Welcome Patrons,

We often trawl the internet looking for interesting texts, and we first came upon this as part of an old book on cant song called Musa Pedestris, and attributed to W.E. Henley, 1888 as “Villon’s Straight Tip to all Cross Coves”. Cant means slang, and the idea of secret languages, particularly those of the lower classes, interests us greatly. Here are the lyrics, with some attempt (via YouTube) to decipher the text.

Screeve is glossed as “forge,” but it can also mean “draw on the sidewalk with colored chalk.” Cheap-jack refers to offering (usually cheap) merchandise for sale at an inflated price, and then granting “discounts” on it. The broads are playing cards, and faking them is cheating at cards. Figging is the same as gingering: thrusting a piece of peeled ginger root into a horse’s rectum to make it raise its tail and acts nervous, so it looks “spirited” when you sell it.

Thimble-rigging is the shell game, using thimbles rather than shells. To knap a yack is to steal a watch. A snide is a false coin, and a rag is a banknote— in this case, a counterfeit one. To duff is to disguise used goods as new. To nose is to spy on someone, and to lag is to turn them in to the police – that is, this is being a stool pigeon. Melting is squandering-in this case, one’s ill-gotten gains; multy supposedly means “bloody”. The blowens are whores; that is, as Villon wrote, it all goes to the taverns and the girls.

A fiddle is a dishonest way of acquiring goods – for example, delivery drivers having packages “fall off” their trucks are fiddling. Mace is another word for swindling, often involving getting credit and not paying up (for example, on gambling debts). Macking is pimping or pandering. To moskeneer is to pawn something for more than it’s really worth. Flashing the drag is cross-dressing. To dead-lurk is to get into people’s houses while they’re at divine services; to do a crack is to break in by force. A slang is a travelling show, and chucking a mag is highway robbery. Bonnetting is shoving someone’s hat down over their eyes. To mump is to beg house to house. The tats are dice, and mark the spot is putting down a marker in billiards. A stag is a shilling; but a stag apparently is also someone who buys stock offerings, not to hold them as an investment, but to resell them immediately at a profit, which might be related.

The square could be the town square, where honest businesses hang out their signs; but being “on the square” is also being honest. But “flag” can also mean apron, so this could be a reference to Freemasonry: Masons wear aprons and talk of building “on the square and on the level.” A

penny-a-liner is a writer who provides short filler pieces for newspapers; the mummers are mimes or stage actors, and to mug and gag is to make exaggerated facial expressions and to adlib dialogue. Dibbs are gambling counters or money, and goblins are sovereigns, gold coins denominated as one pound. To stravag or stravaig is to wander aimlessly. Graft suggests corruption or fraud to us, but in the slang of the time it meant a trade or just hard work in general.

To be up the spout is to be pawned, wipes are handkerchiefs, and tickers are watches; so these lines are about pawning watches and (presumably expensive) handkerchiefs. Charley Wag was the title character of one of the first penny dreadfuls, written by Charles Henry Ross, about a boy burgler; to “play the Charley Wag” was to be truant or to run away, so this line is about pawning whatever goods you have and then going away. The squeezer is the noose (the interpretation as “the stocks” isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the stocks were no longer used in the late 19th century) and scrag is “neck.” So “until you’re hanged, you’ll spend everything on liquor and whores.”

The main thrust of the song being that women and booze is the inevitable ruin of men, and reflects attitudes of the time. But the idea stems from the text that W.E. Henley based his poem on, that of 15th century French criminal-turned-poet, François Villon: “Tous aux tavernes et aux filles”. Villon could well deserve a future deep dive himself, his theme of private jokes and thieves’ cant carried on by W.E. Henley reflecting an eventful life well-lived in the criminal underworld of France.

With thanks to our YouTube community for the comments.