Today, on Colin
Davies’s blog Thoughts From Galicia,
I was invited to offer my opinion concerning Jonathan Swift’s cannibalistic
cookbook. To tell the truth, I don’t know why (unless it has something to do
with my exquisite recipe for Deep Fried
French Chef posted on 9 March, below). I am of course a gourmet cook, and
my forthcoming culinary bible Impress
Through Simplicity will unquestionably become the greatest sensation among sauciers since Carême invented his Gâteau de Valençay. But I must confess
that, when it comes to Sins of the Meat, my experience stops with a
Tanzanian Sirloin of Chimpanzee. Back in the 50s, as I arrived on Tumumoa to
visit good old Maggie Mead, cannibalism had just been declared undesirable for
fiscal reasons (see my article The Flying Rabbits of Tumumoa for context). And when I took up residence among my
beloved Blantun Indians in the Mato Grosso jungle some years later, the keen
interest with which some of the tribal elders studied and even pinched my fresh
white meat, prompted me not to enquire too deeply into their culinary traditions
and to sleep with a Colt .45 under my pillow.
My knowledge of the
practice is therefore limited and I must rely on other folk’s insights for
today’s Quotebook. Out of my large collection, I will give you three charming
ones: one about the famous anthropologist Levi-Strauss, one by that weird
fellow George Borrow, and a resounding parting shot from Melville.
In his analysis of myth and culture, Mr Lévi-Strauss might (…)
consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he
suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies)
[Ed Rothstein, International
Herald Tribune, 3 November 2009]
'Los Gitanos son muy malos! - the Gypsies are very bad people,' said the Spaniards of old times.
They are cheats; they are highwaymen; they practise sorcery; and, lest the
catalogue of their offences should be incomplete, a formal charge of
cannibalism was brought against them. Cheats they have always been, and
highwaymen, and if not sorcerers, they have always done their best to merit
that appellation, by arrogating to themselves supernatural powers; but that
they were addicted to cannibalism is a matter not so easily proved.
Their principal accuser
was Don Juan de Quinones, who (…) gives several anecdotes illustrative of their
cannibal propensities. Most of these anecdotes, however, are so highly absurd,
that none but the very credulous could ever have vouchsafed them the slightest
credit. This author is particularly fond of speaking of a certain judge, called
Don Martin Fajardo, who seems to have been an arrant Gypsy-hunter (…) It came
to pass that this personage was, in the year 1629, at Jaraicejo, in
Estremadura, (…) in the capacity of judge. (…) [He] laid his claw upon four
Gitanos, and having nothing, as it appears, to accuse them of, except being
Gitanos, put them to the torture, and made them accuse themselves, which they
did; for, on the first appeal which was made to the rack, they confessed that
they had murdered a female Gypsy in the forest of Las Gamas, and had there
eaten her.
I am myself well
acquainted with this same forest of Las Gamas, which lies between Jaraicejo and
Trujillo; it abounds with chestnut and cork trees, and is a place very well
suited either for the purpose of murder or cannibalism. It will be as well to
observe that I visited it in company with a band of Gitanos, who bivouacked
there, and cooked their supper, which however did not consist of human flesh,
but of a puchera, the ingredients of which were beef, bacon, garbanzos, and
berdolaga, or field-pease and purslain, - therefore I myself can bear testimony
that there is such a forest as Las Gamas, and that it is frequented
occasionally by Gypsies, by which two points are established by far the most
important to the history in question, or so at least it would be thought in
Spain, for being sure of the forest and the Gypsies, few would be incredulous
enough to doubt the facts of the murder and cannibalism. . . .
On being put to the rack a
second time, the Gitanos confessed that they had likewise murdered and eaten a
female pilgrim in the forest aforesaid; and on being tortured yet again, that
they had served in the same manner, and in the same forest, a friar of the
order of San Francisco, whereupon they were released from the rack and
executed. This is one of the anecdotes of Quinones.
And it came to pass,
moreover, that the said Fajardo, being in the town of Montijo, was told by the
alcalde, that a certain inhabitant of that place had some time previous lost a
mare; and wandering about the plains in quest of her, he arrived at a place
called Arroyo el Puerco, where stood a ruined house, on entering which he found
various Gitanos employed in preparing their dinner, which consisted of a
quarter of a human body, which was being roasted before a huge fire: the
result, however, we are not told; whether the Gypsies were angry at being
disturbed in their cookery, or whether the man of the mare departed unobserved.
Quinones, in continuation,
states in his book that he learned that there was a shepherd of the city of
Gaudix, who once lost his way in the wild sierra of Gadol: night came on, and
the wind blew cold: he wandered about until he descried a light in the
distance, towards which he bent his way, supposing it to be a fire kindled by
shepherds: on arriving at the spot, however, he found a whole tribe of Gypsies,
who were roasting the half of a man, the other half being hung on a cork-tree:
the Gypsies welcomed him very heartily, and requested him to be seated at the
fire and to sup with them; but he presently heard them whisper to each other,
'this is a fine fat fellow,' from which he suspected that they were meditating
a design upon his body: whereupon, feeling himself sleepy, he made as if he
were seeking a spot where to lie, and suddenly darted headlong down the
mountain-side, and escaped from their hands without breaking his neck.
These anecdotes scarcely
deserve comment; first we have the statement of Fajardo, the fool or knave who
tortures wretches, and then puts them to death for the crimes with which they
have taxed themselves whilst undergoing the agony of the rack, probably with
the hope of obtaining a moment's respite; last comes the tale of the shepherd,
who is invited by Gypsies on a mountain at night to partake of a supper of
human flesh, and who runs away from them on hearing them talk of the fatness of
his own body, as if cannibal robbers detected in their orgies by a single
interloper would have afforded him a chance of escaping. Such tales cannot be
true.
[George Borrow, The Zincali (1841), part 1, chapter 5]
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
[Melville, Moby Dick chapter 3]
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