Laudator Temporis Acti

François Rabelais, Gargantua, chap. 25 (tr. J.M. Cohen):

For note that grapes and fresh cake for breakfast is a dish for the gods, especially pineau-grapes, fig-grapes, muscatels, great black grapes, and purgative grapes for those whose bowels are constipated. For these make them squirt the length of a hunting-spear; and often when a man means to fart he shits himself; from which these grapes get the name of wet-farters.

Car notez que c'est viande celeste manger à desjeuner raisins avec fouace fraiche, mesmement des pineaulx, des fiers, des muscadeaulx, de la bicane, et des foyrars pour ceulx qui sont constipéz de ventre, car ilz les font aller long comme un vouge, et souvent, cuidans peter, ilz se conchient, dont sont nomméz les cuideurs des vendanges.

Ernest Langlois, "Anciens proverbes français," Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes 60 (1899) 569-601, discusses a 15th century manuscript collection of French proverbs compiled by Stephanus Legris, of which number 162 (p. 578) is "Cuideurs sont en vendanges," glossed as:

Tempore vendemiarum comeduntur racemi habundanter, idcirco ventres facile solvuntur, ut dum quis putat solum pedere, brachas ipse coinquinat. Et da exemplum de Anastasio, quia volens se anelare, tamen emisit intestina, .XIX. di., c. Anastasius. Hoc contra illos qui sue prudentie procacis nitentes a proposito turpiter defraudentur, quia non sic res eveniunt ut opinabantur.

Labels: noctes scatologicae