CHAPTER II.
ROOTS.
Slang is the language of the dark. Thought is affected in its gloomiestdepths, and social philosophy is harassed in its most poignantundulations, in the presence of this enigmatical dialect, which isat once branded and in a state of revolt. There is in this a visiblechastisement, and each syllable looks as if it were marked. The wordsof the common language appear in it, as if branded and hardened by thehangman's red-hot irons, and some of them seem to be still smoking;some phrases produce in you the effect of a robber's fleur-de-lysedshoulder suddenly exposed, and ideas almost refuse to let themselvesbe represented by these convict substantives. The metaphors are attimes so daring that you feel that they have worn fetters. Still, inspite of all this, and in consequence of all this, this strange patoishas by right its compartment in that great impartial museum, in whichthere is room for the oxydized sou as well as the gold medal, and whichis called toleration. Slang, whether people allow it or no, has itssyntax and poetry. It is a language. If, by the deforming of certainvocables, we perceive that it has been chewed by Mandrin, we feel fromcertain metonyms that Villon spoke it. That line so exquisite and socelebrated,--
"Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? (But where are the snows of yester-year?)"
is a line of slang. Antan, _ante annum_, is a slang word of Thunes,which signified the past year, and, by extension, formerly.Five-and-thirty years ago, on the departure of the great chain-gang,in 1827, there might be read in one of the dungeons of Bicêtre thismaxim, engraved with a nail upon the wall by a king of Thunes condemnedto the galleys, "Les dabs d'antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre duCoësre," which means, "The kings of former days used always to go tobe consecrated." In the thought of that king, the consecration was thegalleys. The word _décarade_, which expresses the departure of a heavycoach at a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and is worthy of him. Thisword, which strikes fire, contains in a masterly onomatopœia thewhole of Lafontaine's admirable line,--
"Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche."
From a purely literary point of view, few studies would be more curiousor fertile than that of slang. It is an entire language within alanguage, a sort of sickly grafting which has produced a vegetation,a parasite which has its roots in the old Gaulish trunk, and whosesinister foliage crawls up the whole of one side of the language. Thisis what might be called the first or common notion of slang, but tothose who study the language as it should be studied, that is to say,as geologists study the earth, slang appears like a real alluvium.According as we dig more or less deeply, we find in slang, beneaththe old popular French, Provençal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, thatlanguage of the Mediterranean ports, English, and German, Romanic,--inits three varieties of French, Italian, and Roman,--Latin, and finally,Basque and Celtic. It is a deep and strange formation, a subterraneanedifice built up in common by all scoundrels. Each accursed race hasdeposited its stratum, each suffering has let its stone fall, eachheart has given its pebble. A multitude of wicked, low, or irritatedsouls who passed through life, and have faded away in eternity, arefound there almost entire, and to some extent still visible, in theshape of a monstrous word.
Do you want Spanish? The old Gothic slang swarms with it. Thus we have_boffette_, a box on the ears, which comes from _bofeton; vantane_, awindow (afterwards vanterne), from _vantana; gat_, a cat, from _gato;acite_, oil, from _aceyte_. Do you want Italian? We have _spade_, asword, which comes from _spada_, and _carvel_, a boat, which comes from_caravella._ From the English we have _bichot_, the _bishop; raille_,a spy, from _rascal, rascalion_, roguish; and _pilche_, a case, from_pitcher_, a scabbard. Of German origin are _caleur_, the waiter, from_kellner; hers_, the master, from _herzog_, or duke. In Latin we find_frangir_, to break, from _frangere; affurer_, to steal, from _fur_;and _cadène_, a chain, from _catena_. There is one word which isfound in all continental language with a sort of mysterious power andauthority, and that is the word _magnus_: Scotland makes _mac_ of it,which designates the chief of the clan, Mac Farlane, Mac Callumore,the great Farlane, the great Callumore; slang reduces it to _meck_,afterwards _meg_, that is to say, the Deity. Do you wish for Basque?Here is _gahisto_, the devil, which is derived from _gaiztoa_, bad,and _sorgabon_, good-night, which comes from _gabon_, good-evening. InCeltic we find _blavin_, a handkerchief, derived from _blavet_, runningwater; _ménesse_, a woman (in a bad sense), from _meinec_, full ofstones; _barant_, a stream, from _baranton_, a fountain; _goffeur_,a locksmith, from _goff_, a blacksmith; and _guédouze_, death, whichcomes from _guenn-du_, white and black. Lastly, do you wish forhistory? Slang calls crowns "the Maltese," in memory of the coin whichwas current aboard the Maltese galleys.
In addition to the philological origins which we have indicated, slanghas other and more natural roots, which issue, so to speak, directlyfrom the human mind. In the first place, there is the direct creationof words, for it is the mystery of language to paint with words whichhave, we know not how or why, faces. This is the primitive foundationof every human language, or what might be called the granite. Slangswarms with words of this nature, immediate words created all of onepiece; it is impossible to say when, or by whom, without etymologies,analogies, or derivatives,--solitary, barbarous, and at times hideouswords, which have a singular power of expression, and are alive. Theexecutioner, _le taule_ (the anvil's face); the forest, _le sabri_(cudgels); fear or flight, _taf_; the footman, _le larbin_; thegeneral, prefect, or minister, _pharos_ (head man); and the devil, _lerabouin_ (the one with the tail). Nothing can be stranger than thesewords, which form transparent masks; some of them, _le rabouin,_ forinstance, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and producethe effect of a Cyclopean grimace. In the second place, there ismetaphor, and it is the peculiarity of a language which wishes to sayeverything and conceal everything, to abound in figures. Metaphor isan enigma in which the robber who is scheming a plot, or the prisonerarranging an escape, takes the refuge. No idiom is more metaphoricalthan slang; _dévisser_ (to unscrew) _le coco_ (the cocoa-nut), to twistthe neck; _tortiller_ (to wind up), to eat; _être gerbé_ (sheaved), tobe tried; _un rat_, a stealer of bread; _il lansquine_, it rains,--anold striking figure, which bears to some extent its date with it,assimilates the long oblique lines of rain to the serried sloping pikesof the lansquenets, and contains in one word the popular adage, "It israining halberts." At times, in proportion as slang passes from thefirst to the second stage, words pass from the savage and primitivestate to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be _le rabouin,_and becomes "the baker," or he who puts in the oven. This is wittierbut not so grand; something like Racine after Corneille, or Euripidesafter Æschylus. Some slang phrases which belong to both periods,and have at once a barbarous and a metaphorical character, resemblephantasmagorias: _Les sorgueurs vont sollicer des gails à la lune_ (theprowlers are going to steal horses at night). This passes before themind like a group of spectres, and we know not what we see. Thirdly,there is expediency: slang lives upon the language, uses it as itpleases, and when the necessity arises limits itself to denaturalizingit summarily and coarsely. At times, with the ordinary words thusdeformed and complicated with pure slang, picturesque sentences arecomposed, in which the admission of the two previous elements, directcreation and metaphor, is visible,--_le cab jaspine, je marronne quela roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri_, (the dog barks, I suspectthat the Paris diligence is passing through the wood); _le dab estsinve, la dabuge est merloussière, la fée est bative,_ (the masteris stupid, the mistress is cunning, and the daughter pretty). Mostfrequently, in order to throw out listeners, slang confines itself toadding indistinctly to all the words of the language, a species ofignoble tail, a termination in _aille, orgue, iergue,_ or _uche_. Thus:_Vouziergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche?_ (Do you find that legof mutton good?) This was a remark made by Cartouche to a jailer, inorder to learn whether the sum offered him for an escape suited him.The termination in _mar_ has been very recently added.
Slang, being the idiom of corruption,
is itself quickly corrupted.Moreover, as it always tries to hide itself so soon as it feels thatit is understood, it transforms itself. Exactly opposed to all othervegetables, every sunbeam kills what it falls on in it. Hence slang isbeing constantly decomposed and re-composed; and this is an obscure andrapid labor which never ceases, and it makes more way in ten yearsthan language does in ten centuries. Thus _larton_ (head) becomes_lartif; gail_ (horse) _gaye; fertanche_ (straw) _fertille; momignard_(the child) _momacque; fiques_ (clothes) _frusques; chique_ (thechurch) _l'égrugeoir_; and _colabre_ (the neck) _colas_. The devil isfirst _gahisto_, then _le rabouin_, and next "the baker;" a priest isthe _ratichon_, and then the _sanglier_; a dagger is the _vingt-deux_,next the _surin_, and lastly the _lingre_; the police are _railles_,then _roussins_, then _marchands de lacet_ (handcuff dealers), then_coqueurs,_ and lastly _cognes_; the executioner is the _taule_, then_Charlot_, then the _atigeur_, and then the _becquillard._ In theseventeenth century to fight was to "take snuff;" in the nineteenthit is "to break the jaw;" but twenty different names have passedaway between these two extremes, and Cartouche would speak Hebrew toLacenaire. All the words of this language are perpetually in flight,like the men who employ them. Still, from time to time, and owing tothis very movement, the old slang reappears and becomes new again. Ithas its headquarters where it holds its ground. The Temple preservedthe slang of the seventeenth century, and Bicêtre, when it was aprison, that of Thunes. There the termination in _anche_ of the oldThuners could be heard: _Boyanches-tu?_ (do you drink?); _il croyanche_(he believes). But perpetual motion does not the less remain the law.If the philosopher succeeds in momentarily fixing, for the purposeof observation, this language, which is necessarily evaporating, hefalls into sorrowful and useful meditations, and no study is moreefficacious, or more fertile and instructive. There is not a metaphoror an etymology of slang which does not contain a lesson.
Among these men "fighting" means "pretending:" they "fight" a disease,for cunning is their strength. With them the idea of man is notseparated from the idea of a shadow. Night is called _la sorgue_ andman _l'orgue_: man is a derivative of night. They have formed the habitof regarding society as an atmosphere which kills them, as a fatalforce, and they speak of their liberty as one speaks of his health. Aman arrested is a "patient;" a man sentenced is a "corpse." The mostterrible thing for the prisoner within the four stone walls which formhis sepulchre is a sort of freezing chastity, and hence he alwayscalls the dungeon the _castus_. In this funereal place external lifewill appear under its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons onhis feet, and you may perhaps fancy that he thinks how people walkwith their feet; no, he thinks that they dance with them, hence, if hesucceed in cutting through his fetters, his first idea is that he cannow dance, and he calls the saw a _bastringue_. A name is a _centre_,a profound assimilation. The bandit has two heads,--the one whichrevolves his deeds and guides him through life, the other which hehas on his shoulders on the day of his death; he calls the head whichcounsels him in crime, the _sorbonne_, and the one that expiates it the_tronche_. When a man has nothing but rags on his body and vices in hisheart, when he has reached that double moral and material degradationwhich the word _gueux_ characterizes in its two significations, he isripe for crime; he is like a well-sharpened blade; he has two edges,his distress and his villany, and hence slang does not call him a_gueux_ but a _réguisé_. What is the bagne? A furnace of damnation, ahell, and the convict calls himself a "fagot." Lastly, what name domalefactors give to the prison? The "college." A whole penitentiarysystem might issue from this word.
Would you like to know whence came most of the galley songs,--thosechoruses called in the special vocabularies the _lirlonfa_? Listen tothis:
There was at the Châtelet of Paris a large long cellar, which was eightfeet below the level of the Seine. It had neither windows nor gratings,and the sole opening was the door; men could enter it, but air not.This cellar had for ceiling a stone arch, and for floor ten inches ofmud; it had been paved, but, owing to the leakage of the water, thepaving had rotted and fallen to pieces. Eight feet above the ground, along massive joist ran from one end to the other of this vault; fromthis joist hung at regular distances chains, three feet long, and atthe end of these chains were collars. In this cellar men condemned tothe galleys were kept until the day of their departure for Toulon; theywere thrust under this beam, where each had his fetters oscillatingin the darkness and waiting for him. The chains, like pendant arms,and the collars, like open hands, seized these wretches by the neck;they were riveted and left there. As the chain was too short, theycould not lie down; they remained motionless in this cellar, in thisnight, under this beam, almost hung, forced to make extraordinaryefforts to reach their loaf or water-jug, with the vault above theirheads and mud up to their knees, drawn and quartered by fatigue, givingway at the hips and knees, hanging on by their hands to the chainto rest themselves, only able to sleep standing, and awakened everymoment by the choking of the collar--some did not awake. To eat theywere compelled to draw up their bread, which was thrown into the mud,with the heel all along the thigh to their hand. How long did theyremain in this state? One month, two months, sometimes six months;one man remained a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys, andmen were put in it for stealing a hare from the king. In this hellishsepulchre what did they? They died by inches, as people can do in asepulchre, and sang, which they can do in a hell; for when there isno longer hope, song remains,--in the Maltese waters, when a galleywas approaching, the singing was heard before the sound of the oars.The poor poacher Survincent, who passed through the cellar-prison ofthe Châtelet, said, "Rhymes sustained me." Poetry is useless; what isthe good of rhymes? In this cellar nearly all the slang songs wereborn, and it is from the dungeon of the Great Châtelet of Paris thatcomes the melancholy chorus of Montgomery's galley: _Timaloumisaine,timoulamison_. Most of the songs are sad, some are gay, and one istender:--
"Icicaille est le théâtre Du petit dardant."[1]
Do you what you will, you cannot destroy that eternal relic of man'sheart, love.
In this world of dark deeds secrets are kept; for secrets are a thingbelonging to all, and with these wretches secrecy is the unity whichserves as the basis of union. To break secrecy is to tear from eachmember of this ferocious community something of himself. To denounceis called in the energetic language of slang "to eat the piece," as ifthe denouncer took a little of the substance of each, and supportedhimself on a piece of the flesh of each. What is receiving a buffet?The conventional metaphor answers, "It is seeing six-and-thirtycandles." Here slang interferes and reads _camoufle_ for candle; lifein its ordinary language takes _camouflet_ as a synonym for a box onthe ears. Hence, by a sort of penetration from bottom to top, andby the aid of metaphor, that incalculable trajectory, slang ascendsfrom the cellar to the academy, and Poulailler saying, "I light my_camoufle_" makes Voltaire write, "Langleviel la Beaumelle deservesa hundred _camouflets._" Searching in slang is a discovery at everystep, and the study and investigation of this strange idiom lead to thepoint of intersection of regular with accursed society. The robber hasalso his food for powder, or stealable matter in you, in me, in thefirst passer-by, the _pantre_ (_pan_, everybody). Slang is the wordconverted into a convict. It produces a consternation to reflect thatthe thinking principle of man can be hurled down so deep that it canbe dragged there and bound by the obscure tyranny of fatality, and befastened to some unknown rivets on this precipice. Alas! will no onecome to the help of the human soul in this darkness? Is it its destinyever to await the mind, the liberator, the immense tamer of Pegasusesand hippogriffs, the dawn-colored combatant, who descends from theazure sky between two wings, the radiant knight of the future? Will itever call in vain to its help the lance of the light of idealism? Isit condemned always to look down into the gulf of evil and see closerand closer to it beneath the hideous water the demoniac head, thisslavering mouth, and this serpentine undulation of claws, swellings,and rings? Must it remain there without a gleam of hope,
left to thehorror of this formidable and vaguely smelt approach of the monster,shuddering, with dishevelled hair, wringing its arms, forever chainedto the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and naked in thedarkness?