Bowel Lore

Whether it's glister or clyster it's up the keister, mister.

From the Diary of Samuel Pepys, The Joys of Excess in the Great Food series from Penguin, the entry for February 11, 1663, begins

Took a glister in the morning and rise in the afternoon.

The Penguin Pepys is based on the edition by Robert Latham and William G. Matthews (1970). The text for the Pepys Diary online is from the Henry B. Wheatley 1893 edition available through Project Gutenberg and reads

Took a clyster in the morning and rose in the afternoon.

Search engines will give a rather modern and glittering meaning for "glister" unless one looks up the complete phrase "to take a glister" which leads to an interesting set of references at the English Language and Usage Stack Exchange. Meanwhile (before thinking to look up "to take a glister"), a quick look up offline in the Oxford English Dictionary confirmed that "glister" is the equivalent of "clyster" and means "enema". The consultation of the OED occurred before examining the online Pepys for a gloss or clue which is indeed nicely supplied there and given the reading of clyster for glister led one to look at the editions at play and our dual citation here. Oh, "keester" is an alternative spelling of "keister". And "rise" is indeed emended to "rose" in Wheatley.

And so for day 1355
29.08.2010