Chapter XI: Appendix: A Note on Thieves’ Cant

The vocabulary given on page 135 contributes no word which may not be found in any cant dictionary, and therefore may appear undeserving of inclusion. But I put it in because I think few people, apart from students of philology, realize the existence of that large section of our language in use among the vagabond classes. Cant and slang, to most people’s minds, are synonymous, but this is an error of belief: slang creeps from many sources into the river of language, and so mingles with it that in course of time many use it without knowing that they do so; cant, on the other hand, remains definite and obscure of origin. Slang is loose, expressive, and metaphorical; cant is tight and correct: it has even a literature of its own, broad and racy, incomprehensible to the ordinary reader without the help of a glossary. Its words, for the most part, bear no resemblance to English words; unlike slang, they are not words adapted, for the sake of vividness, to a use for which they were not originally intended, but are applied strictly to their peculiar meaning.

Although the origin of cant as a separate jargon or language is obscure—it does not appear in England till the second half of the sixteenth century—the origin of certain of its words may be traced. Of those included in the vocabulary on page 135, for example, _ken_, for house, comes from _khan_ (gipsy and Oriental); _fogus_, for tobacco, comes from _fogo_, an old word for stench; _maund_, or _maunder_, to beg, does not derive, as might be thought, from _maung_, to beg, a gipsy word taken from the Hindu, but from the Anglo-Saxon _mand_, a basket; _bouse_, to drink (which, of course, has given us booze, with the same meaning, and which in the fourteenth century was perfectly good English), comes from the Dutch _buyzen_, to tipple. _Abram_, naked, is found as _abrannoi_, with the same meaning, in Hungarian gipsy; _cassan_, cheese, is _cas_ in English gipsy; _dimber_ survives for “pretty” in Worcestershire. _Cheat_ appears frequently in cant as a common affix.

As for _autem mort_, I find it in an early authority thus defined: “These _autem morts_ be married women, as there be but a few. For _autem_ in their language is a church, so she is a wife married at the church, and they be as chaste as a cow I have, that goeth to bull every moon, with what bull she careth not.”

INDEX

ANNE, Queen, as Princess Anne, 138
her death, 160

ARMISTEAD, Mrs. Elizabeth, mistress of 3rd Duke of Dorset, 179

BEAUMONT, Francis, his friendship with 3rd Earl of Dorset, 55

BACELLI, Giannetta, mistress of 3rd Duke of Dorset, 188–192

BERKELEY, Lady Betty. _See_ GERMAINE, Lady Betty

Berkeley Castle, 169

BLACKMORE, his poem _Prince Arthur_ quoted, 148

BOURCHIER, Archbishop of Canterbury, buys Knole from Lord Say & Sele, 5
Builds on to Knole, 6, 7
Encloses the park, 21
Allows glass-making in the park, 24

BOWRA, a cricketer, 182

BRUCE, Lord, his duel with Edward Sackville, 84–90

BUCKHURST, Lord. _See_ SACKVILLE, Thomas
house at Withyham, 18; and mentioned _passim_

BUCKINGHAM, Duke of, his opinion of Charles, Earl of Dorset, 144

BUTLER, Samuel, his opinion of Charles, Earl of Dorset, 144
his portrait at Knole, 151

BURKE, Edmund, letter from, 197–198
his portrait at Knole, 197

BYRON, Lord, quoted, 28, 204
friendship with 4th Duke of Dorset, 203–204
his letters to Thomas Moore, 204–205

CARTWRIGHT, William, his portrait at Knole, 151

CHAMPCENETZ, Comte de, a French fugitive, 188

CHARLES I, verses on the death of, 106–107

CHARLES II, anecdote of his childhood, 98
at Edgehill, 107