The Kingdom of Argot
The Flesh Made Word
[I am neither linguist nor computational lexicographer. I deal in the making of slang dictionaries. In 2005, when he was editing a portion of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Lexicography, Patrick Hanks, skilled at both disciplines, asked me to write two pieces: one on the collection and development of anglophone slang and the other on its francophone equivalent. I wrote the former but was forced to pass on the latter: I knew nothing and lacked the resources and time to remedy that situation. What follows is what, better equipped, I would have offered him:]
Then came the Kingdom of Argot, otherwise all the vagabonds in France, marshalled in order of their various ranks, the lowest being first. Thus they marched, four abreast, bearing the divers insignia of their degrees in that strange faculty, most of them maimed in one way or another, some halt, some minus a hand—the courtauds de boutanche (shoplifters), the coquillarts (pilgrims), the hubins (housebreakers), the sabouleux (sham epileptics), the calots (dotards), the francs-mitoux (“schnorrers”), the polissons (street rowdies), the piètres (sham cripples), the capons (card-sharpers), the malingreux (infirm), the marcandiers (hawkers), the narquois (thimble-riggers), the orphelines (pickpockets), the archisuppôts (arch-thieves), and the cagoux (master-thieves)—a list long enough to have wearied Homer himself. It was not without difficulty that in the middle of a conclave of cagoux and archisuppôts one discovered the King of Argot, the Grand Coësre, huddled up in a little cart drawn by two great dogs.
Victor Hugo Notre Dame de Paris (1831)
Introductory.
Bilingual dictionaries notwithstanding, the strict translation of France’s argot is not slang but is more properly defined as cant, i.e., the occupational slang of the criminal classes, ‘les classes dangereuses’. As with what would become slang, other than a few fragmentary prior references the first knowledge of argot is found in the late Middle Ages, c. 1450, but whereas across the Channel the original collection of cant gradually gave way to lexica of what France would term l’argot commun or la langue populaire, general slang as used by the population at large, the basis of non-standard French lexicography was for at least four centuries the taxonomy of the language of crime. If there is a turning point it is the 1828 Memoirs and even more so the 1837 Voleurs of Eugene Vidocq, the arch-criminal-turned-chief-of-police, both of which underpinned the way in which argot proper was beginning its absorption into la langue populaire parisien. By 1850 Balzac (whose magnificent villain Vautrin was modeled on Vidocq himself), perhaps with a little exaggeration, could claim that argot was now as much the product of ‘the rosy lips of young ladies’ as it was that of the grimier mouths of the traditional underorld.
It is possible that in a country where language remains, however nominally, ruled by the strictures of the Académie française, delving into the ‘counter-language’ of beggars, pimps, whores and thieves lacks the necessary gravitas for academic career advancement. That said, the succession of British slang lexicographers have tended too to be solo artistes, rarely embraced by the linguistic establishment. Whatever the reason, argot, criminal jargon, remains the primary subject of French ‘slang’ dictionaries. It is my intention to explore the ‘founding fathers’ of this tradition, from 1455 to 1800 and note, where possible, the way in which criminality, at least linguistically, appears to cross national borders. It is impossible to note every instance of ‘slang’ collection, but the aim is to pinpoint those of the greatest importance.
1. Argot: a definition and an etymology
It is, albeit masochistically, endearing to find that as regards its etymology, argot offers as near-impenetrable a history as does its English peer slang. (Cant, on the other hand, offers no such problems.) And like its Anglo-Saxon cousin argot has drawn from the lexicographers a selection of suggestions that range from the feasible to the near desperate.
To dispose of the latter, it may be assumed that argot has nothing to do either with Greek Argonauts nor their city Argos; nor is likely to be linked to one Ragot, a celebrated beggar, at least in print, from whom the argotiers supposedly took their commands. Ragot, however, attracted a good deal of attention. He appears briefly in Rabelais, and in Les ruses et finesses de Ragot, jadis capitaine des gueux (1571). Beggars are designated ‘chevaliers du roi Ragot’ in Pierre de Larivey’s play Le Jaloux and elsewhere he is credited as the ‘preux et vaillant capitaine Ragot, tres scientifique en l’art de parfaicte belistrerie’. Whether he really existed, or was a mythical figure akin to England’s contemporary beggar-king ‘Cock Lorel’, is unresolved.
Slightly less absurd are proposed links to zingaro, a gypsy, or Latin argutus, pointed and subtle, and finally, most feasible, the French word ergot (also spelled argot), the spur of a cockerel. This last conjures up the image of the beggars raking in their loot like a cock rummaging his dunghill with his ergots or spurs. Louis Sainéan, in his authoritative Argot Ancien (1907), is satisfied to accept this and notes synonyms in a variety of French dialects; later commentators are less convinced. It is suggested that the shape of the spur does not resemble the hook with which, like England’s contemporary angler, thieves lifted items from stalls and windows. In addition the original argotiers were beggars, albeit criminal ones, and not thieves as such. Further theories include a link to harigoter, to rip or shatter which is in turn rooted in dialect haricote, to argue or swindle, and haricotier, an impoverished merchant. However the dialect is not recorded until the 19th century. Similar anachronism undermines argaut, rags, and argoter or arguer, ‘tirer l'or et l'argent à la filière, dite argue.’ And while it has been suggested that the rue d’Argoud, in what was once the heart of Paris’ underworld, might not only be linked linguistically but might also have hosted the Cour des Miracles, the city’s the semi-mythical equivalent to London’s criminal sanctuary Alsatia, there is no proof. In the end one must accept that most frustrating of etymologies: origin obscure.
Unlike its European peers – cant in England, rotwelsch in Germany, germania in Spain, calao in Portugal and gergo in Italy – France’s argot began linguistic life as a description not of a subset of the standard language, in this case the jargon of a group of criminal medicants, but of the criminals themselves. Hugo’s ‘kingdom of argot’ (predated by Oliver Chereau’s 17th century ‘Monarchie Argotique’ and echoed a century later by the novelist, scriptwriter and slang lexicographer Albert Simonin’s 1954 essay ‘Voyage au pays de l’argot’) is metaphorical, but as the first definition of the word in the Tresor de la langue française states l’argot is ‘L'ensemble des gueux, bohémiens, mendiants professionnels, voleurs.’ [‘The world of beggars, vagabonds, cheats and thieves’] Only in definition 2 do we find the modern, linguistic use: ‘Langage de convention dont se servaient les gueux, les bohémiens, etc., c'est-à-dire langage particulier aux malfaiteurs (vagabonds, voleurs, assassins)’. It offered a variety of early synonyms, among them jobelin, language intended to fool the jobards, the suckers, blesquin, the language of the blesches, minor merchants, street sellers and pedlars, le gourd, le narquin or narquois (the language of soldiers, or those who posed as such, turned beggars and/or criminals), and le bigorne (‘counterfeit’ a figurative use of biscornu, two-horned), usually in the phrase rouscailler le bigorne (‘sling the patter’).
The most important, and long-lived synonym is jargon, which appears in mainstream dictionaries long before argot, the first being the Grand dictionnaire françois latin by Nicot (1625). Furetière (Dictionnaire universel, 1690) calls it a ‘Langage vicieux & corrompu du peuple, de paysans, qu’on a de la peine à entendre’ [‘the corrupt, criminal language of the masses, the peasantry, which is scarecely comprehensible’] and notes that every region of France has its own variation. He adds that jargon can also represent the made-up speech of a given ‘cabal’, e.g. cut-purses, although he suggests erroneously that the bulk of the vocabulary comes from Greek. Jargon originally referred to the twittering of birds, a term that may be linked to another, later synonym for argot, la langue verte ‘the green tongue’, which itself seems to have originated in the idea of ‘green’ as trees and the birds within them.
Robert Copland’s Hye Waye to the Spitel House (c.1535), Thomas Awdelay’s Fraternity of Vagabonds (c.1560) and Thomas Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursetours (c. 1565) listed the 16th century’s anglophone begging vocabulary, but made no serious effort to trace its roots. In theory at least, the origins of argot are more specific. Oliver Chereau, sets them out on the opening page of his Jargon ou langage de l’argot reformé […] Tiré et recueilli des plus fameux argotiers de ce temps (1628). It is indeed the first occasion on which the word itself has been found in print.
‘Antiquity teaches, and the Doctors of Argot inform us, that a King of France, having established the Fairs of Niort, Fontenay[-le-Comte] and other towns in Poitou, many people wished to trade in haberdashery; in order to deal with which [situation] the senior haberdashers assembled and ordered that those who wished to be admitted as haberdashers should be received by their seniors, naming and calling the small merchants péchons [lit. children, i.e., beginners] the others Bleches [small merchants], and the richest of them coesmelotiers hurés [head, i.e. chief merchants]. Then they laid down a certain language among them…’
When, Chereau continues, a number of these merchants ran through their funds and needed to expand their trading into other fairs, they encountered a number of pauvres geux (lit. ‘poor beggars’), who not only traded but augmented their funds through theft and trickery. The legitimate merchants taught them their ‘initiate’ language – argot – in turn the beggars taught them their larcenous tricks. ‘Thence came so many celebrated Argotiers who established the order that followed.’ For Chereau, the Argot was compounded of three groups: the mercelots (minor nomadic merchants, living on their wits), the trucheurs, tricksters, beggars who used a variety of ‘things’ (trucs) to maximise their appeal and elicit alms (the peers of such as England’s counterfeit cranks adorned with fake but still realistically gruesome scars), and downright thieves, whether robbing on the highway or simply attacking lonely dwellings, all sorts accompanied by their female companions.
And as he notes, coincidentally delineating the first users of argot, ‘to be a perfect argotier one must know the language of merchants, the tricks of beggars and the subtlety of cutpurses.’
Gradually the group became its language. In 1740 it was registered as such by the Academie française, albeit the first edition of their dictionary had stated in 1694: ‘Argot: On dit plus communément Ergot. Pointe dure qui vient au derrière du pied de quelques animaux. Les argots d’un coq, d’un chien ; il s’est rompu l’argot en courant’.
2. Pre-History
While it is generally accepted that there are no hard-and-fast glossaries of argot prior to 1455, the concept, if not the word, exists at least two centuries earlier. Louis Sainéan has gathered some tantalising brief examples, notably the 13th century reference to ‘Gergons: vulgare trutanorum’ (‘the language of villains’) in Hugues Fardit’s Donati Privincials, and a reference in in the Dialogue contre les Vices et vertus: ‘Who prays to God without devotion in his heart, speaks to him in jargon, and will not be heard.’ The use is undoubtedly parallel to the early uses of cant: from Latin cantare, to sing, it referred first to insincere, ‘sing-song’ prayers, delivered by rote. From there it came to mean the beggars’ whining tones; the development of jargon seems identical.
As frustrating as is the etymology are these earliest references to argot, or more properly jargon, written as gergo or gargon, in the 13th century. The term emerges in a variety of references to the speech of beggars, but the authors, having raised the subject, go no further. A character may be said to talk in jargon, but the reader is left to imagine what are his words. In 1425 things improve; a few specific terms – crapault, a jug of wine, taffe, uncouth, with reference to the peasantry – are noted (although Sainéan suggests they are in any case not jargon), but a few more decades would pass before a substantial argotic vocabulary is established.
Jargon remains the pertinent word until the 17th century, hence the title of Chereau’s work. Nor do the dictionaries help, for instance in Ménage, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue françoise, one finds a headword ‘argot’, but it is defined as ‘Jargon des Bohémiens’.
When in 1658 Sir Thomas Urquhart rendered Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel into English he produced a manuscript laden with slang, much of which had hitherto been unpublished. He was not working from scratch; Rabelais’ original text is unsurprisingly filled with argot. Among much else is jambe de Dieu, literally ‘God’s leg, but in actuality a healthy leg liberally covered in fake sores and sported by a beggar. As Cotgrave, in his French-to-English Dictionary (1611) puts it, ‘So do the canting and blasphemous rogues of France term a cankered, gangrenous […] fore-leg.’ Predictable francophobia, but England’s contemporary beggars were equally adept: the scaldrum dodge (from scald, to burn) was the practice of deliberately burning the body with a mixture of acids and gunpowder in order to simulate scars and wounds in odrer to solicit sympathy and alms. Other terms include grupper, to seize, croquer pie, drink heavily (lit. to ‘swallow a magpie’, a bird supposed, at least in folklore, to render itself drunk), and salverne, a begging bowl. It is possible that Rabelais, who lived for a while at Fontenay-le Comte, one of the places recorded as a beggars’ centre, picked up his material at first hand. But neither Rabelais, nor the authors who followed him are lexicographers. Their use of argot is alluring, but ultimately coincident. As Marcel Schwob regretted in 1889, one can make nothing but inductions from such material.
3. Early Days
Les Coquillards (1455)
Like slang, a word which does not appear in any English text until the mid-18th century (though the appearance of cant is coincident with the first efforts to codify it), the word argot may not have been seen in print until Chereau’s pamphlet, but whether as a group or as a language, it long-predated his efforts. And while the first attempt other than in France to set out any form of beggar’s language would not come until the German Liber Vagatorum of 1528, there are two examples of argot, both linked to individuals, that predate this by a good seventy years. Unlike the 16th century glossaries, whether German or English, which were designed specifically to reveal the secret code of criminals, these early examples of jargon emerged almost fortuitously. In neither instance was a lexicographer – however amateur – involved. Or certainly not at the time, and in both cases, it would take several centuries before the importance of the language involved was properly appreciated.
The first of these sources was the trial in 1455 of the Coquillards, a gang of criminal mendicants made up mainly of ex-soldiers of the 100 Years’ War, which had effectively ended in 1445. The source of their name is debatable. The obvious root being the ‘coquille’ or cockle, as worn by genuine pilgrims to the shrine of St. James of Compostela. However, while there were undoubtedly some fake pilgrims, who sported the ‘coquille’, the Coquillards were as much violent robbers as they were merely con-men. Writing in his Anthologie de la Litterature Argotique (1985) Jacques Cellard offers an alternative root: the popular saying that all merchants of cockles were liars and tricksters who ate the flesh of an oyster and left their foolish customers nothing but the shell. And Schwob, in a detailed discussion, refers the reader to such phrases as vendre coquilles and dresser un coquille, both of which idioms mean to trick or con, presumably from the same imagery.
Whatever their etymology, the Coquillards, anything from 500 to 1000 in number, plied their trade from the 1440s around Dijon, in eastern France. Not a gang as such, they still boasted a degree of organization, including in their ranks a variety of criminal specialists, whether violent or otherwise. By 1450 they were considered a major problem; the Dijon authorities demanded an enquiry, to be lead by one Jean Rabustel. In 1455 he arrested a dozen Coquillards, and with them some of their otherwise respectable bourgeois accomplices, but all maintained their omerta. Only when he offered to set free the youngest of the band, one Dimanche le Loup, in return for betraying his companions did Rebustel achieve a breakthrough. (Le Loup, it appears, was still hanged). After le Loup came another informer, the barber Perrent le Fournier. The two volunteered much information, notably a list of names, and more importantly for lexicographers, the language or private jargon that the Coquillards used. The accused were tried: three were hanged, the rest banished from Dijon.
Other than a few words encountered in the mouths of brigands, hangmen and robbers in the ‘mysteries’ of the early 15th century (e.g., marié, hanged, in the Geste du Nobles (1408) or beffleur, a robber, in the Mistère du Vieil Testament), this was the first occasion on which a substantial body of argot was recognised. Yet it would be 400 years before the trial’s records were unearthed, in 1842, and published as Les compagnons de la Coquille, chronique dijonnaise du Xve siècle, and a further 40 before in 1880 Marcel Schwob, researching the poet-criminal Francois Villon, appreciated the linguistic importance of what had been revealed in 1455.
Underpinning their conscious organization, the Coquillards were divided into various groups: among them the crocheteurs, the lockpickers, the esteveurs, the confidence men, the vendangeurs (cutpurses), the beffleurs, who attracted the gullible into a crooked game of dice, the pipeurs or desbochilleurs, who actually conducted the crooked game, baladeurs or planteurs, who sold fake jewelry, the blancs coulons, who shared a bed with a merchant, then, as he slept, tossed his clothes and purse out of the window to waiting accomplices, the desrocheurs or bretons, high way robbers, and the envoyeurs ou bazisseurs, simple killers.
In addition was their everyday vocabulary. To give some samples: justice or the law was la marine or la rouhe (both of which referred to tortures, either of water or la roue, the wheel); a priest, le lieffre or rat (from ras, shaved, i.e., tonsured], cards, la taquinade, dice, variously madame, la vallee, le gourt (note cant gourd), la muiche, le bouton et le riche, or la queue de Chien. A rich man was un godiz, his purse la bourse, silver auber, caire, puille, a dress une jarte, a horse, un galier, bread arton (directly from the Greek), the legs quilles (slang quills), a hand une serre, and the ear une anse. A day was la torture. To kill was bazir, parler l’abessse meant to discuss a robbery and jouer le roy David avec le roy Davyot, to pick a lock with a picklock. (both words being a variaion on daviet, a form of pliers or hook – a term later used in dentistry – and related to the English davit, a curved piece of iron used as a crane on board a ship)
Contemporaneous with the Coquillards, indeed more than likely one of their number or certainly their friend, is François Villon, the other indicator of early argot. Villon (born 1431 and last recorded as active in 1463) is probably the best-known poet of his era. (The line ‘Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?’ in his Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis – translated by D.G. Rossetti as ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ – remains one of best-known, if somewhat impenetrable lines of poetry yet written.) A student at the University of Paris, he became Master of Arts in 1452 but at the same time was increasingly implicated in the period’s outbreaks of student rioting. In 1455 he was implicated in a murder, he pleaded self-defence but his assailant died and Villon fled Paris. He was pardoned in 1456 but as a killer he had to give up his high-status teaching post the College of Navarre and henceforth scrape a living singing in taverns. That year he was in trouble again: accused of leading a gang of students who broke into the chapel of the same College of Navarre and stealing 500 gold crowns. He left Paris again and for the next five years surived on the road. It may be that it was during this time that he joined, however marginally, the Coquillards. Certainly he had a number of unarguably villainous friends. He suffered further accusations of criminality in 1461 and 1463. This last led to his banishment; thereafter he vanishes from history.
His works, however, do not. In 1460 he began work on his magnum opus, the 2,023 verses of Le Grand Testament, filled with bitterness, invective, lamentations for a wasted life and an imminent sense of death on the gallows. For the student of argot, his work is irresistable, however it remains a challenge to modern readers. The Testament was published in 1489; the edition included a group of ballades argotiques entitled Le Jargon ou Jobelin de Maistre François Villon. Like England’s later canting songs, these ballads, which mention the Coquillards in several verses, are larded with an argot nearly impenetrable to modern readers. Whether they were actual coded message to his fellow criminals, or simply what they appear: ballads filled with argot, remains debatable.
A parouart la grant mathegaudie
Ou accollez sont duppez et noirciz
Et par les anges suivans la paillardie
Sont greffez et print cinq ou six
La sont bleffieurs au plus hault bout assis
Pour le euaige et bien hault mis au vent
Escheques moy tost ces coffres massis
Car vendengeurs des ances circuncis
Sen brow et du tout aneant Eschec eschec pour le fardis.
Terms include Paroir and montjoye, the scaffold. Acollez, hanged (UK: , ‘scragged’); riflart is a police-officer, abroieart fog. A few words from foreign languages occur: audinos, prayer , is the Latin audi nos of the litanies; arton, bread, is Greek. Moller, to eat, may perhaps be the Latin molere to grind. Anse, the ear, is the Latin ansa, handle.
Whether or not Villon was a card-carrying Coquillard, there is no doubt that his and their vocabulary share a large number of terms: Ance (ear), argue (a die), beffleur (a con-man), blare (a fool) blanchir (to escape, ), David (a picklock), fourbe (a robber), jarte (a dress), long (skilful), plant (a fake ingot) et planteur (one who passes them off), quille (the leg), roe (justice), rufle (feu de saint Antoine), sire (a fool) and vendangeur (a crook) all appear at their trial and in his ballads.
Other words, just as in English slang, reflect the register’s use of the standard vocabulary, but with a figurative twist. Thus one finds accolé (hanged = lit. ‘attached’), bane (the scaffold, lit. a vehicle), benard (a thief), brouer (to walk), can (a provost, i.er. ‘khan’), chanter (to talk, lit. ‘sing’), contre (a companion, lit. ‘against’), desbouser (to rob, lit. to skin, or scrub), dorer (to lie, lit. to gild, i.e., ‘the lily’), embourreux (the executioner, lit. he who wraps, i.e., the neck of the victim in rope), enclouer (to imprison, lit. to nail up), eminaller (to imprison, lit. to place in a trunk), essorer (to hang, lit.to expose to the air), and fueille (a purse, from feuillet, a leaf).Others include faire la moe, lit. faire la moue, of the exposed’s features to ‘make a face’ as they are dried by the sun (English: have a ‘wry face and pissen britches’) ; rouge, from rusé, cunning or crooked, and usually found as rouge geux, a cunning beggar; halle grup, the gallows (halle from haler, to dry out in the sun – the corpse was left exposed after hanging – and grup either from dialect grup, a knot or echoic of choking and reminscent of such blackly humorous English synonyms as artichoke, or ‘hearty choke’. Some, and it is the majority, as Louis Sainéan has noted, are untranslatable, and will probably remain so. They include: Ans (ens), aruant, arrosé, baudrouse, besifle, bison, bizae, carieux, evaige, fardis, forge, flogie, fressous, graveliffe, grime, grume, hirelialle, hurme, harquer, luezie, mouargie, pirenalle, pogois, quarre, curie, soe, spelican, talle.
One last area must be briefly included, albeit unlikely at first glance. This is the 15th century Mystery plays, such as the Passion (1486) and the Life of St Chistopher. One might not have expected jargon in so august an environment, but, presumably to amuse the groundlings, there were often interpolated scenes in which a pair of characters chattered away in beggars’ slang.about successful robberies and the ups and downs of the marginal life.
4. Hierarchies
La Vie Généreuse (1596)
The Coquillards and Villon offer, as it were, argot glossaries by default. The first conscious effort to categorise the world of the argot and the language that it employed comes thirty years after the English magistrate Thomas Harman had offered c.1566 his Caveat for Common Cursetors, detailing the occupations and vocabulary of England’s ‘Canting Crew’, and contemporaneous with the 1590s ‘coney-catching’ pamphlets of the ne’r-do-well playwright Robert Greene. La Vie généreuse (‘heroic’) des mercelots, gueux, et Boesmiens, contenans leurs facons de vivre, Subtilitez et Gergon (i.e. jargon) was published in 1596. Its pseudonymous author called himself Péchon de Ruby (roughly equivalent to ‘The Smart’ or perhaps ‘Naughty Kid’). Like Harman he lays out a hierarchy of villainy and offers a glossary of criminal argot. And while Harman’s work purported to be culled from the magistrate’s one-to-one interrogations of a variety of villains, Péchon de Ruby’s is presented as pure autobiography. As he explains in his extended title, he is a Breton gentilhomme, who associated with criminals in his youth. A dictionary en langue Blesquien (in the language of criminals) is added, ‘with an explanation in the vulgar tongue’.
La Vie généreuse also differs from Harman in its open celebration of the vagabond life. As he makes clear ‘nostre vie estoit plaisante’ and recounts a picturesque existence, even if there are scenes of horror and cruelty and the gallows, inevitably, casts its lengthy shadow. This picture of a parallel, organised criminal underworld, with its hierarchy and its initiatory rites, not that dissimilar from the fantasy Mafia so beloved of Hollywood, is perhaps, as Jacques Cellard suggests, ‘too good to be true’. It is perhaps a rebellious young man’s fantasy viewed through the roseate lens of middle age.
For the purposes of argot, however, it is worth taking note. Again like Harman and his peers, but quite unlike Villon, Pechon de Ruby sets out to inform. Thus the ‘memoirs’ are filled with argot, but a translation of that argot is included. Useful? Possibly – as Elisha Coles justified his inclusion of cant in his dictionary of 1676 ‘’Tis no Disparagement to understand the Canting Terms: It may chance to save your Throat from being cut, or (at least) your Pocket from being pick’d’ – but equally voyeuristic. It is, as such books were, as much a book of titillatory sensationalism, an embryonic tabloid exposé, as a piece of disinterested research.
It is a relatively new lexicon: the argot of the 15th century had largely vanished, and while the vocabulary of La Vie généreuse remains wholly French, like English canting, its elements have expanded to include traces of German, Italian, Spanish.
The vagabond himself was either the mid-ranked blesche or blesque or the more successful coesme or camelot. The former a diminutive of the Dutch bles, the latter dialect. Both originally meant a fool and a liar and are synonymous with sournois, one who deliberately masks his motives for criminal gain. Alongside them is the pechon, the apprentice.
There were some survivals from jargon, among them anse (ear), artois (bread), comble (hat), fouille and fouillouze (purse), gousser (to eat, note UK guzzle), lime (shirt, from the older linas, linen), razis (priest), and vergne (town).
Other sources included the patois of the Midi (i.e. South) Aquiger, to treat badly, to harm; auzard, an ass; corny, dead from provencal cauni, a sin; pechon,an apprenctice; pihouais, wine. And that of the West brimard, the executioner, lit. one who strikes with a stick (Bas-Maine, brims, a small branch); guelier, the devil; hanois, a horse (Anjou, hare, an old nag); mieille, a woman, corresponding to the Angevin mieille, a female gypsy.
Metaphorical use of standard French accounted for Antcele, mass or church; foigne, war (= fange, mud), and foigniard, a soldier (= fangeux, muddy); franc mitou, God and illness; and sourdu, hanged. Rivage meant sexual intercourse and river to have sex; huré, excellent.
Some, while translatable, are harder to source. Brissart, a cashier, but probably a receiver or ‘fence’, chibre (the penis, possibly linked to Romani chiv, a knife), danlué or daulvé (married) ; dyme (intention); fouquer (to sell or give, whether as commerce or a betrayal); ovende (book), and zerver (crier).
As well as vocabulary Pechon de Ruby establishes, accurately or not, the first hierarchy of crime. At the top stands le Grand Coesre, the king of the beggars and presumably cognate with such rulers as a Caesar or Tsar. ‘A very good-looking man, with the majesty of a great monarch […] and a great beard.’ His coat, if we are to believe the author, consisted of six thousand coins sewn together. Beneath him, the Cagous (‘hooded ones’) his immediate assistants. In addition are some six ‘façons de suyvre la vertu’, in fact far from virtuous, but ways of extracting money from the foolish. Reminscent of the tricks played across the Channel (and doubtless all over Europe), they include begging for money to pay for a vitally needed mass, posing as a once-rich merchant who has lost his money in the war, and faking a variety of alms-extracting illnesses.
Finally, in the true tabloid tradition, Pechon de Ruby, having laid out a world of glamour and excess, concludes with a warning: ‘Ces folies meslees de cautelles, c'est afin que chacun s'en donne garde. In other words, these tricks are dangerous for you (and, he implies, for society), be on your guard.
England’s cant also had its creation myth. Like all such confabulations it was undoubtedly unsound. These purported origins involve a great leader and his community of criminal beggars and the establishment of codes both social and linguistic. In England it was one Cock Lorel, King of the Beggars, who took the leader’s role, bringing his people together at the pleasingly named Devil’s Arse Peak in Derbyshire. However cock lorel means no more than what modernity would term a ‘top villain’, and we must accept that the myth, however appealing, is but a myth.
Le Jargon Reformé (1628)
If Pechon de Ruby had offered a first view of the King of the Beggars and his court, his successor, Oliver Cherau, opened out a far more substantial vista. Chereau, who makes his authorship clear in an acrostic sonnet which spells it out (‘O Argot incomparable, / L’appuy de tous les souffreteurs, / Le confort des misérables, / Indigens et necessiteux / Vive l’Argot [etc.]), describes himself as ‘un pilier en boutanche, qui maquille en la verge de l’ours,’ which, translated from argot means ‘the owner of a shop who trades in wool in the town of Tours’. Comfortable, if not actually rich, he was equally pious, and his other well-known work, published in 1654, was a rhymed history of the leading bishops of his city. Quite how he obtained his lexicon is unknown – it must be assumed that he encountered those ‘merchants’ who were less scrupulous in their dealings than himself as part of his professional life; it is, as far as can be ascertained, an accurate representation. Certainly the author presented it as such, supposedly enlisting the imprimatur of two actual archisuppots, who assured readers that nothing therein contradicted ‘l’Estat […] dite Monarchie Argotique’ and advocated the book as useful and profitable for the instruction of all who wishes to rouscailler bigorne.
It is fitting that the book appeared as one of the 1200 titles that made up the 17th century’s bibliotheque bleue, a series of prototype paperbacks (usually blue), aimed foursquare at the popular market and sold only by small merchants who travelled the roads of France.
The book, or rather pamphlet of some 60 pages, contains a brief preface, explaining, as noted above, the supposed ‘official’ origins of argot, a 10-page A-Z (if not internally perfect) glossary of some 216 terms, a description of the criminal activities of the argotiers, an artificial dialogue between a pair of them, and a variety of additional documents including some songs in argot. Like Harman, he lists in some detail the hierarchy of crime – ‘Les Etats Generaux’ – and their individual specialities, Le Grand Coesre, les Cagous (enforcers of the Grand Coesre’s diktat), les Archisuppots (argot’s version of Académiciens, apostrophised as ‘debauched scholars’), who ran philological herd on the language, discarding worn out terms and adding new ones as necessary), les Orphelins (gangs of feral youths, usually genuine orphans and unashamed robbers who paid ‘a heavy trbute to the gallows’, for their rampaging lifestyle); les Marchandiers (posing as merchants they kicked back an annual tithe), les Ruffez (claiming to have lost their possessions), les Millards (rural con-men), les Malingreux (fake pilgrims), les Piettres (pretending to have broken limbs), les Sabuleux (fake epileptics), les Callots (real or counterfeit sufferers from ringworm), les Coquillards (fake pilgims), les Hubins (claiming to have been savaged by wild animals and suffering thus from rabies), les Polissons (fake madmen, England’s ‘abram-men’, half-naked and adorned with realistic scars and bloodstains), les Francs Mitoux (pretending a shaking sickness), les Capons (cut-purses), les Courtauds des bourtanches (shop-lifters), les Convertis (volunteering to change religion for a price), and les Drilles or Narqois (ex-soldiers turned beggars). All these, other than the last, paid homage (and some of their profits) to the Grand Coesre.
The glossary respresents many of the same preoccupations as do those derived from contemporary English vagabonds. Domestic animals, food and drink, the authorities and their prisons, the gallows, parts of the body, clothing, and so on. In many cases he repeats Pechon de Ruby, but his glossary, like the hierarchy, is rather more structured. And like many slang collectors, he is at pains to show his contemporaneity, offering not merely a list of the latest argotique terms for given items, but dismissive references to their defunct predecessors too.
The Jargon reformé was a success, it sold rapidly and a number of reprints followed, appearing regularly into the 19th century – even if the original vocabulary list was barely understood and most of it rarely used by then. New words were regularly added, reminiscent of the successive editions of the dictionaries of Francis Grose (1785-1823) and John Camden Hotten (1859-74). Unfortunately the last of these, that of Halbert d’Algers in 1849, was, to quote Sainéan, the work of an ignoramus and ‘writhing’ (‘fourmillé’) with errors and so-called ‘argot’ that in fact was anything but; that did not prevent it from being accepted as the slang dictionary of its era.
Two years after Chereau’s pamphlet there appeared, anonymously, la Réponse et complainte au Grand Coesre sur le Jargon de l'Argot réformé by ‘one of the most excellent argotiers of these times’. Like the complaint of ‘Cuthbert Coney-Catcher’ who in 1592 had responded indignantly to the supposed betrayal of his secrets by Robert Greene and whose identity was that of Greene himself, this ‘response’, with much slang but no glossary, may well have been a commercial trick. Certainly one can only read it with the help of a single book: le Jargon reformé.
4. Heroes and Others
Cartouche (1720)
Les Chauffeurs d’Orgères (1795)
With two dedicated dictionaries completed, the collection of argot effectively pauses for the 18th century. In its place one has, again, pair of glossaries dependant on criminal trials. The first is that of Cartouche, a villain whose exploits and escapes delighted France just as his contemporary Jack Sheppard was doing in England, the other following the wholly repellent excesses of the sadistic Chauffeurs d’Orgères, one of the many bands of criminals who took advantage of the chaos that followed the French Revolution.
Louis Dominique Cartouche (‘Cartridge’) seems to have epitomized the charming villain of myth, defying nearly every effort at his capture (and escaping, à la Sheppard, from those that succeeded – other than the last, which ended on the wheel), appearing in high society’s salons to rob the highborn ladies, doubtless with a deep bow and courtly kiss, and delighting the masses who bought his posthumous biography Vies de Cartouche (1723) in their thousands. In 1721, as he lay in chains in the Chatelet prison awaiting his death, two actors from a new play, ‘Cartouche, or the Robbers’ came to see him and pick up linguistic tips (though they opted for relatively little argot in the play as produced). In 1725 appeared a poem, ‘La Vice puni, Cartouche’ by Nicolas Ragot, known as Granval. It was this poem, which included a glossary of argot that is of relevance here.’ Je chante les combats et ce fameux voleurs,’ it began, ‘Qui, par sa vigilance et sa rare valeur, / Fit trembler tout Paris.’ And although it was Ragot who suggested that argot came from Argos, his glossary added a substantial number of new terms to the recorded lexicon. In addition its hero’s popularity ensured that more than ever before, a knowledge of argot entered the public consciousness.
Not that Cartouche’s theatrical incarnation was unique. In 1634 the popular writer Adrien de Montluc, comte de Cramail had presented (but not written) La Comédie des proverbes while a decade later Claude de L’Estoile had a hit, premiered before the Queen mother, entitled l'Intrigue des filous. In both the authors offer scenes of villainous life, larded with argot. But again it was not argot of either man’s invention, nor was there any conscious effort to make it comprehensible.
The Chauffeurs d’Orgères drove nothing. In this context chauffeur is to be taken literally: one who heats (something) up, and among their many cruelties their trademark was burning the soles of their hapless victims’ feet – usually the owners of out-of-the-way farms – in order force them to reveal the whereabouts of hidden treasure. They rejoiced in such pleasingly grand guignol nicknames as ‘Mort aux rats’, ‘Tremble au vent’ and ‘le Chat sourd’. Like that of the Coquillards, the trial of the Chauffeurs, in 1800, revealed not merely their deeds, but their language. And although one of the presecutors, P. Leclair, who compiled a small glossary of their language, claimed that it was theirs alone (and that they could use it safely ‘even among those whom they were about to kill’), it seems in fact to have included Romany and patois. That said, there were a number of new terms, notably bayaffe, a pistol, the semantic equivalent of England’s barker, bonique, an old man, godelay, cider, and ferningant, a plate. Their self-description was at odds with their vicious practice: bijoutiers au clair de la lune (‘jewellers by the light of the moon’).
Pointing up their dedicated barbarity, the Chauffeurs offered not merely one but several terms for murder. To kill with a knife was escarper, to use a blow to the head was escoffier, lit. to knock someone’s cap off, while travailler, ‘to work’, implied that the murder was undertaken as an act of revenge, or in their own terms, of justice. To work (for a living) was turbiner, a word that would last well beyond them, focussing by the 19th century on a single job: prostitution. An inn was a piaule, a room a cambriole. A town, as it had been for two centuries, remained a vergne. Some words, at least as to etymology, remain obscure: boaisse (a prostitute), bridou (a coin), crôle (proud), dague or savate (a hen), jorer (to talk), rivet (a hole), and tiche (the road).
Eighty-two Chauffeurs faced trial, 37 of them women. Twenty men and three women went to the guillotine, all but 19 of the remainder were jailed.
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By the mid-19th century the line between argot and la langue populaire would become harder to draw. Vidocq’s books (the second of which may have been ghost-written) made the crossover clear. The rest of the century would see a variety of books in which this trend was accentuated. Such artficial ‘languages’ as louchebem or largonji (both forms of ‘Pig Latin’) and in time the backslang known as verlan (l’invers, backwards) would further muddy the waters. If one believes Albert Simonin, l’argot, whether as a collection of human beings or as a form of criminal jargon, did not survive World War II.
But argot, whether in its original sense, or in the general definition that has succeeded it in modern dictionaries, continues unabated. Hugo having had the first words, let Balzac, in his Essai philosophique, linguistique et littéraire sur l'argot, les filles et les voleurs (1838), have the last: ‘It may astonish many people but there is no more energetic and colourful language in the world… Argot keeps coming, from everywhere. It follows civilizations, it grasps on to them, it enriches them.’