[Footnote 242: Near Hebron is an oak of great dimensions and of great age; but the acorn from which it sprung was not planted for ages after Abraham's time.]
Slang Banished From The Stage.
Some objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions, are extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the strong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those theatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to Argot, (slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it prevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the Paradis of the theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world and their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: "Argot is the ordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they plot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their misfortunes at the bagne; ergo, it is not a fit and proper dialect to be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives and children; ergo, it must not be spoken." So the poor gamin of vicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn the language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.
Yet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is the word Binette, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live by their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of the Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and majestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little fields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his dignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not confectioned by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that stops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the wig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.
In thieves' Latin ardent represents a candle. The thief has accurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland House of the seventeenth century. One of the Precieuses of that temple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle, would thus express herself: "Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet ardent!" [Footnote 243]
[Footnote 243: This anecdote reminds us of a tradition not forgotten among the gyps of T.C.D. A very learned fellow, dismounting from his steed some time during the dark ages, said to a little boy, "Juvenile, circumambulate the quadruped round the quadrangle, and I shall recompense thee with a pecuniary remuneration.">[
The gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words, but does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is not aware that his own name is the galopin (tavern-boy) of the middle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or what you will, is chouette, (nice,) he is merely retaining the souef (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his copin, the compaign (comrade) of old times; the boy he despises is a capon, the name applied to the Jews in the days of Philip the Fair. His rigolo comes to him from the verb rigoler, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in Maistre Pathelin, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An umbrella is a rifflard with him, though he is little aware that it gets that name from Mons. Rifflard, the "Paul Pry" of the Petite Ville of Picard.
Edouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this characteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of O'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.
"A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a meraicher, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion of the wonderful vocabulary.