"onions and garlic"

[Charles Doyle]

Not necessarily germane, but from the 14th century through the 17th, popular tradition regarded garlic and onions as a promising antidote to the stench of feces. The result must have been a horrible mixture of horrible smells!

The saintly Thomas More published an epigram in 1518, which plays upon the topos. Here it is in translation: "So that your chopped leeks [porrum] may not waft their loathsome odors, take my advice and eat an onion [cepa] right after the leeks. Then again if you want to get rid of the foul smell of the onion, the chewing of garlic [alium] will easily accomplish that for you. But if your breath remains offensive even after the garlic, then either it is incurable or nothing but shit [merda] will remove it." (_Latin Poems_, ed. Clarence Miller et al. [Yale UP, 1984], 266-67; my brief discussion of analogs and the tradition appears at 699-701 of that volume).

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:52:23 -0500
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>
>Well!  We now have the Torah and Chaucer as candidates, with (I think!) very different metaphors.  Any votes?
>
>Joel
>
>At 11/19/2007 03:01 PM, William Salmon wrote:

>A few centuries prior to colonial Massachusetts, a fondness for onions and garlic was symbolic of one's being depraved and corrupt. In the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the summoner is described as having a fondness for garlic, onions, and leeks, and this has often been interpreted as further indication of his lecherous or corrupt character.

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