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Examples of Travellers' cant; names for different groups of...

Date September 1955
Track ID 74607
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1955.155.A3

Original Tape ID

SA1955.155

Summary

Examples of Travellers' cant; names for different groups of Travellers.

Cant comes from the Romany Gypsies, but has spread over time. The showmen and Gypsies can all understand each other, wherever they come from in the British Isles. The contributor's mother could speak nothing else. He sees little difference between Romany and cant. Hamish Henderson is doubtful and asks the contributor for some words:

fire: glimmer
bread and butter: habben [food] or smout and penum
a horse: gry
a milking cow: grazier
a straw: strammel
a byre: ganzie
a camp: wattle
a tent: hamesiers.

The Perthshire Travellers call the Aberdeenshire ones 'meal and milk eaters' and are called in return 'pork eaters' or 'scrubber makers'. The contributor agrees that they are also called 'raucheries' - very coarse people. Those in the north of Perthshire are the 'brochans' or 'brochan Stewarts'.

Item Notes

'Habben' and 'gry' are Romany words adopted into cant. With 'ganzie' (more usually 'granzie') cf. Romany gran 'a barn'. The Romany for bread is 'pani'.

See:
'Romano Lavo-Lil. Word-Book of the Romany, or, English Gypsy Language' (George Borrow, 1874)
'A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English' (Eric Partridge, 8th edition revised Paul Beale, 1984)
'The Scottish National Dictionary' (available online [[http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/]], accessed 8 December 2009)
'Folk Songs of Britain and Ireland' (Peter Kennedy, 1975) Glossary

Language

English

Genre

Information

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Fair