Waiting on the pizzle, the dizzle and the shizzle
G's to the bizzack, now ladies here we gizzo.
Snoop Dogg - "Drop It Like It's Hot"
So, there I was, tidying up my latest creation, when my man spire comes up to me to offer a suggestion for what I could do with a leftover penis:
"I seem to remember that a bull's cock can be tanned and used as a cosh."
Now, this is not the sort of trivia that a girl can just sit on. Quit your giggling back there. Where was I...? Ah, yes. I don't know about you, but this snippet of information gave me mental images of the scene from 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels', where "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale beats Smithy to death with a 15" black rubber cock.
God, I love that film.
Anyway.
Such is my curiosity about the world and the things in it that I had to find out more about this new concept in hand-to-hand combat weaponry. Let me tell you all.
Pizzle
A 'pizzle' is street slang for 'pistol', but back in the ago, as Webster 1913 tells us, it was a noun used for the penis of an animal. Whilst its traditional use is mostly archaic now outside of the abattoir industry, it was often used in particular to mean a bull's penis. According to my Collin's English Dictionary, the word is of sixteenth century Germanic origin; a middle road between the Low German pēsel, Flemish pēzel, and the Middle Dutch pēze.
Now, back in the day, and the day wasn't so long ago, resources were limited. Actually, they still are limited, but most people seem to want to live in blissful ignorance of this fact. I digress. When they killed an animal that they'd gone to the trouble of feeding and looking after, they wanted to get the maximum return out of their investment. There is no part of an animal that can't be used for something. Most of it is used for food, but the hide can be tanned and used for leather (which has a variety of uses), bones and tendons can be boiled for glue, and fat can be rendered down for candles or soap.
And anything that we humans couldn't think of a way of eating or utilising, we could feed to the dogs, who were not only pets, but also had to work for their food as hunting dogs, guard dogs, sheep dogs, und so weiter.
Now, all those bulls that we still slaughter everyday; what do you think we do with the penises? That's right. We feed them to dogs. Those chews that you pick up from the pet store that you don't really know what they are, but your dog loves them, and if you don't remember to take them off him and throw them away the next day they start to smell? Yeah, that's a bull's penis.
Uses for a bull pizzle
It's not just dogs that get good use out of a bull's pizzle; humans do too. Pizzles were, and are, still used for... well, not a variety of things, as such, but a couple of things. Of its modern uses, the first, more public use is that of a walking cane, and if having just read that snippet of information you've decided that you must own one now, you'll be pleased to know that they are available to buy over the web at the address that I have provided as a reference below. Apparently they are "a legendary cane that represents power and stamina." Indeed.
The other modern use for a pizzle is for those who enjoy BDSM; you see, a pizzle is highly flexible and thus makes very a good flogging implement. Everything you could possibly want to know about its use as a punishment device is contained on the Agony & Ecstasy reference below, and there is little point in my cutting and pasting the information contained within. Suffice it to say that we've been using bull penises to beat the living shit out of each other for a while now. Its first recorded use was in the Code of Hammurabi from around 1700 BC (line 202, for those interested), and has been used by a range of civilisations as an instrument of torture since; worryingly, it was used in schools as a punishment device in Italy until the middle of the twentieth century.
Now, I know what you're thinking; a highly flexible flogging implement doesn't sound like it'd make a good walking stick. I probably need to explain this a little further.
Pizzling a pizzle
While a bull's penis is being cured, it is also stretched by hanging a weight off it. It can be stretched out almost indefinitely - such that a single penis could be made into a serviceable and fair-on deadly whip of some 4-5ft in length. However, it's rarely stretched out to that sort of length; for flogging and walking stick purposes, 2-3ft will do nicely. It can then be trimmed and ornamented appropriately; some are twisted during the curing process to give a distinctive look to the piece. Now, the difference between a pizzle used for walking and a pizzle used for whipping is the insertion of a metal rod to give the walking stick strength. In þe olden days, the pizzle would be equipped with a wooden dowel, allowing it to be used as the weapon of which spiregrain spoke.
So, you know a little bit more about bull penises than you did a few minutes ago. Now go tell all your friends.
References
