第 二百五十四 章 · ROOTS

Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness.

Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is bidden

to its most poignant meditations, in the presence of that enigmatic

dialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisement

made visible. Every syllable has an air of being marked. The words of

the vulgar tongue appear therein wrinkled and shrivelled, as it were,

beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking.

Such and such a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of

a thief branded with the fleur-de-lys, which has suddenly been laid

bare. Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which

are fugitives from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that

one feels that it has worn the iron neck-fetter.

Moreover, in spite of all this, and because of all this, this strange

dialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial case

of pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well as

for the gold medal, and which is called literature. Slang, whether the

public admit the fact or not has its syntax and its poetry. It is a

language. Yes, by the deformity of certain terms, we recognize the fact

that it was chewed by Mandrin, and by the splendor of certain

metonymies, we feel that Villon spoke it.

That exquisite and celebrated verse—

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

But where are the snows of years gone by?

is a verse of slang. _Antan—ante annum_—is a word of Thunes slang,

which signified the past year, and by extension, _formerly_.

Thirty-five years ago, at the epoch of the departure of the great

chain-gang, there could be read in one of the cells at Bicêtre, this

maxim engraved with a nail on the wall by a king of Thunes condemned to

the galleys: _Les dabs d’antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du

Coësre_. This means _Kings in days gone by always went and had

themselves anointed_. In the opinion of that king, anointment meant the

galleys.

The word _décarade_, which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles at

a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it is worthy of him. This word,

which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterly

onomatopœia the whole of La Fontaine’s admirable verse:—

Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche.

Six stout horses drew a coach.

From a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove more

curious and fruitful than the study of slang. It is a whole language

within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graft

which has produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in the

old Gallic trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls all over one side

of the language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar

aspect of slang. But, for those who study the tongue as it should be

studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears

like a veritable alluvial deposit. According as one digs a longer or

shorter distance into it, one finds in slang, below the old popular

French, Provençal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the

Mediterranean ports, English and German, the Romance language in its

three varieties, French, Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin, and

finally Basque and Celtic. A profound and unique formation. A

subterranean edifice erected in common by all the miserable. Each

accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering has dropped its

stone there, each heart has contributed its pebble. A throng of evil,

base, or irritated souls, who have traversed life and have vanished

into eternity, linger there almost entirely visible still beneath the

form of some monstrous word.

Do you want Spanish? The old Gothic slang abounded in it. Here is

_boffete_, a box on the ear, which is derived from _bofeton; vantane_,

window (later on _vanterne_), which comes from _vantana; gat_, cat,

which comes from _gato; acite_, oil, which comes from _aceyte_. Do you

want Italian? Here is _spade_, sword, which comes from _spada; carvel_,

boat, which comes from _caravella_. Do you want English? Here is

_bichot_, which comes from _bishop; raille_, spy, which comes from

_rascal, rascalion; pilche_, a case, which comes from _pilcher_, a

sheath. Do you want German? Here is the _caleur_, the waiter,

_kellner_; the _hers_, the master, _herzog_ (duke). Do you want Latin?

Here is _frangir_, to break, _frangere; affurer_, to steal, _fur;

cadene_, chain, _catena_. There is one word which crops up in every

language of the continent, with a sort of mysterious power and

authority. It is the word _magnus_; the Scotchman makes of it his

_mac_, which designates the chief of the clan; Mac-Farlane,

Mac-Callumore, the great Farlane, the great Callumore41; slang turns it

into _meck_ and later _le meg_, that is to say, God. Would you like

Basque? Here is _gahisto_, the devil, which comes from _gaïztoa_, evil;

_sorgabon_, good night, which comes from _gabon_, good evening. Do you

want Celtic? Here is _blavin_, a handkerchief, which comes from

_blavet_, gushing water; _ménesse_, a woman (in a bad sense), which

comes from _meinec_, full of stones; _barant_, brook, from _baranton_,

fountain; _goffeur_, locksmith, from _goff_, blacksmith; _guedouze_,

death, which comes from _guenn-du_, black-white. Finally, would you

like history? Slang calls crowns _les maltèses_, a souvenir of the coin

in circulation on the galleys of Malta.

In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses

other and still more natural roots, which spring, so to speak, from the

mind of man itself.

In the first place, the direct creation of words. Therein lies the

mystery of tongues. To paint with words, which contains figures one

knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation of all human

languages, what may be called their granite.

Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words

created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom, without

etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous,

sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power of

expression and which live. The executioner, _le taule_; the forest, _le

sabri_; fear, flight, _taf_; the lackey, _le larbin_; the mineral, the

prefect, the minister, _pharos_; the devil, _le rabouin_. Nothing is

stranger than these words which both mask and reveal. Some, _le

rabouin_, for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and

produce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace.

In the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is

desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in

figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a

stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom

is more metaphorical than slang: _dévisser le coco_ (to unscrew the

nut), to twist the neck; _tortiller_ (to wriggle), to eat; _être

gerbé_, to be tried; _a rat_, a bread thief; _il lansquine_, it rains,

a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which

assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting

pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the

popular expression: it rains halberds. Sometimes, in proportion as

slang progresses from the first epoch to the second, words pass from

the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense. The devil

ceases to be _le rabouin_, and becomes _le boulanger_ (the baker), who

puts the bread into the oven. This is more witty, but less grand,

something like Racine after Corneille, like Euripides after Æschylus.

Certain slang phrases which participate in the two epochs and have at

once the barbaric character and the metaphorical character resemble

phantasmagories. _Les sorgueuers vont solliciter des gails à la

lune_—the prowlers are going to steal horses by night,—this passes

before the mind like a group of spectres. One knows not what one sees.

In the third place, the expedient. Slang lives on the language. It uses

it in accordance with its fancy, it dips into it hap-hazard, and it

often confines itself, when occasion arises, to alter it in a gross and

summary fashion. Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed

and complicated with words of pure slang, picturesque phrases are

formed, in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding

elements, the direct creation and the metaphor: _le cab jaspine, je

marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri_, the dog is

barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the

woods. _Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussière, la fée est

bative_, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the

daughter is pretty. Generally, to throw listeners off the track, slang

confines itself to adding to all the words of the language without

distinction, an ignoble tail, a termination in _aille_, in _orgue_, in

_iergue_, or in _uche_. Thus: _Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce

gigotmuche?_ Do you think that leg of mutton good? A phrase addressed

by Cartouche to a turnkey in order to find out whether the sum offered

for his escape suited him.

The termination in _mar_ has been added recently.

Slang, being the dialect of corruption, quickly becomes corrupted

itself. Besides this, as it is always seeking concealment, as soon as

it feels that it is understood, it changes its form. Contrary to what

happens with every other vegetation, every ray of light which falls

upon it kills whatever it touches. Thus slang is in constant process of

decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which never

pauses. It passes over more ground in ten years than a language in ten

centuries. Thus _le larton_ (bread) becomes _le lartif; le gail_

(horse) becomes _le gaye; la fertanche_ (straw) becomes _la fertille;

le momignard_ (brat), _le momacque; les fiques_ (duds), _frusques; la

chique_ (the church), _l’égrugeoir; le colabre_ (neck), _le colas_. The

devil is at first, _gahisto_, then _le rabouin_, then _the baker_; the

priest is a _ratichon_, then the boar (_le sanglier_); the dagger is

_le vingt-deux_ (twenty-two), then _le surin_, then _le lingre_; the

police are _railles_, then _roussins_, then _rousses_, then _marchands

de lacets_ (dealers in stay-laces), then _coquers_, then _cognes_; the

executioner is _le taule_, then _Charlot, l’atigeur_, then _le

becquillard_. In the seventeenth century, to fight was “to give each

other snuff”; in the nineteenth it is “to chew each other’s throats.”

There have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes.

Cartouche’s talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire. All the words of

this language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utter

them.

Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement, the

ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more. It has its

headquarters where it maintains its sway. The Temple preserved the

slang of the seventeenth century; Bicêtre, when it was a prison,

preserved the slang of Thunes. There one could hear the termination in

_anche_ of the old Thuneurs. _Boyanches-tu_ (bois-tu), do you drink?

But perpetual movement remains its law, nevertheless.

If the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes of

observation, this language which is incessantly evaporating, he falls

into doleful and useful meditation. No study is more efficacious and

more fecund in instruction. There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in

slang, which does not contain a lesson. Among these men, to beat means

to feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength.

For them, the idea of the man is not separated from the idea of

darkness. The night is called _la sorgue_; man, _l’orgue_. Man is a

derivative of the night.

They have taken up the practice of considering society in the light of

an atmosphere which kills them, of a fatal force, and they speak of

their liberty as one would speak of his health. A man under arrest is a

_sick man_; one who is condemned is a _dead man_.

The most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls in which

he is buried, is a sort of glacial chastity, and he calls the dungeon

the _castus_. In that funereal place, life outside always presents

itself under its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons on his

feet; you think, perhaps, that his thought is that it is with the feet

that one walks? No; he is thinking that it is with the feet that one

dances; so, when he has succeeded in severing his fetters, his first

idea is that now he can dance, and he calls the saw the _bastringue_

(public-house ball).—A name is a centre; profound assimilation.—The

ruffian has two heads, one of which reasons out his actions and leads

him all his life long, and the other which he has upon his shoulders on

the day of his death; he calls the head which counsels him in crime _la

sorbonne_, and the head which expiates it _la tronche_.—When a man has

no longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart, when

he has arrived at that double moral and material degradation which the

word blackguard characterizes in its two acceptations, he is ripe for

crime; he is like a well-whetted knife; he has two cutting edges, his

distress and his malice; so slang does not say a blackguard, it says

_un réguisé_.—What are the galleys? A brazier of damnation, a hell. The

convict calls himself a _fagot_.—And finally, what name do malefactors

give to their prison? The _college_. A whole penitentiary system can be

evolved from that word.

Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the

galleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary _lirlonfa_,

have had their birth?

Let him listen to what follows:—

There existed at the Châtelet in Paris a large and long cellar. This

cellar was eight feet below the level of the Seine. It had neither

windows nor air-holes, its only aperture was the door; men could enter

there, air could not. This vault had for ceiling a vault of stone, and

for floor ten inches of mud. It was flagged; but the pavement had

rotted and cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the

floor, a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation

from side to side; from this beam hung, at short distances apart,

chains three feet long, and at the end of these chains there were rings

for the neck. In this vault, men who had been condemned to the galleys

were incarcerated until the day of their departure for Toulon. They

were thrust under this beam, where each one found his fetters swinging

in the darkness and waiting for him.

The chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands,

caught the unhappy wretches by the throat. They were rivetted and left

there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. They

remained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam,

almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach their bread, jug,

or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg, filth flowing to their

very calves, broken asunder with fatigue, with thighs and knees giving

way, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to obtain

some rest, unable to sleep except when standing erect, and awakened

every moment by the strangling of the collar; some woke no more. In

order to eat, they pushed the bread, which was flung to them in the

mud, along their leg with their heel until it reached their hand.

How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months

sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys.

Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this

sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they

went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, they

sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters

of Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could be heard before

the sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who had gone

through the prison-cellar of the Châtelet, said: “It was the rhymes

that kept me up.” Uselessness of poetry. What is the good of rhyme?

It is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had their birth.

It is from the dungeon of the Grand-Châtelet of Paris that comes the

melancholy refrain of the Montgomery galley: _“Timaloumisaine,

timaloumison.”_ The majority of these songs are melancholy; some are

gay; one is tender:—

Icicaille est la theatre

Du petit dardant.

Here is the theatre

Of the little archer (Cupid).

Do what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heart

of man, love.

In this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret is

the thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches,

is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear

from each member of this fierce community something of his own

personality. To inform against, in the energetic slang dialect, is

called: “to eat the bit.” As though the informer drew to himself a

little of the substance of all and nourished himself on a bit of each

one’s flesh.

What does it signify to receive a box on the ear? Commonplace metaphor

replies: “It is to see thirty-six candles.” Here slang intervenes and

takes it up: Candle, _camoufle_. Thereupon, the ordinary tongue gives

_camouflet_42 as the synonym for _soufflet_. Thus, by a sort of

infiltration from below upwards, with the aid of metaphor, that

incalculable, trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the Academy;

and Poulailler saying: “I light my _camoufle_,” causes Voltaire to

write: “Langleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred _camouflets_.”

Researches in slang mean discoveries at every step. Study and

investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point of

intersection of regular society with society which is accursed.

The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I,

whoever passes by; _le pantre_. (_Pan_, everybody.)

Slang is language turned convict.

That the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low, that it

can be dragged and pinioned there by obscure tyrannies of fatality,

that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, is

sufficient to create consternation.

Oh, poor thought of miserable wretches!

Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that

darkness? Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the

liberator, the immense rider of Pegasi and hippogriffs, the combatant

of heroes of the dawn who shall descend from the azure between two

wings, the radiant knight of the future? Will she forever summon in

vain to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she

condemned to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of

the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the

hideous water of that dragon’s head, that maw streaked with foam, and

that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain

there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that

terrible approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering,

dishevelled, wringing its arms, forever chained to the rock of night, a

sombre Andromeda white and naked amid the shadows!