Zeb, best.
From these examples the apt student may fairly judge how to form his own back slang to his own liking and that of his friends.
SOME ACCOUNT
OF
THE RHYMING SLANG.
There exists in London a singular tribe of men, known amongst the “fraternity of vagabonds” as chaunters and patterers. Both classes are great talkers. The first sing or chaunt through the public thoroughfares ballads—political and humorous—carols, dying speeches, and the various other kinds of gallows and street literature. The second deliver street orations on grease-removing compounds, plating powders, high-polishing blacking, and the thousand-and-one wonderful penny-worths that are retailed to gaping mobs from a London kerb-stone.
They are quite a distinct tribe from the costermongers; indeed, amongst tramps, they term themselves the “harristocrats of the streets,” and boast that they live by their intellects. Like the costermongers, however, they have a secret tongue or cant speech known only to each other. This cant, which has nothing to do with that spoken by the costermongers, is known in Seven Dials and elsewhere as the “rhyming slang,” or the substitution of words and sentences which rhyme with other words intended to be kept secret. The chaunter’s cant, therefore, partakes of his calling, and he transforms and uses up into a rough speech the various odds and ends of old songs, ballads, and street nicknames, which are found suitable to his purpose. Unlike nearly all other systems of cant, the rhyming slang is not founded upon allegory; unless we except a few rude similes, thus—“I’m afloat” is the rhyming cant for “boat,” “sorrowful tale” is equivalent to “three months in jail,” “artful dodger” signifies a “lodger,” and a “snake in the grass” stands for a “looking-glass”—a meaning that would delight a fat Chinaman, or a collector of Oriental proverbs. But, as in the case of the costers’ speech and the old gipsy-vagabond cant, the chaunters and patterers so interlard this rhyming slang with their general remarks, while their ordinary language is so smothered and subdued, that, unless when they are professionally engaged, and talking of their wares, they might almost pass for foreigners.
From the inquiries I have made of various patterers and “paper-workers,” I learn that the rhyming slang was introduced about twelve or fifteen years ago.[61] Numbering this class of oratorical and bawling wanderers at twenty thousand, scattered over Great Britain, including London and the large provincial towns, we thus see the number of English vagabonds who converse in rhyme and talk poetry, although their habitations and mode of life constitute a very unpleasant Arcadia. These nomadic poets, like the other talkers of cant or secret languages, are stamped with the vagabond’s mark, and are continually on the move. The married men mostly have lodgings in London, and come and go as occasion may require. A few never quit London streets, but the greater number tramp to all the large provincial fairs, and prefer the “monkery” (country) to town life. Some transact their business in a systematic way, sending a post-office order to the Seven Dials’ printer for a fresh supply of ballads or penny books, or to the “swag shop,” as the case may be, for trinkets and gewgaws, to be sent on by rail to a given town by the time they shall arrive there.
When any dreadful murder, colliery explosion, or frightful railway accident has happened in a country district, three or four chaunters are generally on the spot in a day or two after the occurrence, vending and bawling “A True and Faithful Account,” &c., which “true and faithful account” was concocted purely in the imaginations of the successors of Catnach and Tommy Pitts,[62] behind the counters of their printing-shops in Seven Dials. And but few fairs are held in any part of England without the patterer being punctually at his post, with his nostrums, or real gold rings (with the story of the wager laid by the gentleman—see [FAWNEY-BOUNCING], in the Dictionary), or savealls for candlesticks, or paste which, when applied to the strop, makes the dullest razor keen enough to hack broom handles and sticks, and after that to have quite enough sharpness left for splitting hairs, or shaving them off the back of one of the hands of a clodhopper, looking on in amazement. And Cheap John, too, with his coarse jokes, and no end of six-bladed knives, and pocket-books, containing information for everybody, with pockets to hold money, and a pencil to write with into the bargain, and a van stuffed with the cheap productions of Sheffield and “Brummagem,”—he, too, is a patterer of the highest order, and visits fairs, and can hold a conversation in the rhyming slang.
Such is a rough description of the men who speak this jargon; and simple and ridiculous as the vulgar scheme of a rhyming slang may appear, it must always be regarded as a curious fact in linguistic history. In order that the reader’s patience may not be too much taxed, only a selection of rhyming words has been given in the Glossary,—and these for the most part, as in the case of the back slang, are the terms of every-day life, as used by this order of tramps and hucksters.
It must not be supposed, however, that the chaunter or patterer confines himself entirely to this slang when conveying secret intelligence. On the contrary, although he speaks not a “leash of languages,” yet is he master of the beggar’s cant, and is thoroughly “up” in street slang. The following letter, written by a chaunter to a gentleman who took an interest in his welfare, will show his capabilities in this line:—