The Games of Gargantua.

Via Ways To Play (“a site about games, traditional and modern, that are played around the world”), The Games of Gargantua (1534—):

One of the most famous historical lists of games is that found in Chaper 22 of François Rabelais’ Gargantua, first published in 1534. In the original French the list contained 216 games, but in each translation the games that are named were changed and often expanded upon. Many of the games are either invented by Rabelais, or are games for which we no longer know the rules.

An in-depth examination of the games in the list lies below the table.

The first five columns give the lists from five different French editions; the remaining columns are from translations into English.

The lists of Nicolaas Jarichides Wieringa (Dutch, 1682) and Johann Fischarts (German, 1590) are given beneath the table as they diverge significantly.

Some of them are fairly invariant (au fleux is always a variation on flush), others are a motley mix (au moucōtēt is at the surlie, poor Jack, take miss, or the malcontent; a la blanche is at the lottery, blank draw, blanks, raffles, or whites).

Furthermore, the main page has a link to game names by language, which is also fun.

Comments

  1. I was so excited when I saw this post because I thought “finally I can post a link to my own list of games”! But it turns out I made a list of 108 games, inspired directly by Gargantua, and then never actually posted it to my blog (presumably because I was trying to think of more games), and it still sits in my drafts to this day.

    There’s also the list of games that Buddha would not play.

  2. Well, get cracking! Post it to your blog and then link it here!

  3. J.W. Brewer says

    Boy, that Buddha’s a total buzzkill isn’t he? (Subject to arguments about historicity of the list etc.)

  4. The Hoyle I have a copy of, by Morehead, Frey, and Mott-Smith (1964), says that “le cent” and “la ronfle” on this list are names for piquet (also on the list).

    Did people still say “pick-a-back” for “piggyback” and “battledore and shuttlecock” for “badminton” in 1975 and later, or are those deliberate archaisms?

    @J. W.: It’s as well Buddha didn’t know about cards, or computers.

  5. The Buddha has some strange names for his games. Sure we’ve all played the game “Dipping the hand with the fingers stretched out in lac, or red dye, or flour-water, and striking the wet hand on the ground or on a wall, calling out “What shall it be?” and showing the form required—elephants, horses, etc..”, but I’ve never heard it called that before.

    Rabelais though, I start to wonder if he even knows what a game is.

    The link hat posted is wonderful. I particularly like the last translator, who occasionally seems to go rogue (“shitty yew-twigs”, “be diddled” for “gulls”–but who knows, maybe these are actually the correct translations, I can’t make any sense out of the French).

  6. Well, I posted my list of games.

  7. “shitty yew-twigs”

    This seems to be based on Cotgrave’s explanation of boutefoire here (column 2) in his dictionary of 1611.

    The article the blogger links to (Psichari, Michel (1908). ‘Les Jeux de Gargantua’, Revue des Études rabelaisiennes vol. 6: pages 1–37, 124–81, 317–61) has this:

    A LA BOUTTE FOYRE. Suivant Le Duchat (t. I, p. 82), foyre, ici, vient de foras, et ce jeu est une espèce de boute hors (voir plus loin). Urquhart semble donner raison à cette étymologie en traduisant par « At put out ». Cotgrave, au contraire, définit ainsi le mot Boutefoire: « A certain shitten yen game. » On sait que shitten, pour parler la langue de Rabelais, veut dire foireux. Cette explication paraît plus vraisemblable que celle de Le Duchat. Il est sans doute question ici d’un jeu, analogue à la barbe d’oribus, où les enfants se barbouillent fort peu proprement.

    Maybe someone can ferret out a further explanation with this.

  8. “be diddled” for “gulls”

    Psichari (ibid.) on beliné:

    AU BELINE. « Jeu ainsi nommé, dit Marty-Laveaux (Glossaire de Rabelais), soit parce qu’on y traitait les gens en béliers qu’on tire par les cornes, soit parce qu’on les trompait, qu’on les attrapait. » La première hypothèse est celle de Le Duchat (t. I, p. 79) : « Je crois que c’est une espèce de Boutehors, où l’on traite les gens en béliers, qu’on tire par les cornes pour les faire sortir de la bergerie. » Le mot revient au livre II, ch. vII (Catalogue de la librairie de Saint-Victor) : « Le beliné en court ». Et Le Duchat, qui ne se souvient plus de son précédent commentaire, change d’avis et écrit en note à ce passage (t. I, p. 224): « Beliner quelqu’un, c’est en faire une espèce de Bélier, un Cocu ; et lorsque le jeune Gargantua jouoit au Beliné, je suis fort trompé si par ce Jeu Rabelais n’entend quelque espèce de Hère. »

    On lit dans la traduction anglaise d’Urquhart : « At he’s gulled (pipé, dupé) and esto. » Ce serait donc, selon lui, une sorte de jeu d’attrape. Et l’on pourrait citer, à l’appui de cette opinion, deux passages de Rabelais où le mot beliné est pris dans le sens de gulled : « Avoir resolu… qui par leurs astuces sera beliné, corbiné, trompé et affiné » (1. IV, prol.), et : « Ilz ne vouldront estre par les Romanistes belinez » (Pant. progn., ch. vi). Il paraît plus naturel d’interpréter de cette façon le Beliné dont il s’agit ici que d’y voir un jeu dans lequel on traiterait les gens en béliers; cette dernière hypothèse est en même temps très vague et amenée de très loin. Il n’est d’ailleurs pas impossible que ce beliné, ce trompé soit le même, comme le veut Le Duchat, que le malheureux, le maucontent et le cocu dont il a déjà été question précédemment; mais rien ne le prouve.

  9. « A certain shitten yen game. »

    I presume “yen” should be “yew”; should I change it?

  10. David Eddyshaw says

    The “Ways to Play” site unaccountably lacks Oware:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oware

  11. Do the Kusaasi play it, and if so, what do they call it?

  12. I presume “yen” should be “yew”; should I change it?

    Not an OCR error. Here is the text of Psachari’s study. Just a printer’s error, probably, triggered by the previous shitten? As you can see from the link I gave, Cotgrave has yew. I should have just written, “(Yen looks like a printer’s error for yew.)” at the end of my comment. Or inserted [sic]. I leave it up to you to change my comment as you see fit—and delete this comment too. (I would hate for this LH conversation to become about a mere printer’s error.)

  13. I vote leave the comments as is — the reasoning about why you think it’s a printer’s error is exactly the nitty-gritty of scholarship that we’re here for.

  14. January First-of-May says

    I tried to look up the game list in the Lyubimov translation (into Russian); it looks like it mostly vaguely follows the original, with the occasional omission. (Pages 78-80 in this PDF.)

    AFAICT the 1901 Engelhardt translation just named two games (трилистник “trefoil” and ландскнехт “landsknecht”) and then gave up, and the 1929 Piast translation didn’t bother with the game list at all.

  15. I used to play mancala with my kids sometimes (and before that with my youngest brother). I made a specific decision not to think about the strategy of the game except when I was actually playing. That way I would never get any good at it, and any children playing against me could win without me having to throw.

  16. David Eddyshaw says

    Do the Kusaasi play it, and if so, what do they call it?

    Yes; it’s called wari in Kusaal (loaned from Twi.) You “shoot” wari (tɔn “shoot”, as in shooting arrows.*) A bit reminiscent of 碁を打つ in Japanese …

    Traditional handcarved sets are often very beautiful. I have a couple.

    The game is much harder than it looks. Beginners always lose very badly.

    * Cognate with tanp “bow”, with a root reconstructable right back to proto-Volta-Congo.

  17. David Eddyshaw says

    (Cf Swahili uta “bow.”)

  18. Nat Shockley says

    The website author is not quite right when he says “The first set of entries in the list are either card games or terms used in card games — sometimes both.” As far as I am aware, they were all the names of card games, even if some of those names were also terms used during play. Flux/Flusso and Prime/Primero/Primiera were two of the most popular card games of the era.

    And as Jerry Friedman says above, Cent was indeed the card game that later became known as Picquet. The “picquet” on Rabelais’ list, however, was a different game entirely and was not a card game at all, which is why it is nowhere near the card game section (I can’t remember exactly what it was, and I can’t quickly locate the text where I read about it, but it presumably involved an actual piquet, i.e. a wooden peg of some sort).

  19. David Eddyshaw: “Yes; it’s called wari in Kusaal (loaned from Twi.) You “shoot” wari (tɔn “shoot”, as in shooting arrows.*)
    A bit reminiscent of 碁を打つ in Japanese …
    Traditional handcarved sets are often very beautiful. I have a couple.”

    I remember you mentioning that here https://languagehat.com/belote/#comment-3951464

  20. Brett: Remember: Hugo Nominations Open Through March 14, nominate. If you want to? but I think why not. I’m certainly going anywhere near the US, but I have a WSFS membership. And the Busines meetings were something.

  21. @Will — when you said your list had 108 games, i wondered if it was a Buddhism reference…and then you followed it up with an actual Buddhism reference 😛

    (Also hello, fellow user of tumblr long after everyone else has declared that website dead)

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