filth
Original: filth on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title caption: "I collect times that authors innocently said something filthy."
Panel 1:
Source banner: TRIAL BY JURY, W.S. GILBERT, 1875
Quoted text: "Be firm, my moral pecker..."
Explanation banner: AT THE TIME, "PECKER" MEANT NOSE, AS IN THE ONCE COMMON PHRASE "KEEP YOUR PECKER UP."
(A bearded man in a suit sits writing with a quill at a desk.)
Panel 2:
Source banner: PIPPA PASSES, ROBERT BROWNING, 1841
Quoted text: "Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats, monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!"
Explanation banner: BROWNING MISTAKENLY THOUGHT "TWAT" REFERRED TO A NUN'S HEADGEAR.
(A bearded man with long hair sits writing at a desk.)
Panel 3:
Source banner: SIR GIBBIE, GEORGE MACDONALD, 1879
Quoted text: "He might have slept longer the next morning, for there was no threshing to wake him, in spite of the cocks in the yard that made it their business to rouse sleepers to their work, had it not been for another kind of cock inside him."
Explanation banner: MACDONALD TALKING ABOUT AN INTERNAL ALARM CLOCK IN THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE.
(A long-haired, bearded man sits writing at a desk.)
Votey:
A close-up of a man's head in profile, looking grumpy, saying: "People these days are lazy! Not enough cocks in them, I say!"
Panel 1:
Source banner: TRIAL BY JURY, W.S. GILBERT, 1875
Quoted text: "Be firm, my moral pecker..."
Explanation banner: AT THE TIME, "PECKER" MEANT NOSE, AS IN THE ONCE COMMON PHRASE "KEEP YOUR PECKER UP."
(A bearded man in a suit sits writing with a quill at a desk.)
Panel 2:
Source banner: PIPPA PASSES, ROBERT BROWNING, 1841
Quoted text: "Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats, monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!"
Explanation banner: BROWNING MISTAKENLY THOUGHT "TWAT" REFERRED TO A NUN'S HEADGEAR.
(A bearded man with long hair sits writing at a desk.)
Panel 3:
Source banner: SIR GIBBIE, GEORGE MACDONALD, 1879
Quoted text: "He might have slept longer the next morning, for there was no threshing to wake him, in spite of the cocks in the yard that made it their business to rouse sleepers to their work, had it not been for another kind of cock inside him."
Explanation banner: MACDONALD TALKING ABOUT AN INTERNAL ALARM CLOCK IN THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE.
(A long-haired, bearded man sits writing at a desk.)
Votey:
A close-up of a man's head in profile, looking grumpy, saying: "People these days are lazy! Not enough cocks in them, I say!"
Alt text
A three-panel SMBC comic titled "I collect times that authors innocently said something filthy," each panel showing a bearded historical author at a writing desk with a quoted line that sounds dirty by modern standards. Panel 1, from W.S. Gilbert's Trial by Jury (1875): "Be firm, my moral pecker..." with a note that "pecker" then meant nose, as in "keep your pecker up." Panel 2, from Robert Browning's Pippa Passes (1841): a verse including "cowls and twats, monks and nuns," with a note that Browning mistakenly thought "twat" meant a nun's headgear. Panel 3, from George MacDonald's Sir Gibbie (1879): a passage about being woken not just by the cocks (roosters) in the yard but "another kind of cock inside him," noted as describing an internal alarm clock in the worst possible way. Votey aftercomic: a close-up profile of a grumpy man declaring, "People these days are lazy! Not enough cocks in them, I say!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.