[Next to gossiping jokes on subjects kindred to religion are jokes about domestic disputes, the greater blame being generally ascribed to the wife.]
[2] ‘Un po’ di mistuanza.’ ‘Mistuanza’ is a word in use among the poor for a mixture of herbs of which they make a kind of poor salad. [↑]
[3] ‘Un po’ di bove, un po’ di porchi, un po’ di galline.’
‘Un po’ (un poco) a little. The effect of the story depended a good deal on the tones of voice in which it was told. The deprecatory tone of the penitent as he says, ‘un po’ di bove,’ &c., and the horror of the priest as he cries out, ‘Signori della mistuanza!’
This same story in quite another dress was told me one evening in Aldershot Camp; and as it is a very curious instance of the migration of myths, I give the home version.
It would seem that in Aldershot lingo, or in the lingo of a certain regiment once stationed there, to ‘kill a fox’ means to get drunk. Possibly the expression was acquired during the Peninsular war, as ‘tomar una zorrilla’ has an equivalent meaning in Spanish. The story was this. Once during the brief holiday of the chaplain of the regiment, a French priest who knew a little English took his place. At confession the chief fault of which, according to the story, the men accused themselves was that they had ‘killed a fox,’ an expression perfectly well understood by their own pastor. The good French priest, however, instead of being shocked at finding how often men got drunk, was highly edified at the angelic simplicity of these Angles, who showed so much contrition for having indulged in the innocent pastime—in France, not even an offence among sportsmen—of having killed a fox.
At last there came one of a more humorous turn of mind than the rest, and the surnois air with which he pronounced the expression revealed to the good Frenchman that the words meant something more than they said.
‘Vat mean you ven you say, “kill de fox?”’ now inquired the Frenchman of his penitent with fear and trembling. And the blunt soldier had no sooner expounded the slang than the bewildered foreigner threw open the front wicket of the confessional and cried aloud: