It may be nothing, but I was working recently with the terms 'higgler' and
'badger', the former having taken over from the latter sometime in the 17th
century but both seeming to mean a merchant from the lower classes; someone
inherently untrustworthy. Would be interesting if higgling was derived from
a proper name. I guess Higgen is a not-unusual Irish/tinker name, though?
And speaking of furry creatures, it seems more likely that brock-type
badgers get their name from merchant-badgers than the other way round.
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Robin Hamilton
> Sent: 29 August 2007 00:28
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Rodent's Return
>
> From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > Oh pretty please!
> >
> > KMight even be some cheese in it for you.
>
> Ah, thought you at least might be interested in a Restoration playwright.
>
> Relevant bit is spoken by one Higgen, in an attempt to prove himself
worthy
> of Poverty. I think ...
>
> (... as I haven't read the whole of the play (yet) -- or, indeed, anything
> by
> Thomas Randolph. Have you come across it or him, Mark? Supposed to be a
> translatiuon of Aristophanes. I cherry-picked the passage via a cite in
the
> OED.)
>
> Hig.:
> Attend, attend; I Higgen the grand Oratour.
> Begin to yawn, lend me your Asses ears;
> Give auscultation. Higgen , whose Pike-staffe Rhetorick,
> Makes all the world obey your Excellence
> By cudgelling them with Crab-tree eloquence.
> By lusty Doxies, there's not a Quire Cove,
> Nobler then I in all the bowsing Kens
> That are twixt Hockly 'ith' hole and Islington .
> By these good stampers, upper and neather Duds;
> Ile nip from Ruffmans of the Harmanbeck ,
> Though glimmer'd in the fambles, I cly the chates:
> I'le stand the Pad or Mill, the Churches deneir.
> Nip bungs, dupp gibbers leager, lowze and bowse.
> Liggen in strommel, in darkmans for pannum
> Should the grand Ruffian come to mill me, I
> VVould scorn to shuttle from my Poverty.
>
> -- Most of this is simply a rehash of Thomas Harman's _Caveat for Common
> Cursitors_ of 1567, but in a couple of places, I'm not sure whether
Randolph
> is doing something new, or simply making a total cock-up of Harman, one
> hundred years on. The latter, I think.
>
> "Though glimmer'd in the fambles, I cly the chates" -- gliim(er)ed in the
> fambles means, probably, branded on the hand, but "cly the chates" -- take
> the gallows? Bloody hell ...
>
> Not helped since "chates" is an unusual word for gallows -- usually it's
> "nubbing cheat" (which occurs as late as "The Night Before Larry Was
> Stretched", I think) -- but is used by Harman and Dekker.
>
> The passage -- I think it's the only bit in cant in the play -- would be
> more interesting if Thomas Randolph actually seemed to know what he was
> doing, but as most if not all of the cant he uses here is already a
hundred
> years old, this seems more than doubtful.
>
> Occam's razor suggests that it's simply a screw-up. Like "dupp gibbers
> leager" -- "dup" means "[to] open", but after that ... <sigh>
>
> R.
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