Ventre-saint-Gris!
The usual oath of Henri IV. About equal to “Corpus Christi.” A similar juron is “Par le ventre de Dieu” (Ventre-dieu! or Ventrebleu!). Cris for Christ is familiarised by our common phrase “the criss-cross or cris-cross row”; and if saint refers to Christ we have a similar phrase in St. Saviour’s. Rabelais has “Par sainet Gris”; and William Price, “the Arch-Druid,” who died in 1893, describes himself in the Medical Directory as “Decipherer of the Pedigree of Jessu Grist.” Chaucer writes the word “Crist.”
⁂ Mr. F. Adams has sent me two quotations from the Romance of Huon de Bordeau, from a MS. dated 1250—
(Line 1,473.)
(Line 2,218.)
But a correspondent of Notes and Queries sends this quotation—
“Ce prince [Henri IV.] avoit pris lʹhabitude dʹemployer cette expression. ‘Ventre-saint-Gris,ʹ comme une espece de jurement, lorsquʹil etoit encore infant, ses gouverneurs craignant quʹil ne sʹhabituâl à jurer … lui avoient permis de dire ‘Ventre-saint-Gris,ʹ qui étoit un terme derision quʹils appliquoent aux Franciscans … de la couleur de leur habillements.”—Feb. 10th, 1894, p. 113.
