‘When?’ asked the steward.
‘That time they made your nose into a spigot to draw off a vatful of pooh,’ said Gargantua, ‘and your gullet into a funnel to pour it off into another pan as the bottom was all smelly.’
‘Golly,’ said the major-domo, ‘we have come across a tongue-wagger! Well, Monsieur Chatterbox, may God keep you out of harm’s way, for you have a sharp tongue.’
They scuttled on down, dropping under the stairs the great beam which Gargantua had loaded them with. Whereupon Gargantua said,
‘What devilishly rotten riders you are. Your bob-tail will let you down when you need her.
‘But if you had to get from here to Cahuzac would you rather get astride a gosling or lead a sow on a leash?’
‘I,’ said the steward, ‘would rather have a drink.’
And so saying they went into the lower hall; all their companions were there and when they told them this novella, they had them buzzing with laughter like a bevy of flies.
How Grandgousier recognized the miraculous intelligence of Gargantua from his invention of a bum-wiper
CHAPTER 12
[Becomes Chapter 13.
Before the general use of lavatory-paper the leaves of many plants were used to wipe bottoms; some still retain their popular names such as arse-smart. Rabelais prepares us, through laughter at a caricature of the effects of the old education, for the evangelical-humanist propaganda of the following chapters. Left to himself and to the ministrations of peasant women, Gargantua becomes a bouncing boy who concentrates on his bum, on faeces and on graffiti on the wall of his jakes composed by an old woman. The addition at the end, with its evocation of Duns Scotus (Jean d’Ecosse) places this foul education firmly under that ‘Gothick’ past which humanists (unfairly) associated with that ‘dunce’.
One of the few changes to the text was made in ‘42. The phrase ‘the most royal’ is cut out. (Sensitivities about royal backsides had to be humoured!)
‘Breton wine’ came not from Brittany but from the vineyards of a Monsieur Breton in Rabelais’ pays. It still did some ten years ago and doubtless continues to do so.
Saint Buddocks, a West Country saint later gentrified as Saint Budeaux, is used here to catch the savour of Gargantua’s patois oath. ‘Par la mer Dé’ (‘By the mercy of God’, with a pun on merde (shit)). ‘Doctor of the Sorbonne’ becomes ‘Doctor of Gay Science’ in ‘42.]
Grandgousier, on his way back from defeating the Canarrians, came to visit his son Gargantua towards the end of his fifth year and was delighted at seeing such a son, as such a father could well be. Putting his arms round his neck and kissing him, he asked him all sorts of little-boy questions. He drank drink for drink with him, and with his nurses too, whom he meticulously asked, amongst other things, whether they had kept him white and clean. Gargantua replied that he had so ordered things that there was no boy in the whole realm cleaner than he was.
‘How did you manage that?’ said Grandgousier.
‘After long and careful experimentation,’ said Gargantua, ‘I have invented a way of wiping my bum which is the most royal, the most lordly and the most excellent one ever seen.’
‘Which way was that?’ said Grandgousier.
‘I shall tell you now,’ said Gargantua. ‘Once I wiped my bum on a velvet muffler belonging to one of your young ladies. That I found good, for the softness of the silk gave great pleasure to my fundament. It was the same another time when I used a lady’s lace bonnet; yet another time I used a neckerchief; another, some crimson satin ear-muffs, but the gilt-work on a pile of shitty pearls stuck into them skinned all my bum: may Saint-Anthony’s fire scorch the arse-gut of the jeweller which made them and of the young lady who wore them! The pain went away when I wiped my bottom on a page’s bonnet full of Switzer-style plumes. Then, when I was pooing behind a bush, I came across a March cat and wiped my bum on that: but its claws ulcerated my perineum. The following morning I made it all better by wiping myself on mummy’s gloves, all redolent of her bad-crack. Then I wiped my bum on sage, fennel, dill, marjoram and rose-petals; on leaves of the vegetable marrow, of cabbages, of the vine, of mallows, longwort (which gives you a raw bottom), lettuces, spinach – which all did me a pile of good – pot-mercury, arse-smart, stinging-nettles and groundsel: that gave me the Lombardy squitters, but I cured it by wiping myself on my codpiece.
‘Then I wiped myself on linen sheets, on a blanket, the curtains, a cushion, a carpet, a baize table-cloth, a table-napkin, [a serviette,] a headscarf, a handkerchief and a shoulder-cloth. I found even more pleasure in all of them than mangy folk do when you scratch ’em.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Grandgousier. ‘Which arse-wiper did you find the best?’
‘I was just about to come to that,’ said Gargantua. ‘You’ll soon know it all, down to the World without end, Amen. I wiped my bottom on hay, straw, oakum, flock, wool and paper, but
Use paper on your dirty bum:
On your bollocks splatter some.’
‘Well I never did,’ said Grandgousier. ‘Have you caught at the rim, seeing you’ve begun to rime!’
And Gargantua said:
‘Yes indeed, King of mine:
I can rime all the time:
E’en when snotty in frost or rime.
But just you hear what our jakes say to all who pooh there:
Squitter,
Shitter,
Farter,
Thundering,
Dropper,
Dunger,
Larder,
Scumbering,
Squirting,
Turding,
Fouling,
May erysipelas bite you, sir,
If failing –
Your ring
Cleaning –
You wipe it not without demur.
Shall I go on?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Grandgousier.
‘Well then,’ said Gargantua:
Whilst duly dropping yesterday
The tribute owing by my bum,
An unexpected smell did come:
An evil pong about me lay.
If only someone brought my way
That girling whom I long to come,
Whilst poohing;
I would my tool to her display
And get it then – I would, by gum –
Into that pee-hole ‘neath her tum,
Whilst her fair fingers cleaned away
My poohing.
Now dare tell me that I know nothing about such things! By Saint Buddocks, I never made them up myself, but on hearing them recited by grandma over there I have stored them in the game-bag of my memory.’
‘Can we get back to the subject,’ said Grandgousier.
‘Which? Poohing?’ said Gargantua.
‘No,’ said Grandgousier, ‘the wiping of bottoms.’
‘But,’ said Gargantua, ‘are you prepared to pay me a vat of Breton wine if I render you speechless?’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said Grandgousier.
‘There is no need,’ said Gargantua, ‘to wipe your bum unless there be ordure upon it. No ordure can be there unless you have pooh-ed. We must therefore pooh before wiping.’
‘O my!’ said Grandgousier. ‘How clever you are, my little boykin! One of these days – soon – I’ll have you made a Doctor of the Sorbonne. By God I will. You are wiser than your years. Now do, I pray, get on with your bottom-wiping topic. And, by my beard, instead of a vat of that good vin breton (which grows not in Brittany but in the fair vineyards of Véron) you shall have sixty tuns of it.’
‘I wiped my bum after that,’ said Gargantua, ‘on a head-scarf, a pillow, a game-bag, a basket – but oh, what a nasty bottom-wiper – then on a hat. And note that some hats are soft, others have bristles, others velvety, others smooth as taffeta or soft as satin; the best of all is one made of bristles, for it is very good for the abstersion of faecal matter.
‘Then I wiped my bum on a hen, a cock, a pullet, on calf-skin, on the pelt o
f a hare, on a pigeon, a cormorant, a lawyer’s bundle, a woollen hood, a night-cap and a stuffed decoy-bird.
‘But to conclude: I affirm and maintain that there is no bottom-wiper like a downy young goose, provided that you hold its head between your legs. Believe me on my honour, for you can feel in your bumhole a mirifical voluptuousness, as much from the softness of its down as from the temperate heat of the young goose which is readily communicated to the arse-gut and the rest of the intestines until it reaches the region of the heart and the brain. And do not believe that the blessedness of the heroes and demi-gods in the Elysian Fields lies in their nectar, asphodel or ambrosia, as these old women would maintain: in my opinion it consists in the fact that they wipe their bums on a young goose.’
[And such is the opinion of Master Duns Scotus.]
How Gargantua was introduced to Latin literature by a Theologian
CHAPTER 13
[Becomes Chapter 14.
The name of the preceptor Tubal Holofernes is revealing: Thubal (worldly, confusion and ignominy in Hebrew) and Holofernes, taken to be the archetypical persecutor of the Church. The name of his successor, Jobelin Bridé, means a bridled fool.
From ‘42, throughout this and the following chapter, Rabelais systematically replaced ‘theologian’ by ‘sophist’, and similarly for all similar words like ‘theology’ and ‘theologically’. Those important changes are not further pointed out in the notes; they are made every time without exception.
The old-fashioned books used in this wretched system of education are all real ones, long since mocked by many humanists including Erasmus. Sleep in Confidence was the title of a book of sermons to be used by priests.
The long opening account of the wisdom and skill at horsemanship of Philip of Macedonia is taken from Plutarch’s Life of Alexander. It implicitly condemns Gargantua’s limitation to hobby-horses and, later, to his old mule, thus preparing the way through laughter for the new princely education which is to follow.]
That fine fellow Grandgousier, having heard those words, was caught away in wonder as he considered the higher meanings and the miraculous intelligence of his son Gargantua. And he said to the nurse-maids:
‘Philip, King of Macedonia, recognized the good sense of his son from the dextrous way he handled a horse, for the horse was so intractable and terrifying that no one dared to mount it: it threw its riders, breaking the neck of one, the legs of another, the skull and the jawbone of others. As Alexander watched it closely in the hippodrome (which was the place where horses were exercised and put through their paces), he spotted that the horse’s skittishness arose from fear of its own shadow. At which he leapt astride it and headed towards the sun so that the shadow was cast to the rear; and thus he made it docile and malleable to his will. By which deed his father, recognizing the divine intelligence within him, had him very excellently taught by Aristotle, who was then rated above all the philosophers of Greece. Yet I can inform you that, from this one conversation which I have now had with my son Gargantua before you all, I recognize that his intelligence does partake of something divine, since I see him so acute, so subtle, profound and serene: I have absolutely no doubt that, if he receives a good grounding, he will in time attain to the highest degree of wisdom. I therefore intend to entrust him to some learned man to have him educated according to his abilities. I will spare nothing!
‘In fact they recommended to him a great Doctor of Theology called Magister Thubal Holofernes. He taught Gargantua his ABC so well that he could recite it by heart backwards. He spent five years and three months over that.
‘Then he read with him the Donatus, the Facetus, the Theodolet and Alan de Lille’s Parables. Over that he spent thirteen years, three months [and a fortnight]. Note however that during this time his tutor taught him to write in the Gothick script, and he copied out all his books by hand, since the art of printing was not yet in use. He normally lugged about a bulky writing-desk weighing more than seven thousand hundredweight. Its pen-and-pencil-box was as big and bulky as the great pillars in Saint-Martin d’Ainay; its ink-horn, which could hold a ton, dangled from it by great chains of iron.
‘His tutor then read with him On Methods of Signifying, with commentaries by Windbaghius, Plodmannius, Too-many-Likemmius, Galahad, John Thickeadius, Billonius, Quimius and a heap of others. He spent over eighteen years and eleven months over it and he knew it so well that he recited it backwards in the exam and proved to his mother on his fingers that On Methods of Signifying has nothing to do with learning.
‘The tutor then read the Computum with him; he had spent a good sixteen years and two months over it when his tutor died,
In the year of grace fourteen hundred and twenty,
Killed by the pox of which he had plenty.
‘He was then allotted another old cougher called Magister Jobelin Bridé, who read to him Hugotio, Eberard’s Lexicon of Greek, the Doctrinale, the Quid est, the Supplementum, the Mammotreptus, the How to Behave at Table, Seneca On the Four Cardinal Virtues, as well as Passavantus, with a Commentary and Sleep in Confidence for the feast-days and other books of similar grist, on reading which he became as wise as any loaf we have ever half-baked.’
How Gargantua was placed under other pedagogues
CHAPTER 14
[Becomes Chapter 15.
After all the laughter we are brought to realize that the young giant has been driven mad by his tutors. We have been laughing at a mad way to bring up children.
‘Mataeologian’ is a word vulgarized by Erasmus, combining mataios (vain, useless) with theologian.
Again ‘theologically’ is replaced in ‘42 by ‘sophistically’. The change is not further indicated in the notes.
The young page Eudemon, whose name means ‘Fortunate’, is in most ways an ideal Renaissance youth, clean, healthy, skilled at Latin and at elegant speaking, but his rhetoric is more eloquent than truthful in his praise of the young giant!]
His father eventually noticed that, although Gargantua was truly studying very hard and devoting his entire time to it, he was deriving no good from it, and what was worse becoming a fool and a dolt, quite stupid and mad. Grandgousier complained about it to Don Philip Desmarais, the Viceroy of Papeligosso, and was told that it would be better for the boy to study nothing at all than to study such books under such tutors, since their scholarship was sheer stupidity and their wisdom triviality, debasing sound and noble minds and corrupting the very flower of youth.
‘To prove it,’ he said, ‘select one of today’s youths who has studied for a mere two years: should he not show better judgement and a better command of words and arguments than your son, as well as a better deportment and behaviour in society, then for ever account me a bacon-slicer from La Brenne.’
That greatly pleased Grandgousier, and he ordered it to be done.
During supper that evening Desmarais brought in a young page of his from Villegongis named Eudemon, so neatly combed, so trim, so well brushed and so proper in his bearing that he looked more like a little cherub than a human being.
Desmarais then said to Grandgousier,
‘See this young lad? He is not yet sixteen. If you agree, let us see what a difference there is between the learning of those mad old-fashioned mataeologians of yours and the young folk of today.’
Grandgousier was pleased to try it, and commanded the young page to address them. At which Eudemon asked his master the Viceroy for leave to do so, and then, standing up straight, bonnet in hand, with an open countenance, ruddy lips, and steady eyes looking straight at Gargantua with youthful modesty, he began to praise and commend him: first, for his virtues and good behaviour; secondly, for his wisdom; thirdly, for his nobility; fourthly, for his physical beauty; then for the fifth, he gently exhorted him to honour his father in every respect since he had taken such care to have him educated. And finally he begged him to retain him as the least of his servants, for at that present time he supplicated Heaven for no other boon than grace to please him by doing
him some acceptable service. All that was advanced with such appropriate gestures, so clear an enunciation, so eloquent a voice, such elegant language and in Latin so excellent that he resembled a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Aemilius of antiquity rather than a youth of our century.
But Gargantua’s behaviour was merely to blubber like a cow and hide his face in his bonnet: it was no more possible to drag a word out of him than a fart from a dead donkey.
At which his father was so incensed that he would have slaughtered Magister Jobelin, but the said Desmarais stopped him with elegant remonstrations, in such a manner that his anger was moderated. Grandgousier then ordered that the tutor be paid his wages and encouraged to tipple theologically.
That done, let him go to all the devils.
‘At least,’ he said, ‘he wouldn’t cost his host much today if he should happen to die, drunk as an Englishman.’
Once Magister Jobelin had quitted the house, Grandgousier consulted the Viceroy about which tutor they should provide for Gargantua. It was decided amongst themselves that the duty should be entrusted to Ponocrates, the tutor of Eudemon, and that they should go off to Paris together in order to find out what the youth of France were studying nowadays.
How Gargantua was sent to Paris, and of the enormous mare which bore him, and how she overcame the gad-flies of Beauce
CHAPTER 15
[Becomes Chapter 16.
‘Out of Africa ever comes something new’ is one of the best-known sayings of Pliny. It forms an adage of Erasmus (III, VII, X).
It was Froissart during the wars who made the famous remark (which Grandgousier inverts): ‘Were it not for Messieurs the Clerics we would all live like beasts.’
Here and elsewhere Rabelais changed ‘Languedoc’ into ‘Languegoth’ by a false etymology suggestive of depised Gothic roots.]