Montagne du géant, f. (obsolete), gallows, “scrag, nobbing cheat, or government signpost.”
Montant, m. and adj. (thieves’), breeches, “trucks, hams, sit-upons, or kicks.” (Military) Grand —— tropical, riding breeches; petit ——, drawers. (Familiar) Montant, term which is used to denote anything which excites lust.
Montante, f. (thieves’), ladder. Literally a thing to climb up.
[Monte-à-regret] (thieves’), abbaye de ——, the guillotine. Formerly the gallows. This name was given the scaffold because criminals were attended there by one or more priests, and on account of the natural repugnance of a man for this mode of being put out of his misery. Michel records the fact, that at Sens, one of the streets leading to the market-place, where executions took place, still bore, a few years ago, the name of Monte-à-regret. Chanoine de ——, one sentenced to death. Termed also “grognon,” or grumbler. Monter à l’abbaye de ——, to be guillotined, meant formerly to be hanged, to suffer the extreme penalty of the law on “wry-neck day,” when the criminal before being compelled to put on the “hempen cravat,” would perhaps utter for the edification of the crowd his “tops, or croaks,” that is, his last dying speech. It is curious to note how people of all nations have always striven to disguise the idea of death by the rope by means of some picturesque or grimly comical circumlocution. The popular language is rich in metaphors to describe the act. In the thirteenth century people would express hanging by the term “mettre à la bise;” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an executed criminal was spoken of as “vendangeant à l’eschelle, avoir collet rouge, croître d’un demi-pied, faire la longue lettre, tomber du haut mal,” and later on: “Servir de bouchon, faire le saut, faire un saut sur rien, donner un soufflet à une potence, donner le moine par le cou, approcher du ciel à reculons, danser un branle en l’air, avoir la chanterelle au cou, faire le guet à Montfaucon, faire le guet au clair de la lune à la cour des monnoyes.” Also, “monter à la jambe en l’air.” Then a hanged man was “un évêque des champs” (on account of executions taking place in the open country) “qui bénit des pieds,” and hanging itself, “une danse où il n’y a pas de plancher,” which corresponds to the expression, “to dance upon nothing.” The poor wretch was also said to be “branché,” a summary proceeding performed on the nearest tree, and he was made to “tirer la langue d’un demi-pied.” The poet François Villon being in the prison of the Châtelet in 1457, under sentence of death for a robbery supposed to have been committed at Rueil by himself and some companions, several of whom were hanged, but whose fate he luckily did not share, thus alludes with grim humour to his probable execution:—
Je suis François, dont ce me poise,
Né de Paris emprès Ponthoise,
Or, d’une corde d’une toise,
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.
When Jonathan Wild the Great is about to expiate his numerous crimes, and his career is soon to be terminated at Tyburn, Fielding makes him say: “D—n me, it is only a dance without music; ... a man can die but once.... Zounds! Who’s afraid?” Master Charley Bates, in common with his “pals,” called hanging “scragging”:—
“He’ll come to be scragged, won’t he?” “I don’t know what that means,” replied Oliver. “Something in this way, old feller,” said Charley. As he said it, Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and holding it erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound through his teeth; thereby intimating, by a lively pantomimic representation, that “scragging” and hanging were one and the same thing.—Dickens, Oliver Twist.