Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and MoresWedeck, Harry E.
History
Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores
Wedeck, Harry E.
Aphrodisiacs -- History; Erotic literature
Who e’re has money may securely sail,
On all things with all-mighty gold prevail.
May Danae wed, or rival amo’rous Jove,
And make her father pandar to his love.
May be a poet, preacher, lawyer, too:
And bawling win the cause he does not know:
And up to Cato’s fame for wisdom grow.
Wealth without law will gain at bar renown,
How e’re the case appears, the cause is won,
Every rich lawyer is a Littleton.
In short of all you wish you are possest,
All things prevent the wealthy mans’ request,
For Jove himself’s the treasure of his chest.
While my thoughts were thus engag’d, she plac’d a cup of wine under my
hands, and having cleans’d my prophane extended fingers with sacred
leeks and parsley, threw into the wine, with some ejaculations,
hazel-nuts, and as they sunk or swam gave her judgment; but I well knew
the empty rotten ones wou’d swim, and those of entire kernels go to the
bottom.
When applying herself to the goose, from its breast she drew a lusty
liver, and then told me my future fortune. But that no mark of the
murder might be left, she fixt the rent goose to a spit, which, as she
said, she had fatten’d a little before, as sensible it was to die.
In the mean time the wine went briskly round, and now the old women
gladly devour the goose, they so lately lamented; when they had pickt
its bones, Enothea, half drunk, turn’d to me; “and now,” said she, “I’ll
finish the charm that recovers your strength”: When drawing out a
leathern ensign of Priapus, she dipt it in a medley of oyl, small
pepper, and the bruis’d seed of nettles, paulatim coepit inserere ano
meo. Hoc crudelissima anus spurgit subinde umore femina mea. Nasturcii
sucum cum abrotano miscet perfusisque inguinibus meis viridis urticae
fascem comprehendit, omniaque infra umbilicum coepit lenta manu caedere.
Upon which jumping from her, to avoid the sting, I made off. The old
woman in a great rage pursu’d me, and tho’ drunk with wine, and their
more hot desires, took the right way; and follow’d me through two or
three villages, crying stop thief; but with my hands all bloody, in the
hasty flight, I got off.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
National Gallery of Art
THE KISS
_by Rodin_
]
[Illustration:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
BESIDE THE SEA
_by Rodin_
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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