142 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 146. 



his opinion, from an anxiety to adhere to tlie old 

 impressions iu all cases where it was possible to 

 make sense out of the original reading. !My folio 

 1632 did not come into my possession until long 

 afterwards, and there to my surprise 1 found " sly 

 slow " printed flij slau-, the old manuscript-cor- 

 rector having, moreover, placed a hyphen between 

 the two words, so as to make the line read — 

 '• The fly-slow liours shall not determinate." 



Ilei'e again I beg to ask whether any of your 

 readers and correspondents happen to know of the 

 existence of any other copies of the folio 1632 

 similarly corrected? It is clear that the two 

 errors (arising in both cases from the ordinary 

 confusion of the/* and the long ,s) must have been 

 detected as the sheets were passing through the 

 press, and the objectionable letters picked out of 

 what, 1 believe, printers call the form, and others 

 substituted. The folio 1623 has j??-e in one play, 

 and sl>/ slow in the other, so that the changes in 

 these words in the folio 1632 must have been 

 made in order to set right two blunders, after 

 many copies containing them had been struck off. 

 Other copies with the corrections must also have 

 been struck off, and I wish to be informed whether 

 any such are known. 



As I have said, I have not yet found any other 

 places in which the printed portion of my folio 

 1632 differs from others, and I doubt if I shall 

 meet with such ; but these two are remarkable, 

 especially as I cannot observe that they have been 

 occasioned by any defects in the letters themselves, 

 although the cross-stroke from the f to the I in 

 "fly-slow" is rather faint. The manuscript-cor- 

 rector seem.s to have bestowed his pains upon a 

 copy that was peculiar, however ill it happens to 

 have been since used, and. however shabby its 

 present condition. J. Payne Collier. 



CANT OR SLANG LANGUAGE. 



Will you kindly allow me to make a few hasty 

 remarks on cant, or slang language ; for though 

 the parties amongst whom it is chiefly in use are 

 those of tiie lowest and most abandoned, yet the 

 investigation of its origin and principles opens a 

 curious field of inquiry, replete with considerable 

 interest to the philologist and the pliilosopher ? It 

 affords a remarkable instance of lingual contriv- 

 ance, which, without the introiluction of any ar- 

 bitrary matter, has developed a system of commu- 

 nicating ideas, having all the advantages of a 

 foreign language, and which has all been accom- 

 plished simply by the employment of metaphor 

 and allegory grafted on the older forms of the 

 vernacular, or its cognate dialects ; and what 

 foreign expressions may occur have arisen mostly 

 from the mutual intercourse of native and foreign 

 mendicants and wanderers. 



Ilarman, in Lis Caveat (1566), states that the 



cant language was the invention of an individual 

 in the early jiart of the sixteenth century ; 



" As far as I can learn or understand by the ex- 

 amination of a numbev of tliem, their language, which 

 they term Pedler's-rrencli, or canting, began but 

 within these thirty years, or little above that : the first 

 inventor thereof was hanged all save the head." 



Will any reader of " N. & Q." be kind enough to 

 explain, if possible, the last words? Rowlands, in 

 his Martin J\-.'arh-All, states that this language 

 was introduced iu the time of a certain king of the 

 beggars, called Cock Lorrell, and that it is an om- 

 nium gatherum. But from the fact of the French 

 having their Argot, a vocabulary of which ap- 

 ]5eared in the middle of the sixteenth century ; the 

 Spanisli their Gerniania, of which a vocabulary 

 was publislicd in 1609; the (4ermans their Itoth' 

 walsch, or lied Italiati ; the Italians their Gergo ; 

 and even the Hottentots their Cuze-cat, a question 

 Avill very naturally arise with us which was the 

 original ? They mostly agree in principle — me- 

 taphor mixed Avith obsolete expression ; and. 

 Burrow, in his Gypsies in Spain, inclines to Italy 

 as being the originator : I do not now stoji to in- 

 quire farther into this point. Confining ourselves 

 to the English slang, we find it is composed to a 

 great extent of common household words, con- 

 verted into slang by the* use of metaj)hor, allegory, 

 or burlesque antithesis, of much Anglo-Saxon, of 

 many words obtained from the rommany, or gypsy 

 tongtie (which is not slang, but a proper language, 

 closely allied to the Sanskrit and other eastern 

 dialects, though it is freqitently confounded with 

 the thieves' jargon), of corrupted forms of Latin, 

 of some Hebrew words derived from the connexion 

 of the Jewish receivers of stolen property with the 

 thieves, &c., and of several German, Dutch, French, 

 and Italian words, derived probably from an in- 

 tercourse with foreign itinerants. 



The following are a i'ew familiar words takerii 

 promiscirously- from a cant or slang vocabulary, 

 etymological and comparative, on which I Lave 

 been engaged for some time past : — 



Having a lark (A.-S. lac, sport, play). 



Gammon (A.-S. samcn, game, sport, scoff). 



Jvst the cheese (A.-S. ceoran, to choose), hence 

 = just my choice. 



Dodge and dodger (A.-S. beosian, to colour, con- 

 ceal). 



Nix my Dolly (A.-S. bap], part, dole). 



Stir, a prison (A.-S. rryn, correction, punish- 

 ment). 



Blunt (money), from Fr. hlond, hlund, or Hunt, 

 and a]>plied to money from its colour ; compare 

 the word Browns which = copper money. 



Patter, to talk (Lat., from the mumbling and 

 huiTied way of saying the pater-noster before the 

 lleformation). 



Toggerij, clothing (Lat. toga). 



