‘It is,’ said Epistemon, ‘an aorist issuing from the very-imperfect preterite of the Greeks and Latins, accepted as a mottled, motley bellicose time. Patience! (as the lepers say).’
‘It is a fatal time,’ said the hermit, ‘as I told you. Whoever would gainsay that is a heretic, good for nothing but the pyre.’
‘It is quite certain, Father,’ said Panurge, ‘that when I’m at sea, I’m more afraid of being wetted than heated, of being drowned than burnt. All right, then! For God’s sake let us fast, but I have fasted so long already that the fasts have undermined all my flesh and I fear that the bastions of my body may fall into decay.
‘I have another worry too: I might offend you by my fasting, for I know nothing about it and, as many have told me, I make a bad show at it: and I believe them. For my own part, I say, I am not much concerned with fasting: nothing is easier or readier to hand. I’m much more concerned not to fast in the future, for then I’ll need cloth to full and grist for the mill.
‘But let us fast, for God’s sake, since we have entered upon the festivities of Esurience: it is a long time since I was last acquainted with them.’
‘And if fast we must,’ said Pantagruel, ‘the only expedient is to get over it quickly as over a bad road.
‘I would also like to spend some time with my papers to find out whether studying at sea is as good as studying on land, since Plato, wishing to describe a silly, uncouth and ignorant man, compared him to folk brought up at sea aboard boats, just as we might say Folk brought up in a barrel, who peer only through a bung-hole.’
Our fastings were terrifying and very dreadful, for:
– the first was a joust with short staves;
– the second, with drawn foils;
– the third, with whetted blades,
and
– the fourth, with all put to fire and sword.
For such was the decision of the Fatal Sprites.
How Ringing Island had been inhabited by Siticines who had been transfigured into birds
CHAPTER 2
[The opening chapters are a satire of celibate religious Orders.
Strictly ‘Siticines’ were musicians at Roman funerals, whilst Sicinnis-tae danced satyr-dances.]
‘Albian Camat’ may be a faulty transcription of Abien Camar, the Hebrew for a pagan priest.
Master Aedituus (Temple-keeper) is miscalled Antitus, the name of a cook in the Fourth Book and of a booby in Pantagruel.
In French the birds are called Clerigaux, etc. Here the termination ‘goths’ seeks to convey the pejorative force of the original -aux.
The Harpies and the Stimphalides (foul and befouling birds of prey) were eventually defeated by Hercules.]
Once our fastings were over, the hermit gave us a letter addressed to a man whom he called Albian Camat, the Master Aedituus of Ringing Island: but Panurge greeted him as Master Antitus. He was a little old man, bald, with an illuminated snout and a ruddy face who offered us a very warm welcome on the recommendation of the hermit, once he learnt that – as was expounded above – we had all fasted.
After we had very well eaten, he explained to us the special features of the island, insisting that it had first been inhabited by Siticines but they (following the natural order, since all things change) had turned into birds.
There I was fully informed of what Atteius Capito, Pollux, Marcellus, Aulus Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius and others had written on the subject of the Siticines and the Sicin-nists; after which it did not seem hard to us to believe in the metamorphoses of Nyctimene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus and other birds. We had no more doubts either about the children of Matabrune, who were changed into swans, nor about the men of Pallene (in Thrace), who, at the precise moment that they bathed nine times in Lake Triton, were also turned into birds. Thereafter he talked of nothing but birds and cages.
The cages were grand, richly ornate, sumptuous and remarkably constructed. The birds were grand, handsome and becomingly sleek, closely resembling the men of my part of the world. They ate and drank like men, shat like men, broke wind, slept and leapt females like men. In short, on first seeing them, you would have said that they were in fact men, yet according to what Maître Aedituus taught us, they were not men at all, maintaining that they were, on the contrary, neither secular nor of this world.
Their plumage moreover made us wonder: some had plumage which was wholly white; others, entirely black; others, all grey; others half white and half black; others, entirely red; others, half white, half blue. And what a fine sight it was to see them!
The male birds they called Clerigoths, Monkogoths, Priestogoths, Abbégoths, Bishogoths, Cardingoths, plus a Popinjay, who is unique in his species.
He called the female birds Clerickesses, Monkagesses, Priestagesses, Abbégesses, Bishogesses, Cardingesses and Popagesses.
He told us, however, that, just as drones haunt bees yet do nothing but eat and spoil everything, so too, for the last three hundred years, on the fifth day after each full moon, a large number of Bigot-tails have somehow flown in amongst those happy birds, shamefully shitting all over their island. So hideous and monstrous are they that everyone has always shunned them, for they all have wry-necks, hairy paws and the claws and bellies of Harpies together with the bums of Stymphalian birds.
It was impossible to exterminate them: for every one of them killed, two dozen fly in. I yearned for a second Hercules, since Frére Jean had sunk into such mind-distracting contemplation that he had lost touch with reality, while there befell Pantagruel what had befallen Messer Priapus when his skin ran out as he contemplated the sacrifices of Ceres.5
How there is but one Popinjay on Ringing Island
CHAPTER 3
[Popinjay meant a parrot. Here it also means a pope. There is an allusion to the Great Schism (1378 to 1417) when there were two rival popes.
‘Robert Valbringue’ may be a confused allusion to Roberval, the explorer who governed Canada.
Cf. two adages of Erasmus: I, V, XXIX, ‘More mute than a fish’, and ‘III, VII, X, ‘Africa always brings something new’.]
We then inquired of the Maître Aedituus why, seeing the increase of those venerable birds in their various species, there was only one Popinjay. He replied that the cause lay in the original foundation and in ineluctable destiny as determined by the stars, by which Priestogoths and Monkogoths were born of Clerigoths without carnal intercourse (as happens to bees which are brought forth from a young bull prepared according to the art and practice of Aristaeus).
From the Priestogoths are born the Bishogoths, and from them the splendid Cardingoths; any, unless overtaken by death, could well become Popinjay, of which there is usually but one just as there is but one king-bee in a hive and but one sun in this world. When a Popinjay dies, to replace him another is born from the entire tribe of Cardingoths (again, you realize, without carnal intercourse). Accordingly, within that species there is but one individual in an unbroken succession, no more nor less than the Arabian phoenix.
It is true that two Popinjays were delivered into Nature some two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, but that was the greatest disaster ever seen on this island, ‘for,’ said the Aedituus, ‘during that period all the birds despoiled each other and tore the skins off each other, so that the island was put in peril of being robbed of its inhabitants. Part of them adhered to one and supported him: part, to the other, and protected him; part of them stayed as mute as fishes and chanted no more; and some of these bells of ours, as though under an interdict, rang out no more.
‘During that period of sedition they summoned to their aid the emperors, kings, dukes, monarchs, counts, barons and corporations who dwelt upon the terra-firma of our continent. But there was no end to that schism and sedition until plurality was brought back to unity when one of them was plucked from this life.’
We then asked what moved those birds to chant thus incessantly. The Aedituus replied it was the bells hanging over their cage
s. He then said to us:
‘Those Monkogoths you can see over there clad in a cape with a hood like a bag for straining hippocras: would you like me to make them chant now like meadow-larks?’
‘Kindly do so,’ we replied.
Thereupon he rang a bell six times only; whereupon Monkogoths came rushing up and Monkogoths began to sing.
‘Now,’ said Panurge, ‘if I were to ring that bell, would I make those birds sing which have plumage the colour of red herrings?’
‘Just the same,’ said the Aedituus.
And when Panurge struck it, those smoke-cured birds did come charging up at once, and they all chanted together, but their voices were raucous and nasty. The Aedituus explained that they lived on nothing but fish, as herons and cormorants do in the outside world, and that they were a fifth species of Bigot-tails, newly minted. He further added that he had been warned by Robert Valbringue (who had recently called in on the way back from Africa) that there was a sixth species due to land, which he called Capuchinogoths, glummer, madder and more provoking than any species found on that isle.
‘Africa,’ said Pantagruel, ‘is always bringing forth things new and monstrous.’
How the Birds of Ringing Island were all birds of passage
CHAPTER 4
[Harsh words on monasteries and convents. ‘The Ile Bossard’ is occupied by bossus, hunchbacks, and other misfits. Much the same was said about monks and nuns at the beginning of the Abbaye de Thélème.
There was a French saying, ‘Long as a day without bread’.
‘Malsueda’ is an echo of Virgil, Aeneid, 6, 276, malsueda fames (evil-counselling Hunger).
More of the inmates leave their Ringing Isle these days because of the Reformation.
‘A useless burden upon the earth’ is applied to monks in the Fourth Book, Chapter 58, where Rabelais attributes this (quite common) saying of Homer, Iliad, 18, 104, to Hesiod.]
‘But,’ said Pantagruel, ‘seeing that you have explained to us how the Popinjay is born from Cardingoths, Cardingoths, from Bishogoths, Bishogoths, from Priestogoths, and Priestogoths, from Clerigoths, I would dearly like to know whom the Clerigoths are born from.’
‘They are all birds of passage. They come to us from the other world, some from a wondrously broad country called Day-sans-Bread and some from another land lying towards the setting sun and called Too-Many-Ckilder. Every year those Clerigoths come here in droves from those two lands, leaving behind fathers and mothers and all their friends and neighbours. That is what happens whenever there are so many children, be they male or female, in some noble House in that second land, that if you were to divide up the inheritance between them (as reason requires, Nature ordains and God commands) the family itself would be ruined.
‘That is the occasion which leads parents to dump their children on to this Ile Bossard.’
‘Ah,’ said Panurge, ‘The He Bouchard, near Chinon!’
‘I said this Ile Bossard,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘this Isle of Hunchbacks. For here they are usually hunchbacked, one-eyed, lame, one-armed, plagued with the gout, misshapen and deformed, a useless burden upon the earth.’
‘That,’ said Pantagruel, ‘is a custom diametrically opposed to the basic rule observed at the admission of Vestal Virgins: it was, as Labeo Antistius testifies, forbidden to choose any maiden for that honour who had any defect in her soul, any weakness in her senses or any blemish in her body, no matter how trivial or concealed.’
‘I am amazed,’ continued the Aedituus, ‘that mothers in that other world can bear their children nine months in the womb seeing that they cannot bear or abide them nine years in the home – not even seven years in most cases – but, by merely putting a surplice over their clothes and shaving Lord-knows how much hair off their crowns whilst uttering certain evil-averting, expiatory formulas, they clearly and openly turn them before your eyes into such Birds as you see here now by a Pythagorean metempsychosis, without lesion or gash of any kind, just as the priests of Isis were created amongst the Egyptians by tonsuring and the imposition of certain linen stoles.
‘But, dear friends, I cannot tell how it can be, nor why it must be, that the females (be they Clerickesses, Monkagesses or Abbégesses) never sing pleasant motets and songs of thankfulness as once were sung to Oromasis by the rule of Zoroaster, but rather songs of cursing and of gloom such as were addressed to the demon Ahriman, songs (sung continually by the young as much as the old) raining imprecations on their kinsfolk and friends who had transformed them into birds.
‘An even greater number come to us from Day-sans-Bread (which day is excessively long). For when the Asaphis (who inhabit that land) are about to suffer from malsueda because they have nothing to eat, and since they neither know what to do nor want to do it – prepared neither to toil at some honest art or craft nor to go loyally into service with some decent family – they all fly here as do those who have been hopelessly crossed in love and likewise those too who have committed a wicked crime and whom men hunt so as to bring them to some shameful death. Here they have their lives assigned: here they who had once been as skinny as magpies quickly grow as plump as dormice; here they find perfect safety, immunity and privilege.’
‘But,’ asked Pantagruel, ‘once they have come here, do those fine birds never return to the world they were hatched in?’
‘Some do,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘formerly, very few, very late in life and very sadly. But since certain eclipses, huge flocks of them have flown back home by virtue of the constellations in the heavens. That in no wise makes us melancholy: those who stay have all the greater pittance!
‘Before flying off all of them cast their plumage to the thorns and the nettles.’
We did indeed find a few feathers there; and in our searches we came across an uncovered pot of roses.6
How the Gourmander-Birds on Ringing Island are mute
CHAPTER 5
[The verb gourmander found here in the original implies both gourmandise and commanding, domineering or acting proudly. There is also a suggestion of avidity. This chapter mentions three Orders of Chivalry: the Order of the Garter, the Order of Saint Michael (who is shown slaying Satan, the Calumniator, the Father of Lies) and the Order of the Golden Fleece. There is a pun between Gourmanders and the Commanders of such Orders. There are clear allusions to the insignia of the Orders of the Garter, of Saint Michael and of the Golden Fleece.]
Those words had hardly been uttered before there came flying close by some twenty-five or thirty birds of a hue and plumage which we had not yet seen on that isle. Their plumage kept changing from hour to hour like the skin of a chameleon and like the flower of a tripolion or teucrion. Beneath their left wings all of them had a mark like two diameters each bisecting a circle or like a perpendicular dropping on to a straight horizontal. All were virtually of the same shape but not all of the same colour: in some it was white; in others, green; in others, red; in others, violet, and in others, blue.
‘What are these?’ asked Pantagruel. ‘And how do you call them?’
‘They are cross-breeds,’ said the Aedituus. ‘We call them Gourmanders, and they possess a large number of rich gourmandises in your world.’
‘I beg you,’ I said, ‘to get them to sing a bit so that we may hear their voices.’
‘They never sing,’ he replied, ‘but to make up for it, they put enough food away for two.’
‘Where are their females?’ I asked.
‘They have none,’ he replied.
‘How is it, then,’ argued Panurge, ‘that they are all covered with scabs and eaten away by syphilis?’
‘Syphilis is a property of this species of bird,’ he replied, ‘caught from the seas which they haunt at times.’
He then told us of the motive of their coming here:
‘For this one here,’ he said, ‘it was to find out whether there is amongst you a magnificent species of Goth-birds: terrifying birds of prey which however do not answer to the gauntlet nor respond to the
lure, but do exist, they say, in your world. Some of them sport a fair and costly jess-strap garter round their legs, to which is attached a varvel-ring on which is inscribed Honni to him who mal y pense, for all such are condemned to be suddenly shat upon.
‘Others it is said wear on the front of their plumage a pectoral badge depicting victory over the Calumniator, or in other cases, the fleece of a ram.’
‘That,’ said Panurge, ‘is true, Master Aedituus, but we do not know any.’
‘Now,’ said the Aedituus, ‘there has been quite enough palavering: now for a drink.’
‘And for a feed,’ said Panurge.
‘Both a feed and a good drink,’ said the Aedituus. ‘A pair of cards down, then the rest of the suit! Nothing is more dear nor more precious than time: let us spend it on good works.’
He first wanted us to bathe in the thermal springs of the Cardingoths, springs outstandingly beautiful and delightful, and then, on coming out from the baths, have ourselves anointed with precious balm by the Alyptae. But Pantagruel told him that he would drink all too much without any of that.
Whereupon the Aedituus conducted us to a spacious and delightful refectory and said:
‘Braguibus the hermit made you fast for four days: here, to balance things up, you shall eat and feed for four days without ceasing.’
‘Shall we not get any sleep during all that time?’ asked Panurge.
‘As you freely wish,’ replied the Aedituus, ‘for he who sleeps, drinks.7 Good Lord, what good cheer we had. O! what a great man and a good!’
How the birds of Ringing Island are nourished
CHAPTER 6
[There is an echo of two adages of Erasmus: I, I, LXIV, ‘To move the Camarina’ (that is, to disturb the Camerine marshes and so bring ills on to oneself), and II, VII, XC, ‘To thunder in a basin’ (as we might say ‘To storm in a tea-cup’).
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