Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  These lucky idle birds live in plenty. They are untouchable even by the curses and plagues of Jehovah himself, even if their ‘Heaven is as iron’ and their ‘Earth as brass’ as threatened to any Israelite who broke the Covenant. (Leviticus 26:19 and context.)

  The famine in Egypt lasted seven years.

  For the ‘great feast with banners’ cf. Chapter 45 of the Fourth Book.

  These idle monk-birds have their loving cup as in many English colleges today. The two lines at the end are adapted from an epigram of Victor Brodeau published in the works of Clément Marot.]

  Pantagruel showed a glum countenance and seemed displeased about the four-days’ stop-over that the Aedituus had prescribed for us. The Aedituus noticed it and said:

  ‘My Lord, you know that for several days before and after the Winter Solstice there never is a storm at sea. That is because of the sympathy the elements have for the halcyons, those birds sacred to Thetis, which are laying their eggs at that time and hatching their young by the shore. Hereabouts the sea atones for that long period of calm: whenever voyagers appear, it never ceases to rage abnormally for four days. We believe the reason to be that Necessity wants to constrain them to remain here for four days, to be well feasted out of the profits from our bell-ringing. Do not therefore consider this time to be lost in idleness. You will be retained here by force majeure, unless you prefer to fight against Juno, Neptune, Doris, Aeolus and all the little counter-Joves. Simply make up your mind to have a good time.’

  After the first gollops, Frère Jean asked the Aedituus:

  ‘In this isle of yours you have nothing but birds and cages; the birds neither plough nor cultivate the soil: their sole occupation is to frolic, twitter and sing: so from what lands does this cornucopia come from, this abundance of good and toothsome tidbits?’

  ‘From all over that other world,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘except for certain lands in the Northern climes who have stirred up the Camerine marshes these last few years, tra-la-la,

  They shall repent of it, ding-dong:

  They shall repent of it, dong-ding.

  Now for a drink, my friends. But what land do you come from?’

  ‘From Touraine,’ Panurge replied.

  ‘Then you were certainly not hatched by a wretch among magpies,’ said the Aedituus, ‘since you come from the favoured land of Touraine. So many, many good things reach us annually from Touraine that (as we were told one day by some folk from there who were passing through) the Duc de Touraine has not enough left from all his income to eat his fill of bacon; that is because of the excessive bounty of his forebears, who bestowed upon his sacrosanct birds enough to provide us here with a surfeit of pheasants, partridges, pullets, turkeys and fat Loudun capons, with all sorts of venison and game of all sorts.

  ‘Let us drink, my friends. Just look at this perch-load of birds: see how downy they are and plump from the income arising from our remittances from over yonder. And they sing well for it. You never saw skylarks warbling away in the plain as they do here whenever they espy two gilded banner-staves…’

  ‘Ah!’ said Frére Jean, ‘a feast! With banners!’

  ‘… and when I ring those fat bells there which you can see suspended over their cages. Let us drink, my friends. It is certainly a nice day for a drink. But so is every day. Let us drink. I toast you all with a good heart: you are most welcome. And never fear that food and drink might run out, for even if the sky be brass and the Earth be iron, still we would never be short of something to live on, not for seven years, nay for eight; longer than that famine in Egypt. Let us drink together, in harmony and charity.’

  ‘What ease you enjoy in this world, you devils!’ Panurge exclaimed. ‘And we shall have even more in the next,’ replied the Aedituus. ‘At the very least we shall not lack the Elysian Fields. Drink up, my friends. And I drink to you personally.’

  ‘It was,’ I said, ‘a most sacred and perfect mind in the original Siticines which found the means for you to enjoy what all humans naturally aspire to but which is vouchsafed to few – nay, strictly speaking, to none: that is, to have Paradise in this life and in the next one too:

  O blessèd folk! O demi-gods!

  Lord! If only it came to me!’

  How Panurge related to Maître Aedituus the fable of the war-horse and the ass

  CHAPTER 7

  [Platonists make ignorance the source of all evil. But these islanders are no Platonists: they are a parody of the Religious, their life is controlled by their regular services and their copious meals.

  The chapter includes a delightful fable; perhaps the best-written pages in the entire Fifth Book.

  The phrase ‘in less time than it takes to cook asparagus’ is an expression of the Emperor Augustus (Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, 2, 87).]

  Once we had drunk to the full and eaten our fill, the Aedituus brought us into a gilded chamber, well furnished and hung with fine tapestries. He then had us served with myrobalans, a pot of balm and some green preserved-ginger, together with plenty of hippocras and delightful wine. He invited us by means of such antidotes to cast into oblivion and indifference the strains we had undergone at sea, forgetting them all as though with a draft from the waters of Lethe. He also had an abundance of victuals delivered to our ships which were riding in the harbour. Only then did we settle down for the night, but I could not sleep because of the sempiternal clanging of the bells.

  At midnight the Aedituus woke us up for a drink. He was himself the first to have one, and then spoke to us:

  ‘You folk from the other world say that Ignorance is the mother of all evil. And you say truly. Yet you by no means banish her for ever from your minds: you live in her, with her, through her. That is why, day in and day out, so many evils beset you. You are ever complaining, ever lamenting, never satisfied. I can see that even now. For it is Ignorance that keeps you tied to your bed (as the god of War was tied by Vulcan’s art): you do not realize that it was your duty to be abstemious with your sleep but never abstemious with the good things of this famous isle. By now you should already have eaten three meals. Believe you me: to eat the foods of this Ringing Island you must get up betimes. Eat them, and they multiply: spare them, and they shrivel. Scythe grass in good season, it comes back all the thicker: never scythe it, in a few years all is carpeted with moss.

  ‘Let us drink, my friends. All of us. The skinniest of our birds are all ringing for us now: if you like we will drink them a toast. Let us drink one, two, three, nine rounds: not with zeal but in charity.’

  At the break of day he likewise woke us up again to eat prime-time bread-and-dripping. After that we had only one meal: it lasted all day! I never knew whether it was lunch, dinner, supper or a bite before bedtime. However, we went for strolls over that isle for the next few days to amuse ourselves and listen to the merry song of those favoured birds.

  One evening Panurge said to the Aedituus:

  ‘Don’t be offended if I tell you, sir, an amusing story of something which happened twenty-three moons ago in the countryside round Châtellerault.

  ‘One morning in the month of April the groom of a certain nobleman was walking his war-horses through the meadows. There he encountered a happy shepherdess keeping watch over her little lambkins ‘neath the shade of a little bush. Over an ass and a goat too. He chatted to her, persuading her to get up behind on the crupper to visit his stables and enjoy a nice little country-style bite there. While they were still chattering, the war-horse turned to the ass and said in its ear (the beasts in some places could talk to each other the whole of that year):

  ‘“You poor wretched little donkey. For you I feel pity and compassion. You work hard every day: I can tell that from that rub under your crupper-belt. A good thing too, for God made you for the service of human kind. You are, fellow, a good little donkey. But it does seem a bit tyrannical and unreasonable to me when I see you never sponged down, always poorly curry-combed, poorly caparisoned and poorly fed. Your coat lo
oks like bristles all dirty and shiny. You eat nothing but rushes, thorns and prickly thistles. That is why I summon you, donkey, to pick your way after me and see how we (whom Nature has made for war) are treated and cared for. You will not fail, fellow, to see how I normally live.”

  ‘“Indeed, Sir Horse, I will willingly come,” the ass replied.

  ‘“In your position you should say, Sir Steed,” said the steed.

  ‘“I beg your pardon, Sir Steed,” said the ass, “but us village rustics is often wrong and uncouth in our speech.

  ‘“While on the subject, I will willingly obey you, Sir, and follow you – that is, since it pleases you, Sir, to vouchsafe me such an honour, but at a distance for fear of blows: my hide is all quilted with blows.”

  ‘The shepherdess mounted and the ass followed after, firmly intending to have a good feed once they had reached the stables. The groom noticed the ass and ordered the stable-lads to greet it with their pitchforks and belabour it with their cudgels. The ass, upon hearing those words, entrusted itself to the god Neptune and began to scamper away with all speed, thinking and arguing to itself:

  ‘“He put it well. My estate is not to follow the courts of great lords: Nature made me merely to help poor folk. Aesop warned me about it in one of his fables. It was presumptuous of me: there’s no remedy for me today but to scamper off in less time than it takes to cook asparagus.”

  ‘And off trots that ass, breaking wind, bouncing about, kicking its heels and letting off farts.

  ‘The shepherdess, on seeing the ass making off, told the groom it was hers and begged him to treat it well, otherwise she would leave at once and go on no further. The groom then commanded that the horses should go without oats for a week rather than the ass not eat its fill. The hardest thing was to summon it back, for the stable-lads vainly called and cajoled it: “Here, donkey; hee-haw donkey.”

  ‘“I’m not going to come,” said the ass, “I’m too lowly.”

  ‘The more kindly they called it, the more wildly it flayed about, kicking up its heels and farting. They would still be at it, were it not for the shepherdess who told them that they should call to it while holding up a sieve full of oats. Which was done.

  ‘Suddenly the ass faced about saying:

  ‘“For oats I votes; for pitchforks, no. I don’t say, Pass, no trumps.”

  ‘And so it went over to them, singing harmoniously: it is, as you know, nice to hear the musical tones of those beasts from Arcady!

  ‘Once it had come over, they led it next to the war-horse in the stable. It was rubbed down and sponged, curried and supplied with fresh litter up to its belly and a manger full of oats. And while the stable-lads were sieving the oats, it lay back its ears, trying to let them know that it would eat the oats only too well without any sieving, and that so great an honour did not become him.

  ‘Once they had both fed, the horse questioned the ass, saying:

  ‘“How are things going for you now, you poor old donkey? What do you think of such treatment, eh? Yet you didn’t want to come! What have you got to say now?”

  ‘The ass replied:

  ‘“By the fig which one of our forebears ate and so made Philemon die of laughter, this, Sir Steed, is pure balm. And yet we are having but half a good time. Do you gentlemen-horses never, hm, ass about?”

  ‘“What do you mean, donkey, by assing about?” retorted the horse.

  ‘“Strangullion strike you, donkey! Do you take me for an ass too?”

  ‘“Haw, haw,” replied the ass; “I find it hard to learn the courtly language of horses. I mean, do you gentlemen-stallions never, hmm, act the stallion?”

  ‘“Shush, you ass!” said the horse, “If the stable-lads hear you they’ll give you such a drubbing with their pitchforks that you’ll never again desire to ass about. We in here never dare to get a stiff on for fear of a beating, not even at the tip, not even to urinate. Apart from that, snug as kings.”

  ‘“By the pommel of the pack-saddle which I bear,” said the ass, “I renounce you, fellow, and say pooh to your litter, pooh to your hay and pooh to your oats. Long live the thistles out in the fields, since there you can stud-it as much as you like. Feed less and cover away: that’s my motto. It’s hay and fodder to us! O, Sir Steed, my good friend, if only you had seen us at the fairs, my lad, when we’re holding our provincial chapter, covering away while our mistresses are selling their chicks and their goslings!”

  ‘At that they parted.

  ‘I have spoken.’

  Whereupon Panurge held his peace and uttered not a word more. Pantagruel urged him to end with the moral but the Aedituus retorted:

  ‘One word’s enough for the wise. I know well enough what you mean to say and infer by that fable of the ass and the horse. But you are shameless. There’s nothing like that for you here, you know. Never mention it again.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Panurge, ‘I recently met a white-feathered Abbégesse whom I’d rather bestride than lead by the bridle. And if the others are dain-oiseaux – young bucks of birds – then she looks to me like a daine-moiselle – a doe-bird – I mean an attractive one, a pretty one, well worth a sin or two. God forgive me, but I wasn’t thinking any evil: may the evil I was thinking come quick to me now!’

  How, with much difficulty, we were shown a Popinjay

  CHAPTER 8

  [The travellers meet a pope-bird.

  Erasmus similarly links Pluto’s helmet and Gyges’ ring, both of which could render the wearer invisible (Adages, II, X, LXXIX, ‘The helmet of Orcus’, where Orcus is Pluto).

  ‘Gyges’ ring’ was widely known from Plato, Cicero and Lucian’s Double Indictment (or De Votis).

  See also Adages, II, VII, XC, Thunder in a basin’. It applied to ineffectual menaces.

  Nobody seems to know who Michel de Mâcon was.

  One variant reading from the Isle Sonante is preferred: on the mitre (that is mitre, rather than moitié, half or middle).]

  The third day, like the first two, were spent on the same feasting and dining. On that third day Pantagruel earnestly pressed to see the Popinjay but the Aedituus replied that it did not allow itself to be seen as easily as all that.

  ‘How then?’ asked Pantagruel. ‘To make itself invisible does it have Pluto’s helmet on its head, Gyges’ ring upon its claws, or a chameleon upon its breast?’

  ‘Not so,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘but it is a little difficult to see by its very nature. Yet, if it can be done, I shall arrange for you to be able to see it.’

  Having said that, he left us there chomping away.

  Coming back a quarter of an hour later, he told us that the Popinjay was visible at that time and led us discreetly and silently straight to the cage in which it was squatting accompanied by two little Cardingoths and six gross fat Bishogoths. Panurge closely examined its form, gestures and bearing. Then he loudly exclaimed:

  ‘Damn the beast! It looks like a hoopoe-bird!’

  ‘Shush,’ said the Aedituus. ‘For God’s sake. As Michel de Mâcon pointed out wisely: It has ears’

  ‘So does a hoopoe,’ said Panurge.

  ‘If ever it hears you blaspheming like that, you’re done for, good people. Do you see that basin in its cage? There issues from it thunder, thunderbolts, lightning, devils and tempests, by which you would be swallowed up a hundred feet below ground.’

  ‘It would better,’ said Frére Jean, ‘to drink and to feast.’ Panurge, gazing at the Popinjay and its suite, remained abstracted until he noticed a Madge-owl hidden under its cage. He then exclaimed:

  ‘By God’s might! We’re being badly lured and allured by a barrelful of lures! By God there is some gulling, lulling and mulling going on in this manor. Just look at that Madge-owl there. This is blue murder!’

  ‘Shush, for God’s sake,’ said the Aedituus. ‘That is no Madge-owl: it is a male, a noble Church-treasury-Owl.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pantagruel, ‘but do get the Popinjay to sing us something so that we can hear
how harmonious it is.’

  ‘It sings only by its Hours,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘and it eats only by its Hours too.’

  ‘Well I don’t!’ said Panurge. ‘All hours are good for me. So let’s go and drink to each other.’

  ‘At this hour you are talking correctly,’ said the Aedituus. ‘Talk like that and you’ll never be a heretic. Let’s go. I share your opinion.’

  On our way back to our potations we perceived an ancient green-headed Bishogoth squatting down in the company of some merry Protonotary-Birds which were snoring in an arbour. Near by perched a pretty Abbégesse, which twittered happily away: we took such pleasure in her song that we wished that all our limbs were turned into ears so as to lose nothing of it and to be in no wise distracted by anything else, concentrating on it alone.

  Panurge said:

  ‘That beautiful Abbégesse is splitting her temples by the force of her singing while that ugly, fat old Bishogoth goes on snoring. I’ll soon get it singing too, in the name of all the devils.’

  With that he struck a bell hanging over its cage, but however hard he did so, it never sang but snored all the more.

  ‘By God, you old buzzard,’ said Panurge, ‘I shall find some other way to make you sing!’

  Then, picking up a big stone, he went to strike it on its mitre, but the Aedituus cried out:

  ‘Worthy fellow: beat, batter, kill and slaughter all the kings and princes of the world as you please – by treachery, poison or any other means – or dislodge the angels out of their nests in Heaven: for that, the Popinjay will grant you pardons. But never touch these holy birds if you value the life, well-being and happiness of you, your friends and relations, living or dead: even those born to them hereafter would all suffer for the deed. Consider well that basin.’

  ‘It would be better, then,’ said Panurge, ‘to drink to each other and have a feast.’

  ‘He puts it well, does Monsieur Antitus,’ said Frère Jean. ‘When looking at these diabolical birds here we do nothing but blaspheme: when emptying your bottles and wine-jars we do nothing but praise God. So let’s drink to one another. O, what a nice saying!’