Produced by Sue Asscher and David Widger

MASTER FRANCIS RABELAIS

FIVE BOOKS OF THE LIVES, HEROIC DEEDS AND SAYINGS OF

GARGANTUA AND HIS SON PANTAGRUEL

Book V.

Translated into English by

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty

and

Peter Antony Motteux

The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from the first edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.' are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by the translator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in 1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship. Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (as the footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored from the 1738 copy edited by Ozell.

THE FIFTH BOOK

The Author's Prologue.

Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard, jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise? How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were they fools? How should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made 'em fools? Who a God's name made 'em wise? Who d'ye think are most, those that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly? Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later? Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new wisdom be started up and established?

Now answer me, an't please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms, reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil. Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon; then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For I swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that if you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you? I'faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the business, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein, wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d'ye think the old fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 5
• 2: Bumper in hand and tears in eyes
• 3: And like toads spit their venom upon them
• 4: They would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer
• 5: He gave us a full account of all the jangling
• 6: And others had writ of the Siticines and Sicinnists
• 7: Aedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish
• 8: Whole legions of these clerg hawks
• 9: Of the dumb Knight hawks of the Ringing Island
• 10: Cried Aedituus in a merry mood
• 11: Aedituus took us into a chamber that was well furnished
• 12: At night Panurge said to Aedituus Give me leave
• 13: The shepherdess being got behind Roger
• 14: When somewhere under his cage he perceived a madge howlet
• 15: As you must understand Aedituus dismissed us
• 16: Thus a partizan met with a pair of garden shears
• 17: They were called either sice cinque
• 18: To the villainy of griping usurers
• 19: Muttered Panurge between his teeth
• 20: You never were so innocentized in your days
• 21: Directed his discourse to Panurge
• 22: According to Gripe men all's riddle
• 23: Though they were to have it in a shitten clout
• 24: I'll apparitorize you presently with a wannion
• 25: Friar John then gave her the fivepence
• 26: They got to the island of the Apedefers
• 27: And out of them all extract aurum potabile
• 28: And desired Pantagruel to remember he had not dined
• 29: Having farted out much fat for ten years together
• 30: We broke through the whirlwind
• 31: For the dub a dub rattling of the drums
• 32: Do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy
• 33: Her true name then is Entelechy
• 34: Neither did Pantagruel return a word
• 35: When she said to her tabachins
• 36: I saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption
• 37: And began to flay eels at the tail
• 38: Exactly measured how far the fleas could go at a hop
• 39: When her praegustators had tasted the meat
• 40: And obliquely in a diagonal line
• 41: And their antagonists began again
• 42: Takes the last golden warden and some nymphs
• 43: Then the silvered king had only three nymphs
• 44: We compared them to your tops or gigs
• 45: Since he held his shortest and least used
• 46: And of the order of Semiquaver Friars
• 47: And as the preceding Semiquaver rang a handbell
• 48: And ended it with mustard and lettuce
• 49: Having shrewdly observed these jolly Semiquaver Friars
• 50: What's the colour of their stockings
• 51: These arch Semiquavering strumpets
• 52: How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent
• 53: Your little booted Lent preachers
• 54: He called it the island of Frieze
• 55: I saw there two and thirty unicorns
• 56: Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea horses
• 57: How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay
• 58: Every individual word of it by hearsay
• 59: How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii
• 60: As also the provincial lantern of Mirebalais
• 61: Cried Pantagruel when he had read them
• 62: According to the same Pythagorical tetrad
• 63: As some cat o' nine tails or the quartan ague
• 64: Hung a handful of scordium garlic germander
• 65: That were all pargetted with porphyry and mosaic work
• 66: With a pack of young clownish doddipolls
• 67: And all the delineated army cried out Evohe
• 68: Shaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd like limbec
• 69: Was the fine fantastic fountain
• 70: A masculine ruby balas peach coloured amethystizing
• 71: A cupola was raised to cover the fountain
• 72: When Bacbuc directed us to watch the water
• 73: At Rhamnus Motteux gives 'or by the Embrians
• 74: How Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess Bottle
• 75: For Trinc is a panomphean word
• 76: With this quoth Panurge Trinc
• 77: Said the priestess to the friar