strangle-weed and chokefitch is to the flax, the
cats-tail to the brakes, the sheave-grass to the mowers of hay, the fitches
to the chickney-pease, the darnel to barley, the hatchet-fitch to the lentil
pulse, the antramium to the beans, tares to wheat, ivy to walls, the
water-lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the
college of Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the
loadstone, onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain
to vicious nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane
to wolves and libbards, the smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to
goslings, purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees. For we have seen many of
those rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, finish their
lives short and long, after the manner of Phyllis, Queen of Thracia, of
Bonosus, Emperor of Rome, of Amata, King Latinus's wife, of Iphis,
Autolycus, Lycambe, Arachne, Phaedra, Leda, Achius, King of Lydia, and many
thousands more, who were chiefly angry and vexed at this disaster therein,
that, without being otherwise sick or evil-disposed in their bodies, by a
touch only of the Pantagruelion they came on a sudden to have the passage
obstructed, and their pipes, through which were wont to bolt so many jolly
sayings and to enter so many luscious morsels, stopped, more cleverly than
ever could have done the squinancy.

Others have been heard most woefully to lament, at the very instant when
Atropos was about to cut the thread of their life, that Pantagruel held
them by the gorge. But, well-a-day, it was not Pantagruel; he never was an
executioner. It was the Pantagruelion, manufactured and fashioned into an
halter; and serving in the place and office of a cravat. In that, verily,
they solecized and spoke improperly, unless you would excuse them by a
trope, which alloweth us to posit the inventor in the place of the thing
invented, as when Ceres is taken for bread, and Bacchus put instead of
wine. I swear to you here, by the good and frolic words which are to issue
out of that wine-bottle which is a-cooling below in the copper vessel full
of fountain water, that the noble Pantagruel never snatched any man by the
throat, unless it was such a one as was altogether careless and neglective
of those obviating remedies which were preventive of the thirst to come.

It is also termed Pantagruelion by a similitude. For Pantagruel, at the
very first minute of h