[116] _Les Faceties de Pogge_ (Poggio) _Florentin_: Translated by
Pierre des Brandes: Paris: Gamier Frères, n.d. The English rendering
is, of course, our own.
_Of a young wife who was made a fool of by her old husband._
A native of Florence, already old, espoused a young maid, whom the
matrons had instructed to resist the first assault of her husband on
the wedding night, and to yield herself as reluctantly as possible. She
refused, therefore, point-blank, to accede to his desires.
The husband, ‘decks cleared for action and with all sail furled,’ was
astonished by this refusal, and asked why she would not give way to his
wishes. The virgin replied that she had a pain in her head; whereupon
the husband ‘disarmed,’ lay down on his side, and slept till morn.
The young wife, when she perceived that her husband left her alone,
felt remorse in that she had followed the counsels of the gossips; she
aroused her husband, and told him that she no longer had a pain in the
head.
“Ah!” quoth the husband. “I, now, have a pain ... in another
part.”[117] And he left his wife virgin as before.
[117] “The text has a play upon words,” says the translator, “which
could be translated if the French words had the same meaning as the
Latin:--_Dixit (puella) se non amplius dolere caput. Tum ille: ‘At
ego nunc doleo caudam.’_ (The girl said that she no longer had a pain
in the head. Said the husband: ‘But I have a pain in my tail.’)”
This note, we must confess, is a source of some mystification to us,
since the relationship between the French and Latin words is both
simple and direct. _Cauda_, of course, is the Latin word for _tail_:
in the erotic sense it designates the _penis_. (_C.f._ Blondeau:
_Dictionnaire érotique latin-française_: Liseux: Paris, 1885.) The
Italians use the word _coda_ in a similar sense. _Tail_, in French,
is _queue_; in erotic literature it is also a highly common term
for the _membrum virile_. (_C.f._ Landes: _Glossaire érotique de la
langue française_, and Farmer: _Slang and its Analogues_.) Again,
in English, _tail_ is a slang synonym either for the _penis_ or the
female _pudendum_. _C.f._ Farmer: _Slang and its Analogues_, who gives
numerous examples of the use of the word in this sense. We append a
few of his quotations:--(1) Chaucer, _Cant. Tales_, 6047-8: “For al so
siker as cold engendreth hayl, A likerous mouth must han a likerous
TAYL.” (2) Rochester, _Poems_: “Then pulling out the rector of the
females, Nine times he bath’d him in their piping tails.” (3) Motteux,
_Rabelais_, V., xxi.: “They were pulling and hauling the man like mad,
telling him that it is the most grievous ... thing in nature for the
TAIL to be on fire....”
‘Tis a good plan, therefore, to accept what may be profitable and
pleasant when ‘tis offered.
_EXCURSUS_ to _TAKE TIME BY THE FORELOCK_.
Quoting from Mérard de Saint-Just, (_Espiègleries Joyeusetés_),
Poggio’s translator gives a variant in verse of the foregoing story. We
reproduce it in less ambitious English prose:--
“Pierre the Red, wrapped in his bed-clothes, felt himself stimulated by
the burning flame of the god of love, and he invited his wife to come
straightway to his arms. It chanced that she was praying, and she made
reply: ‘Wait a while.’ And whilst her _Paters_ and her _Agnus’_ and her
_Aves_ were accomplished, Pierre’s ardour had had time to grow cold.
She entered the bed, but the chilled husband maintained his pretence.
She drew near him; he did not budge. ‘Beloved, what dost wish? I have
said my prayers.’--’Good,’ quoth Pierre the Red. ‘But I have grown
soft.’”