Fried Tongue

In realgar, in arsenic green and white,
And boiling lead, for fitter fricassee,
Saltpetre, orpiment, quicklime unite
With soot and pitch, and tempered well with ley,
Made of a Jewess' urine let it be;
In water that has lazars' limbs made clean,
Wherein old boots and hosen steeped have been;
In aspics blood, in deadly drugs and tried,
In badgers', wolves' and foxes' gall and spleen,
Let all these sharp and poisonous tongues be fried.

In brain of cat, that water doth affright,
Black and so old that not a tooth hath he;
In foam and slaver from a mad dog's bite,
So old and rotten he can hardly see;
In froth of broken-winded mule, that ye
May cut up small with knives; in water green
With festering slime, wherein there may be seen
Serpents and rats that there have lived and died.
Lizards, toads, frogs and such like beasts obscene,
Let all these sharp and poisonous tongues be fried.

In sublimates, unsafe to touch and sight,
That in a live snake's navel mingled be;
In yellow pus, exuding day and night
From fistula or ulcer on the knee;
And in those vessels, foul to smell and see,
Where nurses children's dirty clouts make clean;
In blood that barbers dry in the sun's sheen;
In tubs where whores themselves have purified
(No apple-squire but knows the thing I mean),
Let all these sharp and poisonous tongues be fried.

Envoi:

Prince, all these dainties look you strain and screen
(If neither sieve nor bag you have) between
Old and foul hosen, with the feet uptied:
But first in excrement of swine unclean
Let all these sharp and poisonous tongues be fried.

(Recipe by Francois Villon; English translation by John Payne, 1878)