[Illustration: Fig. 380.--Beggar playing the Fiddle, and his Wife
accompanying him with the Bones.--From an old Engraving of the Seventeenth
Century.]
At these assemblies, as well as in the Cours des Miracles, French was not
spoken, but a strange and artificial language was used called _jargon_,
_langue matoise, narquois_, &c. This language, which is still in use under
the name of _argot_, or slang, had for the most part been borrowed from
the jargon or slang of the lower orders. To a considerable extent,
according to the learned philologist of this mysterious language, M.
Francisque Michel, it was composed of French words lengthened or
abbreviated; of proverbial expressions; of words expressing the symbols of
things instead of the things themselves; of terms either intentionally or
unintentionally altered from their true meaning; and of words which
resembled other words in sound, but which had not the same signification.
Thus, for mouth, they said _pantiere_, from _pain_ (bread), which they put
into it; the arms were _lyans_ (binders); an ox was a _cornant_ (horned);
a purse, a _fouille_, or _fouillouse_; a cock, a _horloge_, or timepiece;
the legs, _des quilles_ (nine-pins); a sou, a _rond_, or round thing; the
eyes, _des luisants_ (sparklers), &c. In jargon several words were also
taken from the ancient language of the gipsies, which testifies to the
part which these vagabonds played in the formation of the Argotic
community. For example, a shirt was called _lime_; a chambermaid,
_limogere;_ sheets, _limans_--words all derived from the gipsy word
_lima_, a shirt: they called an ecu, a _rusquin_ or _rougesme_, from
_rujia_, the common word for money; a rich man, _rupin_; a house, _turne_;
a knife, _chourin_, from _rup, turna_, and _chori_, which, in the gipsy
tongue, mean respectively silver, castle, and knife.
|