At the risk of lowering the tone...
I've been reading through Palsgrave's voluminous English-French
dictionary-cum-grammar, L'Esclairecissement de la langue francoise
(1530) and was struck by the curious way in which he chooses to
illustrate the verb 'sard':
' Sarde a queene/ Ie fous, nous foutons, ie foutis, iay foutu, ie
fouteray, que ie foute, foutre.ter. They say there was a lorde in
Englande asked a spyrite of the ayre if she was nat well sarded: Lon
dit qung seignieur Dangleterre dema[n]da a vne diablesse aerine si
elle nestoyt pas bien foutue.'
Is this an exemplum or similar anecdote known to anyone? I can't find
anything obvious in Tubach. My 'succuba?' was just a guess and a
conveniently brief way of signalling the subject!
I'd be grateful for members' suggestions...
Malcolm Jones, CECTAL, Sheffield
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