Gargantua and Pantagruel

  For women are able to carry that long – even longer – especially when it is a masterpiece and a personage destined to do great deeds in his time (as Homer says that the child with whom Neptune impregnated the nymph was delivered after one year had gone by, that is, during the twelfth month). For (as Aulus Gellius states in Book 3) such a long time became the majesty of Neptune, so that within it his child should be fashioned to perfection.

  For a similar reason Jupiter caused the night when he lay with Alcmene to last for forty-eight hours, since he never could have forged in a shorter time Hercules, who rid the world of monsters and of tyrants.

  My Lords the Pantagruelists of old have spoken in conformity with what I say, declaring not only feasible but legitimate a child born to a wife eleven months after her husband’s death:

  – Hippocrates: On food;

  – Pliny: Book 7, chapter 5;

  – Plautus, in The Cistellaria;

  – Marcus Varro, in the satire called The Testament, citing the authority of Aristotle on the subject;

  – Censorinus, in his book On the Day of Birth;

  – Aristotle, chapters 3 and 4 of Book 7 of On the Nature of Animals;

  – Aulus Gellius, Book 3, chapter 16;

  [– Servius, on the Eclogues, explaining the line of Virgil; To your Mother, Ten Months’, etc.;]

  and hundreds of other idiots, the number of whom has been increased by the legal scholars. In the Pandects, see On One’s Own and Legitimate; the Law, To the Intestate, § On Sons; and in the Authentica, the Laws, On Restitutions, and On Her Who Gives Birth in the Twelfth Month.

  More copiously they have scrabbled together their lard-stroking law Gallus (in the Pandects: On Children and Posthumous Heirs, and Law Seven, Pandects, On Man’s Estate) as well as certain others which I do not at present care to cite. By means of those laws, widow-women, for two months after the deaths of their husbands, can frankly play at bonkbum, pricking on regardless.

  As for you, my good comrades, if you do come across any worth untying the flies for, mount them and bring them to me. For if they start to swell in the third month, the fruit will be heir to the deceased. And once the pregnancy is known they can confidently push ahead: Let her run before the wind, since the belly is full. Indeed Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Octavian, never let herself have a go with her drummer-boys except when she was gravid, just as a ship never takes her pilot aboard until she has been caulked up and laden. And if anyone should reproach them for getting country-bumboated on top of their pregnancies, seeing that the dumb beasts never tolerate the mating male once their bellies are swollen, they will retort that those are beasts whereas they are women, fully cognizant of the happy little rigid rights of superfetation (as Populia once retorted, according to Macrobius in Book Two of the Saturnalia).

  If the divel does not want them to get pregnant, then one must twist the vent-pegs off tight – and keep mum.

  How Gargamelle, when carrying Gargantua, took to eating [a great profusion of] tripe

  CHAPTER 4

  [The scene is again set in the pays where Rabelais was brought up, and local terms are used. ‘La Saulaie’ (also called ‘La Saulsaie’) is the Willow-grove.]

  When and how Gargamelle was delivered is as follows – and if you do not believe it, may your fundament run loose. Hers did one afternoon (the third day of February) as a result of eating too many gaudebillaux.

  – Gaudebillaux are greasy tripe derived from coiraux.

  – Coiraux are cattle fattened up in stalls and in prés guimaux.

  – Près guimaux are lush meadows which produce two crops of grass a year.

  Now they slaughtered three hundred and sixty-seven thousand and fourteen of those fatted beeves for salting over Shrove Tuesday so that in spring-time they would have seasonal beef in abundance to enable them [to say a grace for saltings at the beginning of their repasts and] to raise a better thirst for wine.

  There was a profusion of tripe, as you realize, tripe so appetizing that everyone was licking his fingers over it. But the four-devil-mystery-play of it all was that tripe cannot be kept for long: for it will go putrid, and that seemed a shame. So they decided to gobble it all up and waste none of it. To do that they sent invitations to the citizens of the villages of Cinais, Seuilly, La Roche-Clermault and Vaugaudry, not forgetting those of Coudray-Monspensier, the Gué de Vède and others near by, all good wine-bibbers, good company, and fine skittlers with their balls.

  That good fellow Grandgousier took great delight in it all and ordered them to ladle it out by the bowlful. He did tell his wife, though, to eat as little of it as possible, seeing that her time was near and that all that tripery was not a very commendable food. ‘Whoever eats guts,’ he said, ‘must really want to chew shit.’ Despite such expostulations she ate sixteen tuns, two gallons and two pints of it. Oh, what lovely faecal matter there must have been swilling about inside her! After lunch they all went off pell-mell to La Saulaie, and there they danced on the lush grass to the sound of the merry flute and the bagpipes sweet, so joyfully that it was a celestial pastime to watch them having such fun.

  *

  [In ’42 this exchange of drunken quips is expanded and turned into a separate chapter: Words from the tipsy. Chapter 5.

  The jests come from educated tongues and conform at times to that kind of monastic humour which Erasmus loathed but which Rabelais knew how to exploit. A few of the sayings echo scriptural texts: all from the Latin Vulgate: ‘cometh forth as a bridegroom’ (Psalm 19/ 18:5); ‘gaspeth unto thee as a thirsty land’ (Psalm 143/142:6); ‘Respect not the person (Matthew 22:16., omitting the negative!); ‘I thirst’ (one of the last words of Christ on the Cross, John 19:28); ‘And he hath poured it out from this into that’ (Psalm 75/74: 9, Vulgate only).

  A Canon lawyer is present: ‘In the arid can no soul abide’ is a quotation from the Decretum of Gratian, 32, q. 2, cap. 9.

  There is also a quotation from Horace: ‘Whom did most fecund cups not fluent make?’ (Epistles 1, 5, 5, 19).

  Jérôme de Hangest was bishop of Le Mans: Jacques Cœur was, since the fifteenth century, the archetypical rich man. The pope’s ‘mule’ is his mount and/or his slipper (a constant source of jesting).

  There is at least one woman present, one German-speaking Lansquenet, and one Basque: ‘Lagona edatera’ is Basque for ‘Drink comrade’.

  The translation is free at times, transposing some jokes, but not all the jests are complex or allusive.]

  Then, at the appropriate place, they got round to conversing over dessert:

  – ‘Swig

  – Give!

  – Turn it on.

  – Add some water.

  – Shove it along to me, my friend, without the water.

  – Whip that glass gallantly inside you.

  – Produce me some claret in a cup dripping tears.

  – A truce to thirst.

  – Ha, foul fever! Will you never go away?

  – ’Strewth my dear woman, I haven’t even got started yet.

  – Is your nose all bunged up, my sweeting?

  – Indeed it is!

  – By the guts of Saint Quimlet, let’s talk about drinking.

  [– I drink only by my Book of Hours like the pope’s mule.

  – I drink only by my Breviary like a fine Friar Superior.

  – What came first, thirst or drinking?

  – Thirst: in the days of Man’s innocence who would have drunk without thirst?

  – Drinking: for privation supposes habituation. A cleric, I am! Whom did most fecund cups not fluent make?

  – Innocents like us drink all too much without a thirst.

  – But not a sinner like me: if not for a present thirst then for a future one, preventing it you see. I drink eternally. For me drinking’s eternity: eternity’s drinking.

  – Let us sing; let us drink; let’s intone a motet. Just for fun.

  – Just for funnel? Where’s mine!

  – Hey! I’m dri
nking by proxy.

  – Do you wet your whistle to dry it, or dry your whistle to wet it?

  – I understand nothing about the theory but I get by with the practical.

  – Get on with it then.

  – I moisten. I humidify. I drink lest I die.

  – Drink for ever and you’ll never die.

  – If I drink not, I dry out. And there I am, dead. My soul will scamper off to some frog-pond or other. In the arid can no soul abide.

  – Butlers, Ye Makers of new entities, change me from non-drinker into drinker.

  – An everlasting asperging of my dry and gristly innards.

  – In vain drinks he who feels it not.

  – This one’s going straight to my veins. My pisser will get none of it.

  – This morning I dressed the veal-calf’s tripe. Now I shall enjoy washing it!

  – I’ve crammed my stomach full of ballast;

  – If the paper of my pledges was as absorbent as I am, all the writing would be smudged when the time came to honour them and the creditors could whistle for their wine!]

  – That hand of yours is spoiling your nose.

  – O! How many other drinks will get in before this one gets out?

  – This wine-cup is so shallow you risk bursting your girth-strap.

  – You could call this one a decoy for flagons.

  – What’s the difference between a flagon and a butt?

  – Immense: You plug a flagon with your bung, and a butt with your vent-peg.

  [– A lovely one, that!]

  – Our fathers drank well and left not a drop in their potties.

  – Oh! What a shitty-shanty. Let’s all have a drink.

  – Have you got anything for the river? This one’s for washing the tripe.

  [– I can soak up no more than a sponge.]

  – I drink like a Templar.

  – And I, as one who cometh forth as a bridegroom.

  – And I, as one who gaspeth as a thirsty land.

  – Another word for ham?

  [– A summons; commanding you to drink.]

  A drayman’s skid: by the skid wine slides down to the cellars: by the ham wine slides down to the stomach.

  – Get on with it then: drink. Let’s have a drink then. Respect the person! – There’s been no overloading. Pour out for twice: for two sounds too much!

  – If I upped-it as well as I downed-it I’d be high in the air by now.

  [Thus did Jacques Cœur in riches wallow:

  Trees flourish in good land that’s fallow:

  Bacchus with wine did conquer Inde:

  And search-for-wisdom reach Melinde.

  – A tiny shower smothers a gale: lengthy toping foils the thunder.]

  – If my member pissed such piddle, would you mind sucking it?

  – The next round’s on me.

  Page! Hand it over. When my turn comes I’ll insinuate my nomination for you.

  – Guillot, Guillot, drink a lot: There’s still more wine left in the pot.

  [– I appeal against thirst as an abuse. Page, register my appeal in due form.

  – There’s some left-overs.

  – Once I used to drink everything up: now I never leave a drop.

  – Let’s not hurry but gather it all up.

  – Tripe worth a wager, and godebillaux worth doubling! Such tripe would flatter that dun horse with the black stripe. Let’s give him a good currying for God’s sake. Waste not: want not!

  – Drink up, or I’ll…

  – No, no, no! Say, ‘Kindly drink up, I pray.’ To get sparrows to feed you tap their tails: to get me to drink you have to coax me.

  – Lagona edatera. There’s not a burrow in my body where this wine doesn’t ferret out my thirst.

  – This one will track it down. And this will banish it entirely.

  – Let us trumpet this abroad to the sound of bottles and flagons:

  WHOSOEVER HAS MISLAID HIS THIRST,

  LET HIM SEEK IT NOT HEREIN.

  PROLONGED ENEMAS OF THIRST

  HAVE EVACUATED IT FROM THESE LODGINGS.

  – Our great God rules the welkin, and we rule the firkin;

  – I have God’s word in my mouth: I thirst.

  – The stone called asbestos is not more unquenchable than the thirst of my Paternity.

  – Appetite comes with eating, as Hangest Du Mans used to say, and thirst leaves with drinking.]

  – A remedy against thirst!

  – Flat opposite to the one against dog-bites: keep behind a dog and it’ll never bite you: drink before a thirst and it’ll never get you!

  [– I catch you at it and wake you up.

  – Eternal Butler, bottle up sleep.

  – Argus had a hundred eyes to see with: like Briarus a butler needs a hundred hands tirelessly to pour with.

  – Drink up, boys. A fine thing to dry out!]

  – Some white! Pour it. Pour all of it, you devil! Pour it in here up to the brim: my tongue’s pealing.

  – Trink up, mein Freund!

  – Here’s to you, fellow soldier! All in good fun. All in good fun.

  – O, la la! That’s a good guzzle.

  – O Lacrima Christi!

  – It’s from La Devinière. We call it pinot.

  – O noble white wine!

  – Upon my soul, it’s a wine smooth as taffeta.

  – Ho, ho, ho. One-eared wine! Fine stuff from a fine fleece!

  [– Courage, comrade.

  – With such cards we shan’t lose points down: I’m raising a good hand.

  – And He hath poured it out from this into that.

  – Now there’s no magic about it, folks. You all saw it: with goblets I’m a past master. Ahem, ahem: a mast pastor.

  – O, ye drinkers! O, ye that thirst!

  – Page, my friend. Fill it up with a crown of wine at the brim.

  – It’s all cardinal-red.

  – Nature abhors a vacuum. |

  – Would you say that a fly had drunk it!

  – Drink up, Breton-fashion!

  – Polish off this nippitate.

  – Swallow it down: it’s an herbal cure.’

  How Gargantua was born in a manner most strange

  CHAPTER 5

  [Becomes Chapter 6.

  Rabelais, recalling the old notion that the Virgin both conceived and delivered her Babe, the Word of God, through the ear, combines a medical romp with a comic sermon, both Erasmian and Lutheran. For the Sorbonnistes faith is the argumentum non apparentium (Hebrews II:I), Latin which French-speakers may ignorantly take to mean an ‘argument of no apparency’. For them faith is believing something unlikely! Why then believe in the Nativity of Jesus yet not the nativity of Gargantua? Erasmus had shown that faith is not credulity. Faith, in the Greek original of Hebrews II:I, is trust, trust in ‘the evidence of things unseen (in God and his promises). Mary did not at first trust the angel Gabriel: ‘How can these things be?’ Told of the conception of Elizabeth with its echoes of Sarah’s conception of Isaac, she was reminded that ‘with God nothing is ever impossible’, cited in this chapter from Luke 1:37, echoing Genesis 8. That is the punch-line of this chapter, which remains joyful from start to finish.

  The texts amusingly cited from Proverbs 14 and I Corinthians 13 to defend credulity mean very different things in context.

  Rabelais made the prudential cuts shown in the notes.

  The place-names ‘Busse’ and ‘Bibarais’ both sound bibulous.

  Rabelais returns again to the strange births in Pliny, 3.11, which clearly fascinated him.]

  While they were exchanging such tipplers’ chit-chat, Gargamelle began to feel pangs down below, at which Gargantua stood up on the sward and graciously comforted her, thinking that it was baby-pains and telling her how she was put out to grass neath the willows and would soon be bringing forth new feet: it behoved her to show fresh courage at the new arrival of her little one; and though the pains would be rather irksome for her, they wou
ld be short, and the ensuing joy would soon so take away the pain that even the memory of it would not remain.

  ‘I will prove it to you,’ he said. ‘God – that is, our Saviour – says in the Gospel (John 16), “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish.”’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you have spoken well; and I would far rather hear such words from the Gospel (and I feel much better for it) than to hear The Life of Saint Margaret or some other black-beetlery.2

  ‘But I wish to God you’d cut it off.’

  ‘Cut what off?’ asked Gargantua.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘There’s a man for you! You know what I mean all right!’

  ‘My member?’ he said. ‘By goat’s blood! If that’s what you want… – Bring me a knife, somebody!’

  ‘Ha!!’ she said, ‘God forbid. God forgive me. I never meant it seriously. Don’t do anything whatsoever because of what I said. But unless God helps me I shall have a rough time today – all on account of your member, to make you feel nice.’

  ‘Take heart,’ he said; ‘take heart. Worry no more: the four oxen in front can manage the wagon. I shall be off for another quick swig. If anything goes wrong in the meanwhile I shall be near. Whistle in your palm and I shall be with you.’

  Shortly afterwards she started to [sigh], groan and cry out. At once, from all directions, there came piles of midwives who, groping about her bottom, came across some bits of membrane in rather bad taste and thought it was the baby, but it was her fundament which had loosened because of the mollification of the rectum intestinum – which you call the arse-gut – resulting from her eating that excess of tripe which we spoke about above.

  Whereupon a dirty old crone in the throng (who, with a reputation as a leech, had settled there some sixty years ago from Brisepaille near Saint-Genou) concocted a constrictive for her so horrific that all her sphincters were obstructed and contracted to such an extent that you could only with great effort have forced them apart with your teeth. A horrible thought. (The devil likewise, who was recording the claptrap of two gossips during a Saint Martin’s Day Mass, had to use his fine teeth to stretch out the parchment.)