Batarum

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Batarum arabice eminentia quedam carnea in vulva quarundam mulierum: que aliquando intantum magnificatur ut sit velut virga virorum, landicam musio vocat.


Apparatus:

Batarum B e | Bacarum ACD

ut sit velut ACD | ut sit velud B | ut velud e

landicam musio vocat ACD e | latini musio vocant B


Translation:

Batarum is the Arabic word for a somewhat fleshy projecting part in the genitals of certain women, which sometimes grows so big that it is like the penis of a man. Mustio calls it landica.


Commentary:

Simon is alluding to Mustio's liber secundus, p. 106, chapter XXV: De inmoderata landica, quam Greci yos nymfin appellant "On the over-sized clitoris, which the Greeks call 'sow’s clitoris'", an "affliction" for which ultimately clitoridectomy is suggested.

The Arabic sound ﻈ /ẓāʔ/ is naturally difficult to transcribe for Simon. He writes 'dh' or 'd' in some words, and there is a case where he uses 'th', i.e. the plural of ﻇﻔﺮ /ẓufur/ is ﺍﻇﻔﺎﺭ /ʔaẓfār/ "nail, fingernail; toenail; claw, talon", cf. his entry "Athfar".

For Arabic ﺑﻇﺭ /baẓr/ "clitoris (anat.)" (Wehr) the expected transcription would be badhar, badar or bathar and since he would not have distinguished between 'th' and 't' in his speech, "batar" is well within Simon's transcriptional variation range.

The addition of an ending –um remains unexplained.

It is also puzzling that Simon uses the Arabic word to introduce Mustio's passage instead of giving landica its own entry. It might well be the case that Simon as a man of the church shied away from giving a taboo word any prominence, a word possibly considered to be the most obscene in the Latin language and therefore chose to hide it behind the Arabic entry. Apart from Mustio's work, the word occurs only in the Priapeia and in the occasional graffiti. Observe also that in B, the early Zarotus print, the word is misunderstood as "latini", perhaps deliberately, since that statement makes little sense. Its etymology is unknown.

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