Fuckin Abbot
Fuckin Abbot Fuckin Abbot
32 NOTES AND QUERIES March 1993 further light: the text on fo. 62" runs from III.iv.17 ('tarn que id honestum ...') of De Officiis to III.iv.19 ('... Uicit ergo vtilitas'), and consists of a discussion of the alleged conflict between expediency (utilitas) and morality (honestas); on fo. 71 v the marginalium is against the sentence in III.xiii.56 'Hec est ilia, que uidentur \sic] vtilium fieri cum honestis sepe dissencio'; and on fo. 78 V the marginalium is against the words in III.xxii.86 '[fabri]cij ei que pollicitus est, si premium sibi proposuisset, se, vt clam venisset, sic clam in pirrhi castra rediturum', part of the story of Fabricius and the deserter in which Fabricius refused to employ a deserter to assassinate his enemy Pyrrhus, preferring victory and glory by valour and the sword to victory by crime and a shameful deed: a decision on grounds of both morality and expediency. Whilst it is no doubt profitable for an abbot to reflect on these issues, other parts of De Officiis would have provided a more appropriate context for the marginalia: e.g. l.xxviii.lOlff. (on the need to subordinate sensual appetites to reason) or II.x.37 (on how sensual pleasure turns away the hearts of most people from virtue). On the assumption that the charge of sexual immorality against Burton (and perhaps more widely the abbey of Osney) and the nuns of Godstow was factually without foundation, it is probably to be explained by reference to a commonplace of literary satire against monks and nuns. 12 The implication of the marginal reference to 'Osney alias Godstow' is that relations between the two houses were as licentious as in the Middle English The Land of Cokaygne those between the 'wel fair abbei / Of white monkes and of grei' (lines 51-2) and the nearby 'gret fair nunnerie' (line 148). u The author of the marginalium made the charge either believing it to be true, or, knowing it to be false, using the conventionality of a satiric topos to lend credibility. 12 For references to the literary treatment of lechery in monks and nuns see J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge, 1973), 25 (and 222 n. 32), and 129-31 (and 270 n. II); see also E. Power, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge. 1922), Note J. 'The Theme of the Nun in Love in Medieval Popular Literature'. 622-6 (and cf. also 499-562). '•' Text in J. A. W. Bennett and G. V. Smithers (eds). Early Middle English Verse and rrose, 2nd cdn (Oxford. 1968). I 36-44. The satiric background is also relevant to a linguistic consideration of the use of fuckin at the foot of the right-hand column of fo. 62*. Up to 1598, the date of 0ED 2 's earliest English instance in Florio's dictionary (see above), all the recorded examples of the verb and its derivatives are in contexts which are in some sense satiric or at least comic. These early examples are listed by OED 2 and, a fuller number, in DOST (which provides dates and bibliographical references but no quotations). Without the text and without notes on context, genre, speaker, etc., the significance of the examples cannot be assessed, and so I give below a full inventory of the recorded instances before 1598: Verb: 1. '3it be his feiris [behaviour] he wald haif fukkit': J. Kinsley (ed.), The Poems of William Dunbar (Oxford, 1979), no. 13 ['In Secreit Place'], 40, line 13. There is no warrant for OED 2 's date of ante 1503, and the poem can only be dated as before Dunbar's death in c. 1513. The subject of the vb. is described (line 10) as 'townysche ['"towny", bourgeois, uncourtly' according to Kinsley; elsewhere the word is opposed to uplandish or rustic; for Lydgate's association of the word with gawping simplicity see OED 1 s.v. townish, a. 1], peirt ['forward, saucy'] and gukkit ['foolish, silly']', and is sexually inexperienced (lines 16-17). In an excellent discussion of the poem, P. Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford, 1992), is unwilling to class it as a satire, finding its attitude to the exuberant bawdy 'amused rather than contemptuous' (302). 2. 'Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour': D. Hamer(ed.), The Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount 1490-1555: i, Scottish Text Society [STS] 3rd series 1 (1931), 'The Answer Quhilk Schir Dauid Lindesay Maid to the Kingis Flyting', 103, line 49; composed 71536. 3. 'Bischopis ar blist, howbeit that we be wareit [cursed] / For thay may fuck thair fill and nocht be mareit': D. Hamer (ed.), The Works of Sir David Lindsay ...: ii, STS 3rd ser. 2 (1931), 'Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis', 146, lines 1362-3. First performed 1540, the quotation is from the version of 1552, preserved in the Bannatyne MS of 1568. Spoken by a 'Sowttare' or cobbler. Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Bodleian Library on January 19, 2013
March 1993 NOTES AND QUERIES 33 Participial Adjective 1. 'Evin as Meffan [Paul Methven, minister of the Reformed Church at Jedburgh, who was deposed towards the end of 1562 for adultery with his servant-girl: see STS 28 (1892-3), 142- 3, and DNB s.v. Methuen, Paul], his scuill maistre, J?ai se, schew him \>e way, / Quha nef/ wy' ojj'manis wyffe nor maid, bot wy 1 his awin las lay: /Than lat ws sing, O fukand flok! 3o r deid is not lyk 30' say': J. Cranstoun (ed.), Satirical Poems of the Time of the Reformation: i, STS 20 (1889-90), no. xxix, 'A Lewd Ballet', 202, lines 28-30. The MS is dated December 1571, and this poem was probably composed after 4 October 1570 (see STS 28,143, line 34 n.). It is an attack on religious topsy-turvydom and sexual hypocrisy. Verbal Noun 1. '3our courtly fukking garis me fling': W. Tod Ritchie (ed.), The Bannatyne Manuscript: Hi, STS 2nd ser. 23 (1928), no. ccvi [no title: inc. in somer quhen flo'is will smell'], 27, line 48. MS dated 1568. Unusually, the speaker is female, addressing a male seducer; the tone is not so much satirical as humorously tolerant of undoubted absurdity (cf. Dunbar's in Secreit Place' above). 2. 'Thir foure [sc. gucking ('fooling'), Brasing ('embracing'), graping ('groping'), and plucking ('grabbing')], the suth to sane, / Enforsis thame [women] to fucking': J. Cranstoun (ed.), The Poems of Alexander Scott, STS 36 (1896), no. iv, 'Ane Ballat maid to the Derisioun and Scorne of wantoun Wemen', 21, lines 54-5. MS dated 1568; Scott lived c. 1525-c. 1583. 3."... for quha wald not lauche q" his hart grew soir, / To see forett \>t holy frere his fukking so deploire?': from 'A Lewd Ballet': see above s.v. Participial Adjective, 202, lines 24-5. In all the examples cited the meaning is literal ('copulate, copulating'); all instances occur in verse; and all are in satiric or comic contexts. It is clear that in satire and comedy a lower register was regarded as appropriate to the genre - shocking, but less so than in other contexts; indeed, in exposing the reality of illicit sexual acts conducted beneath the faus semblant of holiness and respectability the verb's taboo bluntness had a particular power and justification: the time for 'glosing', moral and linguistic, is over. In one instance only (Verbal Noun, no. 1) is the speaker female, and this is in accord with the view found from the Middle Ages onwards that women do (or should) avoid taboo vocabulary; 14 and in the one case (Verbal Noun, no. 2) where the word is applied to the sexual activity of women it is to women whose morals are gross: the word is linguistically and rhetorically decorous and congruent with the subject matter. In three cases (Verb, no. 3; the Participial Adjective; and Verbal Noun, no. 3) the word is used in relation to the sexual hypocrisy of ecclesiastics. It is also to be observed that all seven instances before 1598 recorded by OED 1 and DOST are Scottish. This cannot be explained by the satiric context since the English, from at least The Owl and the Nightingale onwards, also had a tradition of invective and flyting; 15 1 know of no evidence that use of the word in the sixteenth century, any more than now, was geographically conditioned (the Brasenose MS is a piece of evidence against this), and the reason for this comparative wealth of Scottish examples remains obscure. The Brasenose College MS's marginalium in 1528 is not only the earliest English example, but it is earlier than all but Dunbar [ante c. 1513) of the Scottish ones. It is also the first recorded instance in prose in either language. Its use in an anti-clerical context can be paralleled in three of the seven Scottish quotations cited. One cannot be certain of the meaning in the marginalium, literal or merely intensive, but the clear innuendo of 'alias Godstow' indicates a probability that it is literal: 'O damned copulating Abbot'. The author of the marginalia was self-evidently literate, and possession (not necessarily ownership) of a manuscript consisting entirely of items in Latin might suggest, though without certainty, that the possessor could read Latin; 14 On this topic see G.Hughes, op. cit., n. 3, 209-12; J.Coates, Women, Men and Language (London and New York, 1986), 19-22 (includes historical evidence), 108-9, 131; E. Burness, Female Language in |Dunbar's| The Trelis of the Tua Mariii Wemen and the Wedo', in D. Strauss and H. W. Drescher (eds), Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, and New York, 1986), 359-68; J. Mann, Apologies to Women (Cambridge, etc., 1991), 3ff. For the comparative Old French material see also Muscatine, op. cit., n. 3, Index s.v. Language, obscene: use by women'. " See P. Bawcutt. Dunbar the Makar (Oxford. 1992), 236-8. Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Bodleian Library on January 19, 2013
- Page 1 and 2: March 1993 NOTES AND QUERIES 29 A t
- Page 3: March 1993 NOTES AND QUERIES 31 he
32 NOTES AND QUERIES March 1993<br />
further light: the text on fo. 62" runs from<br />
III.iv.17 ('tarn que id honestum ...') of De<br />
Officiis to III.iv.19 ('... Uicit ergo vtilitas'), and<br />
consists of a discussion of the alleged conflict<br />
between expediency (utilitas) and morality<br />
(honestas); on fo. 71 v the marginalium is against<br />
the sentence in III.xiii.56 'Hec est ilia, que<br />
uidentur \sic] vtilium fieri cum honestis sepe<br />
dissencio'; and on fo. 78 V the marginalium is<br />
against the words in III.xxii.86 '[fabri]cij ei que<br />
pollicitus est, si premium sibi proposuisset, se,<br />
vt clam venisset, sic clam in pirrhi castra rediturum',<br />
part of the story of Fabricius and the<br />
deserter in which Fabricius refused to employ a<br />
deserter to assassinate his enemy Pyrrhus,<br />
preferring victory and glory by valour and the<br />
sword to victory by crime and a shameful deed: a<br />
decision on grounds of both morality and<br />
expediency. Whilst it is no doubt profitable for<br />
an abbot to reflect on these issues, other parts of<br />
De Officiis would have provided a more appropriate<br />
context for the marginalia: e.g.<br />
l.xxviii.lOlff. (on the need to subordinate<br />
sensual appetites to reason) or II.x.37 (on how<br />
sensual pleasure turns away the hearts of most<br />
people from virtue).<br />
On the assumption that the charge of sexual<br />
immorality against Burton (and perhaps more<br />
widely the abbey of Osney) and the nuns of<br />
Godstow was factually without foundation, it is<br />
probably to be explained by reference to a<br />
commonplace of literary satire against monks<br />
and nuns. 12 The implication of the marginal<br />
reference to 'Osney alias Godstow' is that<br />
relations between the two houses were as<br />
licentious as in the Middle English The Land of<br />
Cokaygne those between the 'wel fair abbei / Of<br />
white monkes and of grei' (lines 51-2) and the<br />
nearby 'gret fair nunnerie' (line 148). u The<br />
author of the marginalium made the charge<br />
either believing it to be true, or, knowing it to be<br />
false, using the conventionality of a satiric topos<br />
to lend credibility.<br />
12 For references to the literary treatment of lechery in<br />
monks and nuns see J. Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates<br />
Satire (Cambridge, 1973), 25 (and 222 n. 32), and 129-31<br />
(and 270 n. II); see also E. Power, Medieval English<br />
Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge. 1922), Note J. 'The<br />
Theme of the Nun in Love in Medieval Popular Literature'.<br />
622-6 (and cf. also 499-562).<br />
'•' Text in J. A. W. Bennett and G. V. Smithers (eds). Early<br />
Middle English Verse and rrose, 2nd cdn (Oxford. 1968).<br />
I 36-44.<br />
The satiric background is also relevant to a<br />
linguistic consideration of the use of fuckin at<br />
the foot of the right-hand column of fo. 62*. Up<br />
to 1598, the date of 0ED 2 's earliest English<br />
instance in Florio's dictionary (see above), all<br />
the recorded examples of the verb and its<br />
derivatives are in contexts which are in some<br />
sense satiric or at least comic. These early<br />
examples are listed by OED 2 and, a fuller<br />
number, in DOST (which provides dates and<br />
bibliographical references but no quotations).<br />
Without the text and without notes on context,<br />
genre, speaker, etc., the significance of the<br />
examples cannot be assessed, and so I give<br />
below a full inventory of the recorded instances<br />
before 1598:<br />
Verb:<br />
1. '3it be his feiris [behaviour] he wald haif<br />
fukkit': J. Kinsley (ed.), The Poems of William<br />
Dunbar (Oxford, 1979), no. 13 ['In Secreit<br />
Place'], 40, line 13. There is no warrant for<br />
OED 2 's date of ante 1503, and the poem can<br />
only be dated as before Dunbar's death in c.<br />
1513. The subject of the vb. is described (line<br />
10) as 'townysche ['"towny", bourgeois,<br />
uncourtly' according to Kinsley; elsewhere the<br />
word is opposed to uplandish or rustic; for<br />
Lydgate's association of the word with gawping<br />
simplicity see OED 1 s.v. townish, a. 1], peirt<br />
['forward, saucy'] and gukkit ['foolish, silly']',<br />
and is sexually inexperienced (lines 16-17). In<br />
an excellent discussion of the poem, P. Bawcutt,<br />
Dunbar the Makar (Oxford, 1992), is unwilling<br />
to class it as a satire, finding its attitude to the<br />
exuberant bawdy 'amused rather than contemptuous'<br />
(302).<br />
2. 'Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour':<br />
D. Hamer(ed.), The Works of Sir David Lindsay<br />
of the Mount 1490-1555: i, Scottish Text Society<br />
[STS] 3rd series 1 (1931), 'The Answer Quhilk<br />
Schir Dauid Lindesay Maid to the Kingis<br />
Flyting', 103, line 49; composed 71536.<br />
3. 'Bischopis ar blist, howbeit that we be wareit<br />
[cursed] / For thay may fuck thair fill and nocht<br />
be mareit': D. Hamer (ed.), The Works of Sir<br />
David Lindsay ...: ii, STS 3rd ser. 2 (1931),<br />
'Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis', 146, lines<br />
1362-3. First performed 1540, the quotation is<br />
from the version of 1552, preserved in the<br />
Bannatyne MS of 1568. Spoken by a 'Sowttare'<br />
or cobbler.<br />
Downloaded from<br />
http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/<br />
at Bodleian Library on January 19, 2013
Change language