Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards

by William Andrew Chatto

"In the moneth of May, when grass grows grene,

Fragrant in her flowres with swete savour,

Jac Napes wold on the see, a maryner to ben,

With his clogi and his cheyn to seke more tresour.

"Swych a payn prikked him, he asked a confessour;

Nicholas said, I am redi the confessour to be;

He was holden so, that he ne passed that hour:

For Jac Napes saule, 'placebo et dirige.'"

Mr. Turner's remark, that "the ballad shows that Napes was a term of derision, signifying a Knave, and must therefore be the Saxon Cnapa," does not appear to be well founded; for if it were derived from Cnapa, and merely signified a Knave, or Cheat, it is difficult to conceive why it should be written Napes, and not Knave, or Knape, as required, according to Mr. Turner's etymology; besides, it is evident from the context, that, in the mind of the writer, the idea of a Jac Napes was associated with that of a monkey, or an ape, with his clog and his chain. That this was not the primary signification of the term, may be confidently asserted; and no writer who has derived it from Jack and Ape, has produced any authority to show that it originally meant a man who travelled about with apes or monkeys. In the following passage, from a tract printed about 1540, [271] the term "Yack an napes" evidently refers to a mummer or buffoon in a particoloured dress, like that of a knave of cards. The writer, after having noticed the assembling of the poor on holidays, at the "personis barne," [272] and there committing "ydolatre in mayntenynge his ambision, pride, and bestly lyvinge," thus proceeds: "Nobyl statis were better to hunte the bull, here, hert, or ony othere thynge lyke to suckure the powre with the mette, then to here Sir Jhon Singyl Sowle stombel a payer of mattens in laten, slynge holy water, curse holy brede, and to play a caste lyke yack an napes in a foles cotte." When John Bale, in his work entitled, 'Yet a Course at the Romish Foxe,' speaks of Jack-a-Naipes "swearing by his ten bones," it would seem that he in some manner or other associated the term with the Jack-a-Naipes, or Jack of Cards; for his ten bones can only be supposed to relate to the numerical value of the Jack of Naipes, as a coat card. In Bale's time a "card of ten" would appear to have been a general expression for a coat card, as well as for a card distinguished by that number of pips.