To the Gipseys, beggars and thieves are undoubtedly indebted for their Cant language. The Gipseys landed in this country early in the reign of Henry the Eighth. They were at first treated as conjurors and magicians,—indeed they were hailed by the populace with as much applause as a company of English theatricals usually receive on arriving in a distant colony. They came here with all their old Eastern arts of palmistry, fortune-telling, doubling money by incantation and burial,—shreds of pagan idolatry; and they brought with them, also, the dishonesty of the lower caste of Asiatics, and the vagabondism they had acquired since leaving their ancient dwelling places in the East, many centuries before. They possessed, also, a language quite distinct from anything that had been heard in England, and they claimed the title of Egyptians, and as such, when their thievish wandering propensities became a public nuisance, were cautioned and proscribed in a royal proclamation by Henry VIII.[8] The Gipseys were not long in the country before they found native imitators. Vagabondism is peculiarly catching. The idle, the vagrant, and the criminal outcasts of society, caught an idea from the so called Egyptians—soon corrupted to Gipseys. They learned from them how to tramp, sleep under hedges and trees, to tell fortunes, and find stolen property for a consideration—frequently, as the saying runs, before it was lost. They also learned the value and application of a secret tongue, indeed all the accompaniments of maunding and imposture, except thieving and begging, which were well known in this country long before the Gipseys paid it a visit,—perhaps the only negative good that can be said in their favour.
Harman, in the year 1566, wrote a singular, not to say droll book, entitled, A Caveat for commen Cvrsetors, vulgarley called Vagabones, newly augmented and inlarged, wherein the history and various descriptions of rogues and vagabonds are given, together with their canting tongue. This book, the earliest of the kind, gives the singular fact that within a dozen years after the landing of the Gipseys, companies of English vagrants were formed, places of meeting appointed, districts for plunder and begging operations marked out, and rules agreed to for their common management. In some cases Gipseys joined the English gangs, in others English vagrants joined the Gipseys. The fellowship was found convenient and profitable, as both parties were aliens to the laws and customs of the country, living in a great measure in the open air, apart from the lawful public, and often meeting each other on the same bye-path, or in the same retired valley;—but seldom intermarrying, and entirely adopting each other’s habits. The common people, too, soon began to consider them as of one family,—all rogues, and from Egypt. The secret language spoken by the Gipseys, principally Hindoo and extremely barbarous to English ears, was found incomprehensible and very difficult to learn. The Gipseys, also, found the same difficulty with the English language. A rude, rough, and most singular compromise was made, and a mixture of Gipsey, Old English, newly-coined words, and cribbings from any foreign, and therefore secret language, mixed and jumbled together, formed what has ever since been known as the CANTING LANGUAGE, or PEDLER’S FRENCH; or, during the past century, ST. GILES’ GREEK.
Such was the origin of CANT; and in illustration of its blending with the Gipsey or Cingari tongue, dusky and Oriental from the sunny plains of Central Asia, I am enabled to give the accompanying list of Gipsey, and often Hindoo words, with, in many instances, their English adoptions.
| Gipsey. | English. |
|---|---|
| BAMBOOZLE, to perplex or mislead by hiding. Mod Gip. | BAMBOOZLE, to delude, cheat, or make a fool of any one. |
| BOSH, rubbish, nonsense, offal. Gipsey and Persian. | BOSH, stupidity, foolishness. |
| CHEESE, thing or article, “that’s the CHEESE,” or thing. Gipsey and Hindoo. | CHEESE, or CHEESY, a first-rate or very good article. |
| CHIVE, the tongue. Gipsey. | CHIVE, or CHIVEY, a shout, or loud-tongued. |
| DADE, or Dadi, a father. Gipsey. | DADDY, nursery term for father.[9] |
| DISTARABIN, a prison. Gipsey. | STURABIN, a prison. |
| GAD, or Gadsi, a wife. Gipsey. | GAD, a female scold; a woman who tramps over the country with a beggar or hawker. |
| GIBBERISH, the language of Gipseys, synonymous with Slang. Gipsey. | GIBBERISH, rapid and unmeaning speech. |
| ISCHUR, Schur, or Chur, a thief. Gipsey and Hindoo. | CUR, a mean or dishonest man. |
| LAB, a word. Gipsey. | LOBS, words. |
| LOWE, or Lowr, money. Gipsey and Wallachian. | LOWRE, money. Ancient Cant. |
| MAMI, a grandmother. Gipsey. | MAMMY, or Mamma, a mother, formerly sometimes used for grandmother. |
| MANG, or Maung, to beg. Gipsey and Hindoo. | MAUND, to beg. |
| MORT, a free woman,—one for common use amongst the male Gipseys, so appointed by Gipsey custom. Gipsey. | MORT, or Mott, a prostitute. |
| MU, the mouth. Gipsey and Hindoo. | MOO, or Mun, the mouth. |
| MULL, to spoil or destroy. Gipsey. | MULL, to spoil, or bungle. |
| PAL, a brother. Gipsey. | PAL, a partner, or relation. |
| PANÉ, water. Gipsey. Hindoo, PAWNEE. | PARNEY, rain. |
| RIG, a performance. Gipsey. | RIG, a frolic, or “spree.” |
| ROMANY, speech or language. Spanish Gipsey. | ROMANY, the Gipsey language. |
| ROME, or Romm, a man. Gipsey and Coptick. | RUM, a good man, or thing. In the Robbers’ language of Spain (partly Gipsey) RUM signifies a harlot. |
| ROMEE, a woman. Gipsey. | RUMY, a good woman or girl. |
| SLANG, the language spoken by Gipseys. Gipsey. | SLANG, low, vulgar, unauthorised language. |
| TAWNO, little. Gipsey. | TANNY, Teeny, little. |
| TSCHIB, or Jibb, the tongue. Gipsey and Hindoo. | JIBB, the tongue; Jabber,[10] quick-tongued, or fast talk. |
Here then we have the remarkable fact of several words of pure Gipsey and Asiatic origin going the round of Europe, passing into this country before the Reformation, and coming down to us through numerous generations purely in the mouths of the people. They have seldom been written or used in books, and simply as vulgarisms have they reached our time. Only a few are now cant, and some are household words. The word JOCKEY, as applied to a dealer or rider of horses, came from the Gipsey, and means in that language a whip. Our standard dictionaries give, of course, none but conjectural etymologies. Another word, BAMBOOZLE, has been a sore difficulty with lexicographers. It is not in the old dictionaries, although extensively used in familiar or popular language for the last two centuries; in fact, the very word that Swift, Butler, L’Estrange, and Arbuthnot would pick out at once as a telling and most serviceable term. It is, as we have seen, from the Gipsey; and here I must state that it was Boucher who first drew attention to the fact, although in his remarks on the dusky tongue, he has made a ridiculous mistake by concluding it to be identical with its offspring, CANT. Other parallel instances, with but slight variations from the old Gipsey meanings, could be mentioned, but sufficient examples have been adduced to show that Marsden, the great Oriental scholar in the last century, when he declared before the Society of Antiquaries that the Cant of English thieves and beggars had nothing to do with the language spoken by the despised Gipseys, was in error. Had the Gipsey tongue been analysed and committed to writing three centuries ago, there is every probability that many scores of words now in common use could be at once traced to its source. Instances continually occur now-a-days of street vulgarisms ascending to the drawing-rooms of respectable society. Why, then, may not the Gipsey-vagabond alliance three centuries ago have contributed its quota of common words to popular speech?
I feel confident there is a Gipsey element in the English language hitherto unrecognised; slender it may be, but not, therefore, unimportant.
“Indeed,” says Moore the poet, in a humorous little book, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, 1819, “the Gipsey language, with the exception of such terms as relate to their own peculiar customs, differs but little from the regular Flash or Cant language.” But this was magnifying the importance of the alliance. Moore knew nothing of the Gipsey tongue other than the few Cant words put into the mouths of the beggars, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Comedy of the Beggar’s Bush, and Ben Jonson’s Masque of the Gipseys Metamorphosed,—hence his confounding Cant with Gipsey speech, and appealing to the Glossary of Cant for so called “Gipsey” words at the end of the Life of Bamfylde Moore Carew, to bear him out in his assertion. Still his remark bears much truth, and proof would have been found long ago if any scholar had taken the trouble to examine the “barbarous jargon of Cant,” and to have compared it with Gipsey speech. As George Borrow, in his Account of the Gipseys in Spain, eloquently concludes his second volume, speaking of the connection of the Gipseys with Europeans:—“Yet from this temporary association were produced two results: European fraud became sharpened by coming into contact with Asiatic craft; whilst European tongues, by imperceptible degrees, became recruited with various words (some of them wonderfully expressive), many of which have long been stumbling-blocks to the philologist, who, whilst stigmatising them as words of mere vulgar invention, or of unknown origin, has been far from dreaming that a little more research or reflection would have proved their affinity to the Sclavonic, Persian, or Romaic, or perhaps to the mysterious object of his veneration, the Sanscrit, the sacred tongue of the palm-covered regions of Ind; words originally introduced into Europe by objects too miserable to occupy for a moment his lettered attention,—the despised denizens of the tents of Roma.”
But the Gipseys, their speech, their character—bad enough as all the world testifies—their history and their religious belief, have been totally disregarded, and their poor persons buffeted and jostled about until it is a wonder that any trace of origin or national speech exists in them. On the continent they received better attention at the hands of learned men. Their language was taken down, their history traced, and their extraordinary customs and practice of living in the open air, and eating raw or putrid meat, explained. They ate reptiles and told fortunes, because they had learnt it through their forefathers centuries back in Hindostan, and they devoured carrion because the Hindoo proverb—“that which God kills is better than that killed by man,”[11]—was still in their remembrance. Grellman, a learned German, was their principal historian, and to him we are almost entirely indebted for the little we know of their language.[12]
Gipsey then started, and partially merged into CANT, and the old story told by Harrison and others, that the first inventor of canting was hanged for his pains, would seem to be a fable, for jargon as it is, it was, doubtless, of gradual formation, like all other languages or systems of speech. The Gipseys at the present day all know the old cant words, as well as their own tongue,—or rather what remains of it. As Borrow states, “the dialect of the English Gipseys is mixed with English words.”[13] Those of the tribe who frequent fairs, and mix with English tramps, readily learn the new words, as they are adopted by what Harman calls, “the fraternity of vagabonds.” Indeed, the old CANT is a common language to vagrants of all descriptions and origin scattered over the British Isles.
Ancient English CANT has considerably altered since the first dictionary was compiled by Harman, in 1566. A great many words are unknown in the present tramps’ and thieves’ vernacular. Some of them, however, bear still their old definitions, while others have adopted fresh meanings,—to escape detection, I suppose. “Abraham man” is yet seen in our modern SHAM ABRAHAM, or PLAY THE OLD SOLDIER, i.e., to feign sickness or distress. “Autum” is still a church or chapel amongst Gipseys; and “BECK,” a constable, is our modern cant and slang BEEK, a policeman or magistrate. “Bene,” or BONE, stands for good in Seven Dials, and the back streets of Westminster; and “BOWSE” is our modern BOOZE, to drink or fuddle. A “BOWSING KEN” was the old cant term for a public house, and BOOZING KEN, in modern cant, has precisely the same meaning. “Bufe” was then the term for a dog, now it is BUFFER,—frequently applied to men. “Cassan” is both old and modern cant for cheese; the same may be said of “CHATTES” or CHATTS, the gallows. “Cofe,” or COVE, is still the vulgar synonyme for a man. “Drawers” was hose, or “hosen,”—now applied to the lining for trousers. “Dudes” was cant for clothes, we now say DUDDS. “Flag” is still a fourpenny piece; and “FYLCHE” means to rob. “Ken” is a house, and “LICK” means to thrash; “PRANCER” is yet known amongst rogues as a horse; and “to PRIG,” amongst high and low, is to steal. Three centuries ago, if one beggar said anything disagreeable to another, the person annoyed would say “STOW YOU,” or hold your peace; low people now say STOW IT, equivalent to “be quiet.” “Trine” is still to hang; “WYN” yet stands for a penny. And many other words, as will be seen in the glossary, still retain their ancient meaning.