OR THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF VAGABONDS. CANT and SLANG are universal and world-wide. Nearly every nation on the face of the globe, polite and barbarous, may be divided into two portions, the stationary and the wandering, the civilised and the uncivilised, the respectable and the scoundrel, those who have fixed abodes and avail themselves of the refinements of civilisation, and those who go from place to place picking up a precarious livelihood by petty sales, begging, or theft. This peculiarity is to be observed amongst the heathen tribes of the southern hemisphere, as well as in the oldest and most refined countries of Europe. As Mayhew very pertinently remarks, "It would appear, that not only are all races divisible into wanderers and settlers, but that each civilised or settled tribe has generally some wandering horde intermingled with and in a measure preying upon it." In South Africa, the naked and miserable Hottentots are pestered by the still more abject Sonquas; and it may be some satisfaction for us to know that our old enemies at the Cape, the Kaffirs, are troubled with a tribe of rascals called Fingoes,—the former term, we are informed by travellers, signifying beggars, and the latter wanderers and outcasts. In South America, and among the islands of the Pacific, matters are pretty much the same. Sleek and fat rascals, with not much inclination towards honesty, fatten, or rather fasten, like body insects, upon other rascals, who would be equally sleek and fat but for their vagabond dependents. Luckily for respectable persons, however, vagabonds, both at home and abroad, shew certain outward peculiarities which distinguish them from A the great mass of lawful people off whom they feed and fatten. Personal observation, and a little research into books, enable me to mark these external traits. The wandering races are remarkable for the development of the bones of the face, as the jaws, cheek-bones, &c., high-crowned, stubborn-shaped heads, quick, restless eyes,* and hands nervously itching to be doing; † for their love of gambling,-staking their very existence upon a single cast; for sensuality of all kinds; and for their use of a CANT language with which to conceal their designs and plunderings. The secret jargon, or rude speech, of the vagabonds who hang upon the Hottentots is termed Cuze-cat. In Finland, the fellows who steal seal-skins, pick the pockets of bear-skin overcoats, and talk Cant, are termed Lappes. In France, the secret language of highwaymen, housebreakers, and pickpockets is named Argot. The brigands and more romantic rascals of Spain term their private tongue Germania,‡ or Robbers' Language. Rothwälsch,§ or foreign-beggar-talk, is synonymous with Cant and thieves' talk in Germany. The vulgar dialect of Malta, and the Scala towns of the Levant-imported into this country and incorporated with English cant-is known as the Lingua Franca, or bastard Italian. And the crowds of lazy beggars that infest the streets of Naples and Rome, and the brigands that Albert Smith used to describe near Pompeii-stopping a railway train, and deliberately rifling the pockets and baggage of the passengers-their * "Swarms of vagabonds, whose eyes were so sharp as Lynx.”—Bullein's Simples and Surgery, 1562. ↑ Mayhew has a curious idea upon the habitual restlessness of the nomadic tribesi.e., "Whether it be that in the mere act of wandering there is a greater determination of blood to the surface of the body, and, consequently, a less quantity sent to the brain."-London Labour, vol. i., p. 2. Germania, probably from the Gipsies, who were supposed to come from Germany into Spain. The § Rothwälsch, from Roter, beggar, vagabond, and wälsch, foreign. See Dictionary of Gipsy language in Pott's Zigeuner in Europa und Asien, vol. ii., Halle, 1844. Italian cant is called Fourbesque, and the Portuguese, Calao. See Francisque-Michel, Dictionnaire d'Argot. Paris, 1856. |