VARIANT.
Béroalde de Verville, in Le Moyen de Parvenir, has a similar tale. As it differs in several respects from our Kruptadia version, we give it here. Our extract is from Arthur Machen's text, which is, so far as we know, the only English translation of the old French Canon's much censured work.[1] Donatus, one of the characters in the book, is speaking:...
...That's like the case of my landlady's daughter. ...One day this young wench desired to go to a bride-ale, and asked leave of her mother, who granted it on the condition that she would solemnly, paragraphically, and distinctively promise to keep her maidenhead,[2] to which condition the girl agreed with all her heart.
So she went away to the wedding, and set herself to keep guard o'er her maidenhead. The lasses and lads all danced away, but she not a step, nor did she dare approach the board where the others were engaged in the quintessential operation of making ordure with the teeth. The poor girl stayed all the time in a corner of the room, with her two hands at the bottom of her stomach, just opposite to the diameter (I mean opposite to the
- ↑ Frantasic Tales or The Way to Attain: A Book full of Pantagruelism: Now for the first time done into English by Arthur Machen: Privately Printed: Carbonnek, 1890. We shall return to the subject of De Verville's work in a later page of this volume.
- ↑ the word is ours. Machen translates "honour."
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