Footnotes without a poem

Gargantua and Pantagruel, the insults of the bun makers

"The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously,calling them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangyrascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsyloiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts,cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets,drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns,forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, baseloons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks,blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolishloggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels,gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammerflycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and othersuchlike defamatory epithets; "



Paradise Lost the description of the allegorical figure of Sin


And thrice threefold the Gates; three folds were Brass Three Iron, three of Adamantine Rock, Impenitrable, impal'd with circling fire, Yet unconsum'd. Before the Gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seem'd Woman to the waste, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fould Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm'd With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide CERBEREAN mouths full loud, and rung A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb, And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd then these Vex'd SCYLLA bathing in the Sea that parts CALABRIA from the hoarce TRINACRIAN shore: Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd In secret, riding through the Air she comes Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance With LAPLAND Witches, while the labouring Moon Eclipses at thir charms. The other shape, If shape it might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb, Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.


The Divine Comedy, Inferno the wood of the suicides

To tell us in what way the soul is bound
Within these knots; and tell us, if thou canst
If any from such members e'er is freed."

Then blew the trunk amain, and afterward
The wind was into such a voice converted:
"With brevity shall be replied to you.
When the exasperated soul abandons
The body whence it rent itself away,
Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss
.It falls into the forest, and no part
Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it
,There like a grain of spelt it germinates
.It springs a sapling, and a forest tree;
The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves,
Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet.
Like others for our spoils shall we return;
But not that any one may them revest,
For 'tis not just to have what one casts off.
Here we shall drag them, and along the dismal
Forest our bodies shall suspended be,
Each to the thorn of his molested shade."

Grimms Fairy Tales, the Juniper Tree

The little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife made her say kindly to him, 'My son, will you have an apple?' but she gave him a wicked look. 'Mother,' said the boy, 'how dreadful you look! Yes, give me an apple.' The thought came to her that she would kill him. 'Come with me,' she said, and she lifted up the lid of the chest; 'take one out for yourself.' And as he bent over to do so, the evil spirit urged her, and crash! down went the lid, and off went the little boy's head.Then she was overwhelmed with fear at the thought of what she had done.'If only I can prevent anyone knowing that I did it,' she thought. So she went upstairs to her room, and took a white handkerchief out ofher top drawer; then she set the boy's head again on his shoulders, and bound it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placedhim on a chair by the door with an apple in his hand.Soon after this, little Marleen came up to her mother who was stirring a pot of boiling water over the fire, and said, 'Mother, brother is sitting by the door with an apple in his hand, and he looks so pale;and when I asked him to give me the apple, he did not answer, and that frightened me.''Go to him again,' said her mother, 'and if he does not answer, give him a box on the ear.' So little Marleen went, and said, 'Brother, give me that apple,' but he did not say a word; then she gave him a box on the ear, and his head rolled off. She was so terrified at this, that she ran crying and screaming to her mother. 'Oh!' she said, 'I have knocked off brother's head,' and then she wept and wept, and nothing would stop her.'What have you done!' said her mother, 'but no one must know about it,so you must keep silence; what is done can't be undone; we will make him into puddings.' And she took the little boy and cut him up, made him into puddings, and put him in the pot. But Marleen stood looking on,and wept and wept, and her tears fell into the pot, so that there was no need of salt.