[73] The Perfumed Garden. As illustrating our subject, the Cheikh Nefzaoui tells a quaint story of a man who, owing to physical disability, was unable to satisfy the sexual needs of his wife. A wise man gives him a remedy whereby his member grows “long and thick.” The Cheikh continues: “When his wife saw it in that state she was surprised, but it came still better when he made her feel in the matter of enjoyment quite another thing than she had been accustomed to experience; he began in fact to work her with his tool in quite a remarkable manner, to such a point that she rattled and sighed and sobbed during the operation. As soon as the wife found in her husband such eminently good qualities, she gave him her fortune, and placed her person and all she had at his disposal.”
[74] Queen Budur’s remark that “Women pray pardon with their legs on high,” (p. 88 ante), finds an echo in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and The Ecclesiazusæ. In the former play, Athenian women promise Lysistrata that, if forced to intercourse by their husbands, they will not lift their legs in the air; in the latter, we have a woman saying: “How are we going to lift up our arms in the Assembly (i.e., vote), we, who only know how to lift our legs in the act of love?”
Two of the authorities quoted by Havelock Ellis on p. 97 of the foregoing Excursus merit further brief mention. Martin Schurig, author of Parthenologia and numerous other medical works, flourished as a physician in Dresden between 1688 and 1733. Although many of his theories have long since been exploded, his great erudition is much to be admired. His books deal with the most amazing questions; among the many curious passages in Parthenologia will be found the following: “Chastity put to the proof by a hot iron and boiling water”; “Conception without insertion of the penis”; “Andramytes, King of the Lydori, was the inventor of castration of women, and Semiramis of that of men.” Dr. Sinibaldus’ Geneanthropeia, published in 1642, is a very remarkable work on physical love and its aberrations, treating, for example, of “The shape of the Phallus”; “Eunuchism”; “Aphrodisiacs”; “Influence of the Stars on Copulation”; “Effects and manner of Copulation”; “Pleasure of Copulation as enjoyed by man and woman.” Little is known of Sinibaldus’ life beyond that he was a doctor at Rome. His Geneanthropeia, according to Pisanus Fraxi, (Index Librorum Prohibitorum: London, 1877), has been rendered, in a very emasculated form, into English, under the title of Rare Verities. The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked: London, 1658. The volume is rare, but a copy is to be found in the British Museum.
[75] Kruptadia: Heilbronn, Henninger Frères, 1883: vol. 1, Secret Stories from the Russian, No. 12.
[76] Stories of sexual ignorance, amounting in the case of men to veritable imbecility, are numerous in Kruptadia. In Vol. X., Stories of Picardy, we have the tale of a young girl who had been seduced, but had married a half-witted youth, whom she was forced to instruct in the art of love. When they were in bed together, “she showed him how children are made—a business entirely unknown to him. After the explanations had been given in theory, the husband mounted upon his wife, desiring to show that he had learned his lesson well; but the young wife cried out in surprise: ‘’Tis too high! ‘Tis too high!’ An instant later she was forced to say: ‘’Tis too low! ‘Tis too low!’ Several other of his efforts having failed, she told her husband that he did but knock at the side of the door. Whereat the latter, aweary of ‘Too high’ and ‘Too low,’ exclaimed: ‘Since thou knowest the spot so well, put it there thyself!’”
[77] J. S. Farmer: Merry Songs and Ballads: Privately Printed, 1897: Words and Music in Pills to Purge Melancholy, (1707), 1, 214.
[78] Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles: R. B. Douglas’ translation: Paris, Charles Carrington. C.f. note ante.
[79] Obviously a play on words, with reference to the lessons in marital duty given by the mother to the daughter.
[80] Mr. Douglas translates simply: ... “stick or instrument.” The word in the text, bourdon, signifies literally “a pilgrim’s staff.” It is followed by the word joustouer, “to tilt or joust,” or “a tilter, a jouster,” which Mr. Douglas ignores. The combination, however, seems to keep more faithfully to the spirit of the story. On the other hand, bourdon is a recognised erotic term for penis. Farmer, (Slang and its Analogues: vol. 5, p. 290), quotes Rabelais as employing the word in this sense. Landes, (Glossaire érotique de la langue française: Brussels, 1861), includes it in a list which comprises 212 slang terms for the male organ of generation. Le petit Citateur: Notes érotiques et pornographiques: Paris, 1881: only 300 printed, a curious and valuable little work dealing with the lesser known expressions and metaphors of venery, and intended to serve as a complement to the ordinary erotic dictionary, describes bourdon as “the virile member, the grand chord which gives the note in the amorous duet.” The Memoirs of Miss Fanny are quoted: “ ... enraptured, split open by the enormous size of my ravisher’s bourdon, my thighs all bloodstained, I remained for some time overwhelmed by fatigue and pleasure....” The French text referred to in the foregoing note is that of Garnier Frères, Paris, n.d.
[81] This story, the 86th of Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, is singularly lacking in climax when compared with the majority of old fabliaux. The opening is very promising; but once the husband has stated his case, the fabric seems to fall to pieces, and the wife’s final speech is as silly as it is unjustified. The author has tried to round off the story by dragging in the ages-old tag about the woman who, from hating the pleasures of love, becomes a veritable glutton for them. Compared with “Beyond the Mark,” which is artistic and dramatic from the first to the last line, “Foolish Fear” is a poor thing. Nevertheless, we have thought fit to include it in this anthology because its opening is as characteristic as its finish is uncharacteristic of this type of fabliaux.