Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter - AAAARG.ORG

notes to pages 129–131 221
further references to these two monsters, as well as Taylor 1980; Jones
2002a; and Jones 2002b, pp. 246–247. Several English misericords
show Bigorne swallowing a patient husband; see Christa Grössinger, Picturing
Women in Late Medieval Art (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1997), p. 119, fig. 52, and p. 121.
21. Taylor 1980, p. 104.
22. Mariken van Nieumeghen; Hummelen 1968, 4 03, vv. 118–119; quoted in
Grauls 1957, p. 32: “Ick stae quaet ghenoch om den duven te snoeren, /
Oft om op een cussen te binden al waer hi kintsch.”
23. Grauls 1957, pp. 23–24, quoted from Gheneuglijck Tafel-speelken van een droncken
man / ende zijn wijf / hoe hem ’twijf dwinght de Lantaren te dragen (Hummelen
1968, 3 H 1, 5 A 2): “Al waert een van die seven wijven / Die den duyvel
opt kussen deden blijven.” See Veelderhande 1971, p. 7. A somewhat diªerent
connotation is given this expression in the Evangelien van de Spinrocke,
in which six old women discuss various aspects of marriage; they are characterized
as being so clever and wise in their time that they could “conjure
up the blue devil or bind him to a cushion”; see Die evangelien vanden
spinrocke (Antwerp: Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraeten, ca. 1520; reprinted
with an endnote by G. J. Boekenoogen, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoª,
1910), p. 2; quoted in Grauls 1957, p. 23.
24. See A. Hind, Early Italian Engraving (London: B. Quaritch for M. Knoedler,
New York, 1938–48), 1:64–65, cat. no. A.II.6, who suggests that it was
copied after a lost work by the Master of the Banderoles. The three inscriptions
are as follows: over the Devil on the gallows, “O mala chonpagnia”
the woman with the whip calls out, “Aspetta upqho un poco” (or
“Aspetta un poco”), and her quarry replies, “Oime, oime” (“Ohime,
ohime” in modern Italian).
25. For women binding the Devil to a cushion, see Elaine C. Block, “Iconography
of Choir Stalls in Barcelona,” The Profane Arts of the Middle Ages / Les
arts profanes du moyen-âge 6 (1997): 240–257, esp. 248 and fig. 11; idem,
“Liturgical and Anti-Liturgical Iconography on Medieval Choir Stalls,”
in Objects, Images, and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane,
Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers VI (Princeton: Index of
Christian Art in Association with Princeton University Press, 2003),
pp. 161–179, esp. 175 and fig. 16; and Herman A. van Duinen, De Koorbanken
van de Grote- of Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk te Dordrecht (Leiden: Primavera
Pers, 1997), p. 123, fig. 212.