And therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even
as I give myself to a hundred panniersful of fair
devils, body and soul, tripes and guts, in case that
I lie so much as one single word in this whole history;
after the like manner, St. Anthony’s fire burn
you, Mahoom’s disease whirl you, the squinance
with a stitch in your side and the wolf in your stomach
truss you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed
sharp inflammations of wild-fire, as slender and thin
as cow’s hair strengthened with quicksilver,
enter into your fundament, and, like those of Sodom
and Gomorrah, may you fall into sulphur, fire, and
bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly believe
all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.
Chapter 2.I.
Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel.
It will not be an idle nor unprofitable thing, seeing
we are at leisure, to put you in mind of the fountain
and original source whence is derived unto us the
good Pantagruel. For I see that all good historiographers
have thus handled their chronicles, not only the Arabians,
Barbarians, and Latins, but also the gentle Greeks,
who were eternal drinkers. You must therefore
remark that at the beginning of the world—I
speak of a long time; it is above forty quarantains,
or forty times forty nights, according to the supputation
of the ancient Druids—a little after that
Abel was killed by his brother Cain, the earth, imbrued
with the blood of the just, was one year so exceeding
fertile in all those fruits which it usually produceth
to us, and especially in medlars, that ever since
throughout all ages it hath been called the year of
the great medlars; for three of them did fill a bushel.
In it the kalends were found by the Grecian almanacks.
There was that year nothing of the month of March
in the time of Lent, and the middle of August was
in May. In the month of October, as I take it,
or at least September, that I may not err, for I will
carefully take heed of that, was the week so famous
in the annals, which they call the week of the three
Thursdays; for it had three of them by means of their
irregular leap-years, called Bissextiles, occasioned
by the sun’s having tripped and stumbled a little
towards the left hand, like a debtor afraid of sergeants,
coming right upon him to arrest him: and the
moon varied from her course above five fathom, and
there was manifestly seen the motion of trepidation
in the firmament of the fixed stars, called Aplanes,
so that the middle Pleiade, leaving her fellows, declined
towards the equinoctial, and the star named Spica
left the constellation of the Virgin to withdraw herself
towards the Balance, known by the name of Libra, which
are cases very terrible, and matters so hard and difficult
that astrologians cannot set their teeth in them;
and indeed their teeth had been pretty long if they
could have reached thither.
