The strange and wonderful manner of Gargantua's birth, and old grumpies

Now it is my fate to have to humour any number of old grumpies, all totally uninhibited about their endless lists of dislikes. Which reminds me of one of my favorite parts (well, there are many) of Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel  in 1936 Jacques Le Clercq translation:

I.VI The strange and wonderful manner of Gargantua's birth

A few moments later she began to groan, lament and cry out. Suddenly crowds of midwives came rushing up from all directions. Feeling and groping her below, they found certain loose shreds of skin, of a rather unsavory odor, which they took to be the child. It was, on the contrary, her fundament which had escaped with the mollification of her right intestine (you call it the bumgut) because she had eaten too much tripe, as I explained above.

Here comes the part the reminds me of the sins of old grumpies, and their loong looong lists of dislikes:

A truly revolting thought, this, but one suggested by the story of the Devil at St. Martin's Mass noting down the chatter of two trollops and with his teeth stretching the parchment he wrote on, in a vain effort to keep up with them.

And now we carry on with the miraculous birth of Gargantua:

As a result of Gargamelle’s discomfort, the cotyledons of the placenta of her matrix were enlarged. The child, leaping through the breech and entering the hollow vein, ascended through her diaphragm to a point above her shoulders. Here the vein divides into two; the child accordingly worked his way in a sinistral direction, to issue, finally, through the left ear.

No sooner born, he did not, like other babes, cry: "'"Whaay! Whaay!” but in a full, loud voice bawled: "'Drink, drink, drink!’’ as though inviting the company to fall to. What is more, he shouted so lustily that he was heard throughout the regions of Beuxe (pronounced "booze”) and Bibarois (which in sound evokes bibbers and is how the Gascons pronounce "Vivarais”) .

Now I suspect that you do not thoroughly believe this strange nativity. If you do not, I care but little, though an honest and sensible man always believes what he is told and what he finds written. Does not Solomon say in Proverbs (XIII, 15): "Innocens credit omni verbo, the innocent believeth every word,” and does not St. Paul (I Corinthians, 13) declare: "Charitas omma credit, Charity believeth all.”

Why should you not believe what I tell you? Because, you reply, there is no evidence. And I reply in turn that for this very reason you should believe with perfect faith. For the gentlemen of the Sorbonne say that faith is the argument of non-evident truths.

Is anything I have related beyond our law or faith, contrary to our reason, or opposed to Divine Scriptures? For my part, I find nothing in the Holy Bible that stands against it. And if such had been the will of God, would you affirm that He could not accomplish it? Ha, I pray you, do not ambiguembrangle your minds with such vain conceits. I tell you that nothing is impossible to God and, if He but pleased, women would henceforth give birth to their children through the left ear.

Was not Bacchus engendered out of the very thigh of Jupiter? Was not Roquetaillade or Cleftrock ushered into the world through his mother’s heel? Did not Croquemouche or Craunchfly first see the light out of his nurse’s slipper? Was not Minerva progenerated out of the brain and through the ear of Jupiter? Was not the bark of a myrrh tree brought to bed of Adonis? And did not an eggshell, laid and hatched by Leda, extravasate Castor and Pollux into being?

You would be infinitely more surprised and stunned were I presently to expose to you the entire chapter in which Pliny deals with fantastic and unnatural births, yet I am not nearly so accomplished a liar as he was. Read his Natural History, Book VII. Chapter III, yourselves, and do not plague me further with the subject.