Sunday, April 21, 2013

You can't have eschatology without scatology, eh?

It is not clear whether Robertson Davies had visited the Hunterian Museum when he wrote The Rebel Angels:
Where else but the Hunterian, after all, can you go to look at a bishop's rectum?

This is a rhetorical question -- Riddled has recently upgraded to Rhetor 2.2 and we are determined to get full value for the investment -- so do not feel obliged to provide an answer, even if you can think of one.


Image not so clear here, but more of the background is visible:
Some would call for a revival of this old tradition of "Dissecting clergy" (not to mention "Dissecting generals" and "Dissecting statesmen"), but we could not possibly comment.

4 comments:

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Some would call for a revival of this old tradition of "Dissecting clergy" (not to mention "Dissecting generals" and "Dissecting statesmen"), but we could not possibly comment.

Would "Goatse Guy" not be a more fitting subject for dissection?

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Goatse Guy Fawkes, even.
~

Substance McGravitas said...

That is important science.

Now their mysteries and rites were performed in this manner. It is well known among the learned that the virtuosos of former ages had a contrivance for carrying and preserving winds in casks or barrels, which was of great assistance upon long sea-voyages, and the loss of so useful an art at present is very much to be lamented, though, I know not how, with great negligence omitted by Pancirollus. It was an invention ascribed to AEolus himself, from whom this sect is denominated, and who, in honour of their founder’s memory, have to this day preserved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fix one in each of their temples, first beating out the top. Into this barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed without much pain and griping. And the wind in breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guise the sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting disciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified breath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of the winds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thus represent the soft breezes of their deities appeased.

Smut Clyde said...

Sometimes I wonder if that Dean Swift dude is an entirely reliable source.