Villon's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves is an essay by Jack Rusher, published here Wednesday, January 23, 2008. It is part of Appreciation.
Villon was a villain.
A Brief Biography of the Poet
François Villon (1431 – 1463) was a French poet, raconteur and criminal. It has become a cliché for poets to lead a wild life of drunken womanizing, but Villon went beyond the call — he was also a gambler, thief and murderer.
A depiction of François Villon.
Little is known of Villon’s early life. He is thought to have been born in Paris to poor parents, and to have started his education at the age of twelve. He is known to have received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the arts, but the first well-documented event of his adult life is a knife fight — seemingly over a woman named Isabeau — outside a tavern in June of 1455 that ended when Villon grabbed a cobblestone in his off hand and used it to smash his opponent’s head. The man later died from his wounds, whereas Villon — after being patched up by a barber-surgeon — skipped town.
Villon was sentenced to banishment from Paris, then pardoned in 1456 by King Charles VII. When he returned to Paris, he was — as a convicted murderer — no longer eligible for his old job as a teacher at the Collège de Navarre, nor for most other forms of polite employment. His answer to this predicament was to begin singing for money at inns and taverns.
1. About whom we hear a great deal in his poetry.
Predictably, it didn’t take long before he saw more trouble. At the end of 1456, he got into another fight — this time over a woman called Catherine de Vaucelles1 — in which he was beaten so badly that he left town to avoid ridicule, staying with an uncle at Angers.
During the Christmas holiday of the same year, the chapel at the Collège de Navarre was burgled of five hundred gold crowns. The loss wasn’t noticed until early spring, but after that it only took the police a couple of months to find the gang of students who had committed the crime because one of them, Guy Tabarie, couldn’t get his mouth shut or his purse closed. Tabarie turned King’s evidence, and fingered Villon as the ringleader, going so far as to testify that Villon had gone to Angers primarily to arrange similar burglaries there. The court once more passed a sentence of banishment.
Over the next four years, Villon wandered from town to town. It’s not clear what he was doing during this period, but two of his close friends — Regnier de Montigny and Colin des Cayeux — were members of a wandering gang of thieves and highwaymen, and some speculate that he was in the same line of work. It is known that he managed to parlay his charm and poetic disposition into temporary lodging with a number of noblemen during this period, including two princes of the blood.
Villon spent the summer of 1461 in the bishop's prison at Meung-sur-Loire. His crime is not known, but is thought to have been church-robbing. He was released when a general clemency was announced at the accession of King Louis XI on October 2, 1461.
In the November of 1462, Villon was imprisoned for theft in the fortress that stood at what is now the Place du Châtelet in Paris. There was limited evidence with which to convict him, but the court revived the old burglary case, and even a royal pardon did not protect him from a demand for restitution. Villon made bail, but got into another brawl while waiting for his next court appearance. He was arrested, tortured and condemned to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to banishment by the parlement on January 5, 1463.
2. In fact, it was in Douglas Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau de Marot that I first read this poem.
No one knows what happened to Villon after that. He left Paris and disappeared from recorded history. His poetry would likely be lost to us if not for the efforts of Clément Marot2, who compiled and edited Villon’s work in the following century.
The Poem Itself
Shortly before his last imprisonment, Villon wrote his Grand Testament, which was a collection of ballads. My favorite is De bonne doctrine a ceux de mauvaise vie, loosely A Good Doctrine for a Bad Life, written in the slang-ridden underworld cant of 15th century France. The original is nearly unreadable, even for those fluent in modern French, because of Villon’s use of period jargon. A quick English gloss of the poem — created with the help of period French dictionaries — runs something like:
3. I love his brilliant comparison between a man burning himself while melting metal to mint fake coins and a man being boiled in oil as punishment for same.
4. A jab at Guy Tabarie?
Whether you smuggle papal bulls,
Or hazard a cheat while playing dice,
Or burn yourself shaping fake coins,
Like those who’re boiled in oil for their felonies.3,
Perjurious traitors;4, empty of faith;
Stealing jewels, perfume and pearls,
Where do your winnings go?
All to the taverns and the girls.Rhyme, rail, crash or fight,
Like a fool or a shameless tout,
Bullshit and battle, or play the flute.
Do, in towns and cities,
Play farces, games and masquerades,
Win at cards or ninepins.
It all goes — and listen —
All to the taverns and the girls.5. The original is written in a way as to suggest “You don’t like the smell of this life? Try the smell of farm animals and manure.”
From this stink you recoil?
Then work hard in fields and meadows,
Turn your thoughts to horses and mules.5.
If you lack an education,
You’ll still have enough coin.
But whether you plough or till your fields,
Your labor and your work:
All to the taverns and the girls.THE MESSAGE
Shoes, embroidered doublets,
Dresses, and all your drapes:
Before you do worse, just carry them
All to the taverns and the girls.
6. He is remembered today as a poet, and as the long time editor of the National Observer, a literary paper based in London that was an early publisher of the works of Rudyard Kipling and W. B. Yeats.
7. The NYPL version of which I have consulted in deciphering and annotating this work.
To get the real flavor of the piece, though, requires a translation that preserves the original character. The most successful attempt I’ve seen is William Ernest Henley’s 1887 version, titled Villon's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves. Mr Henley6 had collaborated with J.S. Farmer on the Dictionary of Slang and It's Analogues7, which gave him the vocabulary to produce this delightful version:
8. Forgery.
9. A seller of low-priced, shoddy, or second goods; a hawker.
10. Stack the deck at cards.
11. Apply a fig of ginger to a horse’s arsehole, causing it to lift its tail and thus appear more healthy.
12. The shell game.
13. Steal a watch.
14. Pass a false coin.
15. Pass a false bill.
16. Sell fake goods.
17. Work undercover for the police.
18. Back a winner at the track.
19. Collect your payoff.
20. Spend.
21. Bloody.
22. “All to the taverns and the girls.”
Suppose you screeve8? or go cheap-jack9?
Or fake the broads10? or fig a nag11?
Or thimble-rig12? or knap a yack13?
Or pitch a snide14? or smash a rag15?
Suppose you duff16? or nose and lag17?
Or get the straight18, and land your pot19?
How do you melt20 the multy21 swag?
Booze and the blowens cop the lot22.23. Swindle.
24. Still means the same thing.
25. Welsh a debt.
26. Pimp.
27. To pawn something for more than it’s worth.
28. Same sense as “in drag” today.
29. Case a house.
30. Break and enter, with violence; home invasion.
31. Travel with a show or carnival.
32. Highway robbery.
33. Beg and talk.
34. Roll the dice.
35. At billiards.
36. Stag = shilling.
Fiddle23, or fence24, or mace25, or mack26;
Or moskeneer27, or flash the drag28;
Dead-lurk a crib29, or do a crack30;
Pad with a slang31, or chuck a fag32;
Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag33;
Rattle the tats34, or mark the spot35;
You can not bank a single stag36;
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.37. Show your ass.
38. Noise.
39. Make a fool of yourself.
40. Nothing
41. Money you make.
42. Any game, any trade.
43. =Sovereigns, coins of the realm, via rhyming slang.
Suppose you try a different tack,
And on the square you flash your flag37?
At penny-a-lining make your whack38,
Or with the mummers mug39 and gag?
For nix40, for nix the dibbs you bag41!
At any graft42, no matter what,
Your merry goblins43 soon stravag44:
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.THE MORAL
45. Gone and lost.
46. Handkerchiefs.
47. Watches.
48. The collar of the stocks.
49. Neck.
It's up the spout and Charley Wag45
With wipes46 and tickers47 and what not.
Until the squeezer48 nips your scrag49,
Booze and the blowens cop the lot.
It is my fond wish that Tom Waits record a Brechtian interpretation of this poem in the musical style of Kurt Weill.