Section: ORGUEIL. View all emblems in this section.
Link to an image of this page [F6v p92]
Cacquet.
Apostrophe.
Pourquoy romps tu mon repos Hirondelle
Par ton babil?[1] digne d’estre hupe telle
Que fut Tereus, Quand par glaive trencher
Voulut ta langue: & non pas l’arracher.[2]
Comme Progné ayant par Tereus son vio-
lateur la langue couppée, fut
muée en une
Hirondelle jaseresse. Ainsi ceulx qui savent &
peuvent moins bien parler, sont les plus ba-
billars, fachans les aultres de leur cacquet.
1. ‘disturb my...slumbers with your chattering’. See Aelian, De natura animalium, 9.17: ‘the swallow, an uninvited guest, saddening the dawn with her chattering and interrupting the sweetest part of our slumbers.’
2. Procne and Philomela were daughters of Pandion, king of Athens. Tereus, king of Daulis (town in Phocis) married Procne and had a son (Itys) by her. He raped her sister Philomela and cut out her tongue to prevent her telling of his misdeeds. She managed however to send a message to her sister Procne (through weaving it into a tapestry), who took her revenge by cooking Itys and serving him up as a meal to his father. When Tereus pursued them with a sword, Philomela was turned into a swallow, Procne into a nightingale and Tereus into a hoopoe. In Latin writers the names are often reversed, with Procne becoming a swallow (as here), Philomela a nightingale. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.424ff, especially 555-7.
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Iconclass Keywords
Relating to the image:
- song-birds: swallow (+ feeding and care of young) [25F32(SWALLOW)(+42)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- song-birds: swallow (+ nest, den, burrow) [25F32(SWALLOW)(+421)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- song-birds: swallow (+ animal with prey) [25F32(SWALLOW)(+452)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- song-birds: swallow (+ postures, positions of animal(s)) [25F32(SWALLOW)(+53)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- insects: cicada (+ dying animal; death of animal; dead animal) [25F711(CICADA)(+63)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- groups of plants (herbs) [25G13] Search | Browse Iconclass
- mountains [25H11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- clouds [26A] Search | Browse Iconclass
- ruin of a building ~ architecture [48C149] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Philomela, Procne and Tereus changed into nightingale, swallow, hoopoe (or hawk): Tereus seeks to kill Philomela and Procne for having slain his son; in their flight the two sisters are changed into a nightingale and a swallow; Tereus is changed into a ho [97DD23(+0)] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- Prolixity, Verbosity, Loquacity; 'Loquacità ' (Ripa) (+ emblematical representation of concept) [52D4(+4)] Search | Browse Iconclass
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