Kabanata Kabanata 141 · How Pantagruel did put himse

Chapter 3.XLIX.

How Pantagruel did put himself in a readiness to go to sea; and of the herb

named Pantagruelion.

Within very few days after that Pantagruel had taken his leave of the good

Gargantua, who devoutly prayed for his son’s happy voyage, he arrived at

the seaport, near to Sammalo, accompanied with Panurge, Epistemon, Friar

John of the Funnels, Abbot of Theleme, and others of the royal house,

especially with Xenomanes the great traveller and thwarter of dangerous

ways, who was come at the bidding and appointment of Panurge, of whose

castlewick of Salmigondin he did hold some petty inheritance by the tenure

of a mesne fee. Pantagruel, being come thither, prepared and made ready

for launching a fleet of ships, to the number of those which Ajax of

Salamine had of old equipped in convoy of the Grecian soldiery against the

Trojan state. He likewise picked out for his use so many mariners, pilots,

sailors, interpreters, artificers, officers, and soldiers, as he thought

fitting, and therewithal made provision of so much victuals of all sorts,

artillery, munition of divers kinds, clothes, moneys, and other such

luggage, stuff, baggage, chaffer, and furniture, as he deemed needful for

carrying on the design of a so tedious, long, and perilous voyage. Amongst

other things, it was observed how he caused some of his vessels to be

fraught and loaded with a great quantity of an herb of his called

Pantagruelion, not only of the green and raw sort of it, but of the

confected also, and of that which was notably well befitted for present use

after the fashion of conserves. The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root

somewhat hard and rough, roundish, terminating in an obtuse and very blunt

point, and having some of its veins, strings, or filaments coloured with

some spots of white, never fixeth itself into the ground above the

profoundness almost of a cubit, or foot and a half. From the root thereof

proceedeth the only stalk, orbicular, cane-like, green without, whitish

within, and hollow like the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and

gentian, full of long threads, straight, easy to be broken, jagged,

snipped, nicked, and notched a little after the manner of pillars and

columns, slightly furrowed, chamfered, guttered, and channelled, and full

of fibres, or hairs like strings, in which consisteth the chief value and

dignity of the herb, especially in that part thereof which is termed mesa,

as he would say the mean, and in that other, which hath got the

denomination of milasea. Its height is commonly of five or six foot. Yet

sometimes it is of such a tall growth as doth surpass the length of a

lance, but that is only when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet, and

well-soaked soil--as is the ground of the territory of Olone, and that of

Rasea, near to Preneste in Sabinia--and that it want not for rain enough

about the season of the fishers’ holidays and the estival solstice. There

are many trees whose height is by it very far exceeded, and you might call

it dendromalache by the authority of Theophrastus. The plant every year

perisheth,--the tree neither in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs being

durable.

From the stalk of this Pantagruelian plant there issue forth several large

and great branches, whose leaves have thrice as much length as breadth,

always green, roughish, and rugged like the orcanet, or Spanish bugloss,

hardish, slit round about like unto a sickle, or as the saxifragum, betony,

and finally ending as it were in the points of a Macedonian spear, or of

such a lancet as surgeons commonly make use of in their phlebotomizing

tiltings. The figure and shape of the leaves thereof is not much different

from that of those of the ash-tree, or of agrimony; the herb itself being

so like the Eupatorian plant that many skilful herbalists have called it

the Domestic Eupator, and the Eupator the Wild Pantagruelion. These leaves

are in equal and parallel distances spread around the stalk by the number

in every rank either of five or seven, nature having so highly favoured and

cherished this plant that she hath richly adorned it with these two odd,

divine, and mysterious numbers. The smell thereof is somewhat strong, and

not very pleasing to nice, tender, and delicate noses. The seed enclosed

therein mounteth up to the very top of its stalk, and a little above it.

This is a numerous herb; for there is no less abundance of it than of any

other whatsoever. Some of these plants are spherical, some rhomboid, and

some of an oblong shape, and all of those either black, bright-coloured, or

tawny, rude to the touch, and mantled with a quickly-blasted-away coat, yet

such a one as is of a delicious taste and savour to all shrill and

sweetly-singing birds, such as linnets, goldfinches, larks, canary birds,

yellow-hammers, and others of that airy chirping choir; but it would quite

extinguish the natural heat and procreative virtue of the semence of any

man who would eat much and often of it. And although that of old amongst

the Greeks there was certain kinds of fritters and pancakes, buns and

tarts, made thereof, which commonly for a liquorish daintiness were

presented on the table after supper to delight the palate and make the wine

relish the better; yet is it of a difficult concoction, and offensive to

the stomach. For it engendereth bad and unwholesome blood, and with its

exorbitant heat woundeth them with grievous, hurtful, smart, and noisome

vapours. And, as in divers plants and trees there are two sexes, male and

female, which is perceptible in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, the

daffodil, mandrake, fern, the agaric, mushroom, birthwort, turpentine,

pennyroyal, peony, rose of the mount, and many other such like, even so in

this herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet it is very

copious of and abundant in seed. There is likewise in it a female, which

hath great store and plenty of whitish flowers, serviceable to little or no

purpose, nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth at all, at least

comparable to that of the male. It hath also a larger leaf, and much

softer than that of the male, nor doth it altogether grow to so great a

height. This Pantagruelion is to be sown at the first coming of the

swallows, and is to be plucked out of the ground when the grasshoppers

begin to be a little hoarse.