[Sca-cooks] A poem about salad

[Ariane H]

So, earlier this week I was leafing through one of my poetry books, and 
I found this gem of an ode by Pierre de Ronsard, one of the brightest 
stars of the French Renaissance (I think it was written in the 1560's).  
It's called "La Salade" and is really lovely, and I thought that it 
might be of some interest to this list.  The general gist of it is that 
Ronsard is speaking to his young friend and apprentice poet, while 
they're going out into the fields to collect young greens to make a 
salad, and as they're making the salad he's telling the boy about a 
poet's lifestyle and responsibilities.  But he also lists the 
ingredients and process of putting their salad together.  It's about 150 
lines, much too long to reproduce in full, but I'd like to share a few 
of the choicer excerpts (with my own admittedly rather free translation 
- I had to relie on footnotes and the dictionary for some of the plants' 
names):

"Lave ta main, qu'elle soit belle et nette/ Resveille toy--apporte une 
serviette;/Une salade amasson, et faison/Part a nos ans des fruicts de 
la saison."
"Wash your hands, so they're nice and clean,/Wake up--bring a 
napkin;/We'll gather a salad, and make/The season's bounty a part of our 
years (?)." (ll.1-4)

"Tu t'en iras, Jamyn, d'une autre part,/Chercher songneux la boursette, 
toffue,/La pasquerette a la feuille menue,/Le pimprenelle heureuse pour 
le sang/Et pour la ratte, et pour le mal de flanc;/Je cueilleray, 
compagne de la mousse,/La responsette a la racine douce,/Et le bouton 
des nouveaux groiseliers/Qui le Printemps annoncent les premiers."
"You'll go, Jamyn, in another direction,/To look carefully for the 
shepherd's purse, toffue (??),/The slim-leafed daisy,/The pimpernel 
healthful for the blood/And for the spleen, and for side-aches;/I will 
gather, among the moss,/The campanula (bluebell) with the sweet 
roots,/And the buds of the young currant bushes/Which Spring first 
announces." (ll. 12-20)

"La, recoursant jusqu'au coude nos bras,/Nous laverons nos herbes a main 
pleine/Au cours sacre de ma belle fontaine;/La blanchirons de sel en 
mainte part,/L'arrouserons de vinaigre rosart,/L'engresserons de l'huile 
de Provence:/L'huile qui vient aux oliviers de France/Rompt l'estomac, 
et ne vaut de tout rien."
"There, our arms plunged in up to our elbows,/We'll wash our herbs with 
our own hands/In the courtyard of my sacred fountain;/We'll whiten it 
with a scant amount of salt,/We'll sprinkle is with rosy vinegar,/We'll 
enrich it with oil from Provence:/The oil that comes from French 
olive-trees/Tears apart the stomach, and is worth nothing at all."  (ll. 
24-31)

That's pretty much all there is about the salad itself, but I found it 
interesting.  I love the little bit of humoral theory in the verse on 
the properties of the pimpernel, as well as the olive oil critique. :)  
And the list of ingredients is pretty intriguing - it's got me wondering 
what it all means.  For example, buds of the currant bush - does anyone 
know if the flower buds are actually edible, or is this just a poetic 
way of describing the fruit?  And the line about slim-leafed daisies 
immediately made me think of dandelion greens, but that might have just 
been a random association on my part.  Anyway, I hope others have found 
this poem interesting and entertaining too...


Vittoria