Strolling mort

Imagining the conversation of the gypsies he sees walking on the Sandymount Strand, Stephen mulls some language he has encountered in a book published in the 17th century in London, Richard Head's The Canting Academy. All of the unfamiliar words and phrases in the paragraph about the "red Egyptians" in Proteus, as well as the verse quatrain that follows it, come from a song reproduced in this book, "The Rogue's Delight in Praise of his Strolling Mort." The lecherous quatrain returns to accost Cissy Caffrey in Circe.

Richard Head was an Irish native who came to England as a boy. He attended Oxford for a time until poverty forced him to leave, and he lived much of his adult life in London. His novel The English Rogue, a picaresque adventure inspired by Spanish models, sold brilliantly in five editions in the 1660s, and someone (perhaps Head, perhaps not) added three more volumes of adventures in the 1670s. The book probably influenced Defoe's Moll Flanders, a work which sought to document and translate the "thieves' cant" or "rogues' cant" of the 17th century English criminal underclass. In 1673 Head published The Canting Academy, which did much the same thing.

Stephen has been reading this book. When he sees two "red Egyptians" on the beach, one male and one female, he uses Head's language to characterize them: "With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort." "Mort," a term for a female Traveler or gypsy, can be found in the poem, and in prose Head describes the type: "Strowling-Morts are such as pretend to be Widdows, travelling about from County to County, making laces upon [st]aves, as Beggars tape, or the like; they are subtil Queans, hard-hearted, light-fingered, hypocritical and dissembling, and very dangerous to meet, if any Ruffler or Rogue be in their company" (86). In this instance the mort does have a ruffler or rogue in her company (a "ruffian") and Stephen imagines her as a light-fingered thief lugging about her takings: "Spoils slung at her back."

Calling up another phrase from the poem, he thinks, "bing awast to Romeville"—go away to London. "Rome," or "rum," means good, excellent, top-notch. Stephen uses it a second time near the end of the paragraph when, anticipating his judgment that the thieves' cant is "Language no whit worse" than Aquinas's fancy Latin, he thinks, "Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell!" "Buss" is not cant at all, but a good archaic English word for "kiss" used occasionally by Spenser and Shakespeare. The phrase "dimber wapping dell," however, meaning "pretty loving girl" or "lovely fucking wench," comes from the poem. Here is the complete text, with boldface highlighting of the parts that Stephen recalls and bracketed English equivalents of cant terms:

The Rogue's Delight in Praise of his Strolling Mort

Doxy oh! Thy Glaziers shine  [Wench] [eyes]
As Glymmar by the Salomon,  [Fire] [Mass]
No Gentry Mort hath prats like thine  [Gentlewoman] [thighs] 
No Cove e're wap'd with such a one.     [Fellow] [made love]  

White thy fambles, red thy gan,  [hands] [mouth]
And thy quarrons dainty is, [body] 
Couch a hogshead with me than, [Lie down] [then] 
In the Darkmans clip and kiss. [Night] [embrace]  

What though I no Togeman wear,  [Cloak]
Nor Commission, Mish, or slate,  [Shirt] [Chemise] [sheet]
Store of strummel wee'l have here.  [Plenty of straw]
And i'th' Skipper lib in state.   [Barn] [sleep]

Wapping thou I know dost love,  [Copulating]
Else the Ruffin cly thee Mort,  [Devil] [Wench]
From thy stampers then remove  [feet]
Thy Drawers and let's prig in sport.   [Stockings] [ride in sport]

When the Lightmans up do's call  [Sun] 
Margery Prater from her nest,  [The hen] 
And her Cackling cheats with all [Chickens] [withal]   
In a Boozing-Ken wee'l feast.   [Tippling-house]

There if Lour we want I'l mill  [Money] [steal ]
A Gage or nip for thee a bung,  [Pot] [nab] [purse] 
Rum booz thou shalt booz thy fill  [Excellent liquor]
And crash a Grunting cheat that's young.   [crunch a Pig]  

Bing awast to Rome-vile then  [Go away] [London] 
O my dimber wapping Dell,  [pretty loving Wench] Wee'l heave a booth and dock agen  [rob] [house] [fuck again] 
Then trining scape and all is well. [hanging escape]

John Hunt 2015