COVE - A man, a fellow, a rogue. The cove was bit: the rogue was outwitted. The cove has bit the cole: the rogue has got the money.
KINCHIN - A little child. Kinchin coes: orphan beggar boys, educated in thieving. Kinchin morts: young girls under the like circumstances and training. Kinchin morts, or coes in slates: beggars' children carried at their mothers' backs in sheets. Kinchin cove: a little man.
MORT - A woman or wench; also a yeoman's daughter. To be taken all a-mort: to be confounded, surprised or motionless through fear.
SLATE - A sheet.
From Francis Grose's dictionary The Vulgar Tongue (1785).
Cant, the argot which Grose catalogues, was the language of street-traders, criminals and itinerants: a language of self-protection for those planning or committing illicit acts, or wishing to have private discourse in public; it also acted as a badge of identity of the marginal or dispossessed.
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- Archie Pullen
- Archie Pullen is a fictional character I created for my novel about Dick Turpin (currently being prepared for publication). I am at present providing Pullen with his own 18th century detective novel/revenger's tragedy spin-off. The material about him in this blog is copyrighted to Rebecca Riley. Watch this space to see more about Pullen as the new novel develops.
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4 comments:
and did this then feed into Polari?
It did! Like the robbers, muggers, fences and highwaymen who developed cant, homosexuals were a criminalised group who required a cover to safeguard themselves.
I've seen Polari written as Parlare - which would make some sense I suppose - - but it may just have been a mis-spelling of Polari. Do you know, O Wise One?
Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari, Parlyaree,[1] from Italian parlare, "to talk") was a form of cant slang used in the gay subculture in Britain.
from Wikipedia
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