[112] Kruptadia: Heilbronn: Henninger Frères, 1883: Secret Stories from the Russian.
[113] Masuccio: The Novellino: Translated into English by W. G. Waters: Lawrence and Bullen: London, 1894: vol. 2, Forty-first Novel.
[114] St. Matthew, 27, 46: “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
[115] Kruptadia: Heilbronn: Henninger Frères, 1883: vol. 1: Secret Stories from the Russian.
[116] Les Faceties de Pogge (Poggio) Florentin: Translated by Pierre des Brandes: Paris: Gamier Frères, n.d. The English rendering is, of course, our own.
[117] “The text has a play upon words,” says the translator, “which could be translated if the French words had the same meaning as the Latin:—Dixit (puella) se non amplius dolere caput. Tum ille: ‘At ego nunc doleo caudam.’ (The girl said that she no longer had a pain in the head. Said the husband: ‘But I have a pain in my tail.’)” This note, we must confess, is a source of some mystification to us, since the relationship between the French and Latin words is both simple and direct. Cauda, of course, is the Latin word for tail: in the erotic sense it designates the penis. (C.f. Blondeau: Dictionnaire érotique latin-française: Liseux: Paris, 1885.) The Italians use the word coda in a similar sense. Tail, in French, is queue; in erotic literature it is also a highly common term for the membrum virile. (C.f. Landes: Glossaire érotique de la langue française, and Farmer: Slang and its Analogues.) Again, in English, tail is a slang synonym either for the penis or the female pudendum. C.f. Farmer: Slang and its Analogues, who gives numerous examples of the use of the word in this sense. We append a few of his quotations:—(1) Chaucer, Cant. Tales, 6047-8: “For al so siker as cold engendreth hayl, A likerous mouth must han a likerous TAYL.” (2) Rochester, Poems: “Then pulling out the rector of the females, Nine times he bath’d him in their piping tails.” (3) Motteux, Rabelais, V., xxi.: “They were pulling and hauling the man like mad, telling him that it is the most grievous ... thing in nature for the TAIL to be on fire....”
[118] Kruptadia: Heilbronn: Henninger Frères, 1883: vol. 1: Secret Stories from the Russian.
[119] The young people are obviously nervous, and are making conversation.
[120] Béroalde de Verville: Le Moyen de Parvenir: Paris, Gamier Frères; also Fantastic Tales or The Way to Attain: translated by Arthur Machen: Carbonnek, 1890. Our extract is a blend of both versions, though we have adhered more closely than Machen to the original text. Vide also Excursus to this story.
[121] An infusion of cinnamon bark, soft almonds, and a little musk and amber, in wine sweetened with sugar. The word is probably derived from Hippocrates, the famous Greek doctor.