Verbal Abuse

It's Time For a Little Rabelais

The Inscription Set Upon The Great Gate of Theleme

Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
Externally devoted apes, base snites,
Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns,
Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons:
Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts,
Slipshod cafards, beggars pretending wants,
Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls,
Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls,
Fomenters of divisions and debates,
Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits,

Your filthy trumperies
Stuffed with pernicious lies
(Not worth a bubble),
Would do but trouble
Our earthly paradise,
Your filthy trumperies.

Here enter not attorney, baristers,
Nor bridle-champing law practitioners:
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor parisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people's ease:
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot:
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.

Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling
Hence are exiled, and jangling.
Here we are very
Frolic and merry,
And free from all entangling,
Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.

[From Chapter 50, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais, 1928 Modern Library Edition]