Quænam in mundo admiranda?
Resp. Quod omnes cornices sint nigræ; quod ratti æque cito currant ac mures; quod canes ossa arrodant et duglutiant; quod rusticus armaturam induat, galeam capiti imponat, hastam arripiat ad defendendum pullos gallinaceos, cum singulis diebus tam diligenter observentur a vulpium orphanis. Mirabile quod feles nequam post cœnam, densis existentibus tenebris, sine lumine, sine gladio, sine pileo, nudis auribus pedibusque, absque crepidis calopodiisque audeant aggredi ingentem exercitum honestorum murium et glirium. Mirabilius quod hiems nunquam ita caleat sicuti æstas; uti legitur apud Quinquarillam,* sine perspicillo† in libro per omnia albo, in illis verbis pata, pata, pon.§ Mirabilissimum omnes fœminas hoc vitio laborare, ut per unum idemque foramen mingant et cacent, cum (scilicet) latrinæ podicem obverterint.
Nugæ Venales, sive Thesaurus Ridendi et Jocandi. Ad Gravissimos Severissimosque Viros, Patres Melancholicorum Conscriptos. Anno 1689. Prostant Neminem; sed tamen Ubique.
What things in the world are to be marvelled at?
Answer. That all crows are black; that rats run as fast as mice; that dogs gnaw and suck bones; that the peasant dons armour, puts a helmet on his bonce, lays hold of a spear to defend his hens’ chicks, as noted by orphaned fox cubs every day. It is a marvel that rascally cats, emerging in post-prandial pitch darkness, without a light, without a sword, without a cap, their ears and feet bare, dispensing with sandals and clogs, dare to attack the vast army of noble mice and dormice. More marvellous still is that winter is never as hot as summer, as may be read in the Quinquarilla, without eyeglasses, a book completely blank, worded tappity-tappity-tap. Most marvellous of all is that all women labour under the fault that they micturate and defecate through the same orifice, as is obvious from the fact that in both cases they turn their rump to the privy .
* Quinquarilla (fem. sing.) - ‘Five-Basket’, a hapax legomenon, derived from quasillum, the diminutive of qualus ‘wicker basket’, and perhaps with an echo of Quinquatria (neut. pl.), a Roman festival of Minerva thus named, according to Varro, because it began five days after the Ides of March. The anonymous author of the Nugae Venales (first published in 1632), a work steeped in the Latin-speaking student (sub)culture of the German universities, here provides an inventive translation of the phrase ‘the first Shrove Tuedsay basket’, found in Bruscambille’s ‘Autre prologue & discours’ (Fantaisies, 1612): ‘Comme li se lit sans lunettes au premier pannier de Mardy gras en ces mots pata, pata, pon.’ On borrowings from Bruscambille in the Nugae Venales, see: Annette Tomarken, ‘Borrowed Nonsense: The Nugae Venales and the Prologues of Bruscambille’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, Vol. 64 (2015).
† perspicillus - the word for telescope used by Galileo in the Sidereus Nuncius (1610) and which in subsequent early modern texts was also used in the sense of ‘eyeglasses’.
§ pata, pata, pon - onomatopoeic. ‘Mot inventé pour exprimer le bruit d’un tambour’: Philibert-Joseph le Roux, Dictionnaire Comique, Satyrique, Critique, Burlesque, Libre et Proverbial. Avec une Explication très-fidèle de toutes les manières de parler Burlesques, Comiques, Libres, Satyriques, Critiques & Proverbiales, qui peuvent se rencontrer dans les meilleurs Auteurs, tant Anciens que Modernes. Le Tout Pour faciliter aux Etrangers, & aux François mêmes, l’intelligence de toutes sortes de Livres (Lyon, 1735).
