Wednesday, January 11, 2017
A Rare Word in Rabelais
In the prologue to Rabelais' 4th book, the word merdigues occurs.
Here is the entry for the word in Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, vol. 5 (Paris: Didier, 1961), p. 213:
"Briefve Declar." in Huguet's entry is a reference to Briefve declaration d'aulcunes dictions plus obscures contenües on quatriesme livre des faicts et dicts Heroïcques de Pantagruel, published with the Quart Livre in 1552.
M.A. Screech translates merdigues as "Mudder of God," W.F. Smith as "By'r Lakin" (i.e. by our ladykin, an Elizabethan oath). See also Oeuvres de François Rabelais: édition critique publiée sous la direction de Abel Lefranc, Tome sixième: Le Quart Livre, Chapitres I-XVII (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1955), p. 57 (note 248):
The "index verborum" in the edition of Gargantua edited by Ruth Calder, M.A. Screech, and V.L. Saulnier, for the "Textes littéraires français" series (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), p. 405, glosses "Mer Dé, par la" as:
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Merdigues, juron. Mère de Dieu. — Soubriant du bout du nez dict. Merdigues, ceste cy estoit mienne. RABELAIS, IV. Prologue. — Marmes, Merdigues. Juremens de gens villageoys en Touraine, ID. Briefve Declar. (III, 197).There seems to be a misprint in Huguet, where the word appears as merdignes (corrected by me to merdigues in the transcription above):
"Briefve Declar." in Huguet's entry is a reference to Briefve declaration d'aulcunes dictions plus obscures contenües on quatriesme livre des faicts et dicts Heroïcques de Pantagruel, published with the Quart Livre in 1552.
M.A. Screech translates merdigues as "Mudder of God," W.F. Smith as "By'r Lakin" (i.e. by our ladykin, an Elizabethan oath). See also Oeuvres de François Rabelais: édition critique publiée sous la direction de Abel Lefranc, Tome sixième: Le Quart Livre, Chapitres I-XVII (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1955), p. 57 (note 248):
Par la mère de Dieu. "Jurement de gens villageoys en Touraine", Br. Déclar. Amplification de par la Merdé, cf. 1. I, ch. XIII, n. 55, Sainéan, II, 338.But J.M. Cohen translates merdigues as "God's turds," Donald M. Frame as "Turd of God" with the note:
"Merdigues," euphemism for "Mère de Dieu" but with the sound that we show in our translation.Likewise Marie-Luce Demonet, "Pantagrueline humanism and Rabelaisian fiction," in The Cambridge Companion to Rabelais, ed. John O'Brien (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 73-92 (at 87), explains the word as "turd of God."
The "index verborum" in the edition of Gargantua edited by Ruth Calder, M.A. Screech, and V.L. Saulnier, for the "Textes littéraires français" series (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), p. 405, glosses "Mer Dé, par la" as:
imprécation, par la merci de Dieu; avec équivoque (merde).The same editors, on p. 91, note 99, gloss "par la mer Dé" in Gargantua, Chapter 12, line 99, as:
Forme variante populaire de l'imprécation Par la merci Dieu, qui tombe bien à propos dans un contexte fécal.Hat tip: Ian Jackson, who provided most of the information above.
Labels: noctes scatologicae, typographical and other errors
