François Villon  

I'm Francis -- ill avails it me --
Born near Pontoise, in Paris see:
Whose neck, at the end of a rope of three,
Must feel how heavy my buttocks be.

--"The Quatrain that Villon Made When he was Doomed to Die" by Villon, tr. Payne

"Travelling in France you may often get a glimpse of something that England cannot show you — a chateau with slated roofs and towers pointed each like a witch's cap."--Francois Villon: His Life And Times 1431-1463 (1916) by Henry De Vere Stacpoole

"François Villon was a poet, thief, vagabond and master at combining lyrical texts with veiled obscenities. His love of language is reflected in his extensive knowledge of the jobelin, an argot secret language used by medieval crime societies. He finds himself repeatedly on the wrong end of the prison bars, where he also writes some of his most famous works, including his "Ballad of the Hanged". He is the precursor of the equally criminally inclined writer 20th-century Jean Genet and the first representative of prison literature as a genre."--A History of Erotica (2011) by Jan-Willem Geerinck

"Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?"

"The strangest knave in all Paris," Tristan answered. "One François Villon, scholar, poet, drinker, sworder, drabber, blabber, good at pen, point, and pitcher. In the Court of Miracles they call him the King of the Cockleshells. Judge him for yourself."--If I Were King (1902)