit prodigiously was made, All men, professions, actions to invade, With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen beauteous thoughts ”

“ Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations? It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they would be no longer the rabble.
For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been—a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy, Major André. ”

“ The colour, answered Panurge, is convenient, for it is conform to that of my council-board carpet; therefore will I henceforth hold me with it, and more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done look to my affairs and business. Seeing I am once out of debt, you never yet saw man more unpleasing than I will be, if God help me not. Lo, here be my spectacles. ”

“ What evil thing abideth with this warder of the strife, This burg and treasure chamber for the hoarding of my life? For this is the work of the dwarfs, and no kindly kin of the earth; And all we fear the dwarf-kin and their anger and sorrow and mirth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For when the King asked me the meaning of your riddle—asked how a man could carry the citadel before he passed the ramparts—I told him to take no heed of it, for it was an idle vaunt. And he believed me and assaulted the ramparts three times in vain. And in vain brave men died. Again came your message, and when the King asked me the meaning of it, I said it was insolent defiance. And he believed me, and assaulted the ramparts three times in vain. And in vain brave men died. Then came the message a third time, and the King demanded of me the meaning of it. ”

“ But I will tell him that a thief hath cut them off from my hands in the church, which he will easily believe, seeing the end of the ribbon left at my girdle. After dinner Panurge went to see her, carrying in his sleeve a great purse full of palace-crowns, called counters, and began to say unto her, Which of us two loveth other best, you me, or I you? Whereunto she answered, As for me, I do not hate you; for, as God commands, I love all the world. ”

“ At the same instant, however, there was a terrific clap of thunder, a fragment of earth in the middle of the court-yard sprang like a cannon-ball into the air, and over the castle, and directly after it a jet of water rose as high as a man on horseback, and the water was as pure as crystal, and the sunbeams began to dance on it. When the King saw that he arose in amazement, and went and embraced the tailor in the sight of all men. ”

“ Here must not I forget to set down unto you a riddle which was found under the ground as they were laying the foundation of the abbey, engraven in a copper plate, and it was thus as followeth.
Chapter 1.LVIII.—A prophetical Riddle. Poor mortals, who wait for a happy day, Cheer up your hearts, and hear what I shall say: If it be lawful firmly to believe That the celestial bodies can us give Wisdom to judge of things that are not yet; Or if from heaven such wisdom we may get As may with confidence make us discourse Of years to come, their destiny and course ”

“ Dusk the dwarf coveted the Pearl of Golden Cloud for his wife, and when she denied him, the base wretch stole her from thence, and to hide the deed, he committed a greater one, as people generally do who [39] begin to do evil. By the dwarf’s enchantments, the King, Queen, ladies, nobles, courtiers, and every soul within the palace were transformed into the likeness of stone images. ”

“ Have you any dice in your pocket? A whole bagful, answered Panurge. That is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib. 2. De Patria Diabolorum. The devil would be sure to take me napping, and very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice. With this, the three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the lower points that the cast was five, six, and five. These are, quoth Panurge, sixteen in all. Let us take the sixteenth line of the page. The number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy chance. ”

“ X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake of the scroll on which they are written; and in late and modern painted glass, as well as in architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Ribands occur frequently in arabesques—in some of a high order, too—tying up flowers, or flitting in and out among the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands in nature? It might be thought that grass and seaweed afforded apologetic types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their structure and that of a riband. ”

“ The Ribhus, or Arbhus, again, were the sunbeams or the lightning, who forged the armour of the Gods, and made their thunder-bolts, and turned old people young, and restored out of the hide alone the slaughtered cow on which the Gods had feasted. ”

“ The next morning he came to the eldest and took him to a marble table, where there were three tablets, containing an account of the means by which the castle might be disenchanted. The first tablet said: ‘In the wood, under the moss, lie the thousand pearls belonging to the king’s daughter; they must all be found: and if one be missing by set of sun, he who seeks them will be turned into marble.’
The eldest brother set out, and sought for the pearls the whole day: but the evening came, and he had not found the first hundred: so he was turned into stone as the tablet had foretold. ”

“ The king has a devil to guard his bed.”
And he spent the rest of the night shivering in the farthest garret he could find.
The next morning the coal said to the king:—
“Again this night have I saved your treasure, and mayhap your life as well. Yet a third time I shall do it, and this time you shall learn the name of the thief. But if I do this, you must promise me one thing, and that is that you will place me in your royal crown and wear me as a jewel. ”

“ It descendeth into the salt and fresh of both sea and river-waters for the profit of fishers. By it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man. By it the butt and rover-bows are strung, the crossbows bended, and the slings made fixed. And, as if it were an herb every whit as holy as the vervain, and reverenced by ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins, fiends, and phantoms, the bodies of deceased men are never buried without it. ”

“ Look ye, it is a folly to make a rout for a fart and ado; one word is as good as twenty. I have no more to say to thee, but that, as thou likest thy former entertainment, thou wilt tell me more of the next; for it will go ten times worse with thee unless, by gold, you give me—a solution to the riddle I propounded. Give, give—it, without any more ado.
By gold, quoth Panurge, ‘tis a black mite or weevil which is born of a white bean, and sallies out at the hole which he makes gnawing it; the mite being turned into a kind of fly, sometimes walks and sometimes flies over hills and dales. ”

“ Heaps of rubbish are on all sides visible, whence every shower of rain, not to mention the industry of the natives in digging, discovers pieces of precious marble, and sometimes antient coins, and fragments of sculpture. ”

“ In the lapel of my overcoat I had tied a tag of blue ribbon, and, though for all I knew this was a signal devoting me to a secret and mysterious death, I walked along in a buoyant condition of mind, attributable, no doubt, to the excitement of the venture and to my desire to test my powers, even at the risk of my life. ”

“ All those stories of four or five men stretching their arms around it and not touching each other’s fingers, if one’s pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions. ”

“ I pleasur'd my doxies with fifty rare things,
⁠for which I am got into Limbo.
But as I lay sleeping one day in the straw,
⁠bewailing my woful condition,
Being ready with hunger my fingers to gnaw,
⁠I sigh'd and brought forth this expression:
If I could but get the young whores to my hand,
To argue the case very long I'd not stand,
But grind the young bitches as small as the sand,
⁠I'd teach them to leave me in Limbo. ”

“ Max Müller seems to think some proof of this process as a vera causa may be derived from ‘Folk Riddles.’
The Riddle Theory
We now come, therefore, to the author’s treatment of popular riddles (devinettes) , so common among savages and peasants. Their construction is simple: anything in Nature you please is described by a poetical periphrasis, and you are asked what it is. Thus Geistiblindr asks,
What is the Dark One
That goes over the earth,
Swallows water and wood,
But is afraid of the wind? &c.
Or we find,
What is the gold spun from one window to another? ”

“ Work, clown, work. I am going to tempt to the pleasing sin of whoring the nuns of Dryfart, the sham saints of the cowl, and the gluttonish crew. I am more than sure of these. They need but meet, and the job is done; true fire and tinder, touch and take; down falls nun, and up gets friar.
Chapter 4.XLVI.—How a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope-Figland.
In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went? ”

“ The giant, after he had dragged the heavy burden part of the way, could go no further, and cried, “Hark you, I shall have to let the tree fall!” The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both arms as if he had been carrying it, and said to the giant, “Thou art such a great fellow, and yet canst not even carry the tree!” ”

“ The count, understanding it as an allusion to a misalliance of one of his ancestors with the daughter of a blacksmith, is thrown into a dreadful passion with the young lover, the consequences of which are the seduction of the young lady, and the slaughter of her father.
If we suppose the dwarf to represent the corrupt part of human nature—that 'law in our members which wars against the law' of our minds;—the work forms an ingenious allegory. ”

“ The laburnum had grown wild, like all the trees and shrubs, and some of its black, straggling boughs brushed the pane, and of dark, windy nights while we sat together and talked of art and life we would be startled by the sudden violence with which those branches beat angrily upon the glass. ”

“ Beneath the ruins of the spars, the coils of rigging, and the enormous folds of canvas, might lie crushed many of the best hands, who, from being always the foremost to spring forward in such seasons of danger, are surest to be sacrificed. ”

“ Then the countryman rejoiced at his good luck, and said, "I like many things better than money: first, I will have a bow that will bring down everything I shoot at; secondly, a fiddle that will set every one dancing that hears me play upon it; and thirdly, I should like that every one should grant what I ask." The dwarf said he should have his three wishes; so he gave him the bow and fiddle and went his way. ”