en his daddy begot him.
Now when to recruit he'd fain have been snoring,
Joan's back-door was filthily puffing and roaring;
So for spite he bepissed her, and quickly did find
That a very small rain lays a very high wind.

We are also plagued yearly with a very great calamity, cried the mayor; for
a giant called Wide-nostrils, who lives in the island of Tohu, comes hither
every spring to purge, by the advice of his physicians, and swallows us,
like so many pills, a great number of windmills, and of bellows also, at
which his mouth waters exceedingly.

Now this is a sad mortification to us here, who are fain to fast over three
or four whole Lents every year for this, besides certain petty Lents, ember
weeks, and other orison and starving tides. And have you no remedy for
this? asked Pantagruel. By the advice of our Mezarims, replied the mayor,
about the time that he uses to give us a visit, we garrison our windmills
with good store of cocks and hens. The first time that the greedy thief
swallowed them, they had like to have done his business at once; for they
crowed and cackled in his maw, and fluttered up and down athwart and along
in his stomach, which threw the glutton into a lipothymy cardiac passion
and dreadful and dangerous convulsions, as if some serpent, creeping in at
his mouth, had been frisking in his stomach.

Here is a comparative as altogether incongruous and impertinent, cried
Friar John, interrupting them; for I have formerly heard that if a serpent
chance to get into a man's stomach it will not do him the least hurt, but
will immediately get out if you do but hang the patient by the heels and
lay a panful of warm milk near his mouth. You were told this, said
Pantagruel, and so were those who gave you this account; but none ever saw
or read of such a cure. On the contrary, Hippocrates, in his fifth book of
Epidem, writes that such a case happening in his time the patient presently
died of a spasm and convulsion.

Besides the cocks and hens, said the mayor, continuing his story, all the
foxes in the country whipped into Wide-nostril's mouth, posting after the
poultry; which made such a stir with Reynard at their heels, that he
grievously fell into fits each minute of an hour.

At last, by the advice of a Baden enchanter, at the time of the paroxysm he
used to flay a fox by way of antidote and counter-poison. Since that he
took better advice, and eases himself with taking a clyster made wi