Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/263

ICETIIYOPHAGIA; OE, FISH-EATING. 259 this reason, that they think, as it really is, that the city is defiled by salt-fish mongers; the land, the waters, rivers, air, and fire are infected, and all the other elements, if there be any more, men’s bodies corrupted and filled with putrid humours by the eating of fish; from whence proceed fevers, consumptions, gouts, falling-sicknesses, leprosies, and what not of diseases. Fi. But, prithee, tell me, Hippocrates, how it comes to pass that in well-governed cities it is forbid to kill oxen and hogs within the walls of the city? for it would tend more to the healthfulness of the city if they were restrained from killing sheep in it too. Why is there a certain place appointed for butchers apart from others, but lest if they had liberty to rove about and settle anywhere, they should infect the whole city? Is there any kind of stink so pestilential as that of the corrupted blood and gore of beasts? Bu. They are mere perfumes compared to stinking fish.

Fi. You, perhaps, may think them perfumes, but it is a sign the magistrates thought otherwise that expelled you the city. Besides that, how fragrant your slaughter-houses smell is very plainly seen, by people stopping their noses when they pass by them, and that they had rather have ten bawds for their neighbous than one butcher. Bu. Whole ponds and rivers are little enough for you to wash your stinking salt fish in; for, as the old saying is, You do but attempt to wash the blackamore white; for a fish will always smell like a fish though you perfume it. Nor is it to be wondered at that they smell so strong when they are dead, when many stink alive, and as soon as they are taken. Flesh, pickled up, is so far from stinking that it may be preserved many years, and smell as sweet as a violet at last; nay, being but salted up with common salt will never stink; and being hung up a drying in smoke, or wind, will have no ill scent. But do what you will to a fish it will smell like a fish still. It is evident there is no stink to be compared to that of fish; that fish corrupts even salt itself, which was given for the very end of preserving things from putrefaction, by shutting, binding up, and also forcing out that which should produce anything nauseous, and drying up the humours within from whence putrefaction might come: fish is the only thing on which salt loses its efficacy.

It may be some nice beau or other may stop his nose as he passes by a butcher’s shop, but nobody can bear to be in the boat where your salt fish is. If a traveller chance to meet a cart laden with salt fish on the road, how does he run away, stop his nose, hawk and spit, and curse the stinking cargo? And if it were possible that salt fish could be carried sweet into the city, as we do our beef when killed and dressed, the law would be laid aside. But besides, what can you say as to them that stink while they are eaten? and besides, how often do we see your condemned ware thrown into the rivers by the clerks of the markets, and a fine put upoft you for selling it? And we should see that oftener, but that they, corrupted by you, do not so much regard the city’s good as their own profit. Nor is this the only thing that you are notorious for; but besides that, there is a wicked combination among you to hinder fresh from coming to town.

Fi. Pray, did nobody ever know a butcher fined for killing measled pork, or selling mutton drowned in a ditch, or maggoty shoulders of mutton daubed over with fresh blood, to make them look