ARGOT AND SLANG.*

IN laying stress on the philological justification of such a work as this dictionary, M. Barrere takes safe ground, though a perusal of its pages makes it evident that he uses the term " philological " in a very vague and unscientific way. Of its practical utility to the reader of modern French fiction there can be no question. The representatives of that school are responsible for having given literary permanence to what formerly only enjoyed oral currency ; and the logical out- come of such a procedure is the collection, in this and other similar works, of these labels of what a modern writer has called the drains and dustbins of humanity. M. Barrere has not recoiled from this unsavoury task ; but, on the other hand, he has not abused the opportunity, though preferring Hugo's recommendation, " Quand la chose est, dites le mot," to the Tacitean precept, " Abscondi debent fiagitia." He waives the question of the artistic or ethical value of naturalistic fiction. It is enough for him that it is there, that it is widely read, and that the language used by the lowest characters depicted in it is, in his opinion, forcible and picturesque, dashed with a grim humour and wit of its own. Of the grimness there can be no doubt ; the quality of humour or wit is harder to detect, though we are quite at one with M. Barrer° in his strictures on the compara- tive fatuity of fashionable slang, both French and English. The following definitions of argot show clearly how much wider a field the term covers than slang :—" Argot is but a bastard tongue grafted on the mother-stem, and though it is no easy matter to coin a word that shall remain and take rank among those of any language, yet the field of argot, already so extensive, is ever pushing back its boundaries, the additions surging in together with new ideas, novel fashions, but especially through the necessities of that class of people whose primary interest it is to make themselves unintelligible to their victims, the public, and their enemies, the police." " Argot," again quoting Nodier's words, "is an artificial, unsettled tongue, without a syntax properly so-called, of which the only object is to disguise, under con- ventional metaphors, ideas which are intended to be conveyed to adepts. Consequently its vocabulary must needs change whenever it has become familiar to outsiders."

Thieves' ..lingo, in some respects the most curious and interesting of argots, fluctuates like the dialects of savage African tribes, which have no literature to give them per- manence. New devices are constantly invented to secure secrecy. At one time it was back-slang—the employment of palindromes, e.g., occabot for " tobacco," and sumatopoppy for ." hippopotamus." Again, rhyming slang is another favourite method of avoiding detection—skyrocket pocket, Battle of the Nile a tile. On this Protean character of thieves' slang, Victor Hugo has somagood remarks quoted by M. Barrere :—" Argot being the idiom of corruption, is quickly corrupted. Besides, as it always seeks secrecy, so soon as it feels itself understood,

it transforms itself For this reason, argot is subject to perpetual transformation—a secret and rapid work which ever goes on. It makes more progress in ten years than the regular language in ten centuries." Another striking, but not surprising, feature of this same sort of argot is the immense profusion of words it contains to denote death, madness, and cowardice. Words to express courage and kindliness are few and far between. In French, there are no less than eighty slang synonyms for intoxication. On the other hand, there are more than twice as many English terms for money, Balzac's admiration for the argot of the criminal classes is well known : " Each word of the language recalls a brutal image, either ingenious or terrible. Everything is fierce in

this idiom The word midnight is rendered by douze plombes crosscut. Does not this make one shudder P" • Argot and Slang a New French and English Dictionary of the Cant Words, Quaint Erpreseione, Slang Terms, and Flash Phrases used in the High and Low Lite of Old and New Paris. By A. Barrere. London : Privately printed at tSe Gbiawiek Press.

Besides the dictionaries already in existence, notably Larchey's and Vilatte's, Vidocq's productions, the novels of Balzac, and the memoirs of M. Claude, formerly superin. tendent of the detective department in Paris, have sup- plied M. Barrere with the materials for his compilation. He has also drawn freely from contemporary newspapers.

But—to quote from his preface—" the most interesting sources of information, as being the most original, have been workpeople, soldiers, pickpockets, and other malefactora having done their time' or likely to be ' wanted' at a short notice In one particular instance I was deprived of of my informants in a rather summary manner. Two brothers, members of a family which strongly reminded one of E. Sue's Martials, inasmuch as the father had mounted the scaffold, the mother was in prison, and other members had met with similar accidents, had volunteered to become my collaborators, and were willing to furnish information the more valuable, it seemed to me, as coming from such distinguished individuals.

Unfortunately for the Dictionary, the brothers were appre- hended when coming to my rendezvous, and are now, I believe, far on their way to the penal settlement of New Caledonia."

The list of authorities which stands at the head of M. Barrere's Preface, though ample on the French side, is meagre and ill- chosen enough on the English. Only fifteen authors are mentioned, and some of the entries are not on the face of them easy to justify. Thus we have the Spectator under the head of Addison ; and under that of Kingsley, Westward Ho !

Ravenshoe, and Two Years Ago. Apart from the blunder of confusing the two brothers, it seems to us that a work like Westward Ho ! can hardly be regarded as authoritative on the subject of the slang of the sixteenth century. In such

a case only contemporary authorities are of real value. M. Barrere attaches but little importance to public school and university slang, but inconsistently makes an exception in favour of the cant phrases used at the Royal Military Academy. The Winchester " notions " certainly deserved mention in his introduction, and some university expressions are not without their appropriateness and force. An excursus on the word " side " might well have been included in these preliminary chapters, and the various equivalents for "cad" are worth cataloguing. On the subject of English thieves' slang, M. Barrere has laid the writings of the Rev. J. W.

Horsley largely under contribution. None of the specimens of slang which, arranged in chronological order, precede

the body of the work, are more interesting than The Auto- biography of a Thief in thieves' language, which was taken

down from the lips of a prisoner in Clerkenwell Prison by Mr. Horsley, when chaplain at that establishment, and which M.

Barrere has rendered into French thieves' language. In its unvarnished candour, this strange record is almost unique.

Here the moral interest outweighs the philological, as the following extract will show :—

" One day I took the rattler (train) from Broad Street to Acton. I did not touch (steal anything) there, but worked my way to Shepherd's Bush ; but when I got there I found it so hot, because there had been so many tykes poisoned, that there was a reeler (detective) at almost every double, and bills posted up about it. So I went to the Uxbridge Road Station, and while I was waiting for the rattler, I took a religious tract, and on it was written, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?' So I thought to myself, ' What good has the money done me what I have had.' So instead of getting out at Brondes- bury, I rode on to Broad Street and paid the difference, and went home, and did not go out for about a week."

Another classical specimen of thieves' slang is " The Night Before Larry was Stretched," which M. Barrere commits the solecism of inserting under the title of " The Death of Socrates," evidently taking in earnest Prout's joke of ascribing its authorship to Burrowes, the Dean of Cork. He has not given, however, the companion piece, " Luke Caffrey'a Kil- mainham Minit " (i.e., minuet), a much more elaborate tour de force on the same grisly topic. Some of the footnotes betray imperfect appreciation of the meaning of the English cant phrases. For example, " On ! on !" is, to say the least, a very weak rendering of " Fake away !" in Jerry Juniper's chant ; while in more than one place M. Barrere is at fault in the elucidations appended to " 'Arry at a Political Picnic " (from Punch), one of that series of poems which reproduce the language and sentiments of the vilest town cad with a cleverness as great as it is odious. To write in such a style with such fluency one must have got to think in 'Arry's lingo. M. Barrere claims to have inserted the English slang

equivalent wherever it was possible, but a cursory examina- tion of his pages will show that in not a few cases he has failed to give even the legitimate rendering. For example, he does not seem to be aware of the existence of the terra " black-

mail," but paraphrases chantage as follows Extorting money by threats of disclosures ooncerning a guilty action real or supposed—' jobbery.' " Jobbery is a very different thing from black-mailing, though it may be true that chantage is used in that sense.

Again, M. Barrere has omitted to give " to slate " as the equivalent of ereinter, or Peckaniff for benisseur, which it exactly expresses. Those who are interested in the career of General Boulanger will be struck by the curious slang signifi- cations which attach to his name. Derivations are not M. Barrere's strong point, or we might have expected him to notice the resemblance in sound as well as sense which prevails between the French gosse and the Irish gossoon. He gives the word groller—to growl or grumble—without a word of remark on the German grollen. Of English slang other than that of 'Arry and the criminal classes, M. Barrere has a very rudi- mentary knowledge. Extremes meet, no doubt ; and the catch- words of the music-halls become incorporated in the vocabulary of the gilded youth. But between the blatant vulgarity of the counter-jumper and the imbecile exaggerations of fopland, there is a great deal of hearty, inoffensive, expressive slang talked by young men who are neither .cads nor gommeux, and which is at least as characteristic of the race and as intrinsically interesting as the cant of the gutter or the variety stage. That M. Barrere should not have done justice to this depart- ment of slang is not to be wondered at; for there are obvious reasons why a Frenchman should find it hard to appreciate forms of language which have grown out of our system of education. With these allowances, he has performed his work with great patience and industry, and with an accuracy, if we may say so without offence, surprising in one of a race who, as a rale, do not take the trouble to be correct in their dealings with any foreign tongue.