Tea at Trianon: Street Slang of Old London

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Street Slang of Old London

From English Historical Fiction Authors:

Often their feelings toward politics and the upper classes showed in the words they coined. Glasgow Magistrates for example was a slang term for salt herrings. One can’t help but wonder what the magistrates of that fair city did to deserve to be compared to dead fish. The slang phrase drunk as a lord was a common saying, probably referring to a rich man’s ability to afford such gratification and a sly sarcasm at the supposed habits of the upper class. And even today we can appreciate the term quockerwodger which was the proper term for a wooden toy figure, which, when pulled by a string, jerked its limbs about. In a slang sense it signified a pseudo-politician, one whose strings were pulled by someone else.

The street purveyors of slang even faced illness and death with a lively sense of humor. Someone on their last legs was a croaker and once gone they became a stiff ‘un. Their word for a stomach ache, mollygrubs or mulligrubs is particularly interesting because it also meant sorrow. They believed that the stomach was the seat of emotions, not the brain. A belief rooted no doubt in their experience of emotions and not the emerging science of the times. The term maggoty meant fanciful or fidgetty. Whims and fancies were termed maggots from the popular belief that a maggot in the brain was the cause of any odd notion a person might exhibit. (Read more.)