Cockney English

“ The English easily come next to Americans as beggars, especially when England is represented by the Cockney. He will often attain his ends after failing in a cross-examination and discovered in a lie; for his witty excuses and peculiar manner of expression are not to be resisted by Americans. Even the Irish-Americans, who are so bitter against Englishmen, make an exception of a Cockney, because of his witty talk and his disinclination to be serious. ”

“ MISTAKES ABOUT SCOTLAND
(Contributed by a Converted Cockney)
It is a mistake to believe that every Scotchman, when he goes to Edinburgh, immediately walks down Princes Street clad in the ancient costume of the Highlanders.
It is a mistake to believe that the pièce de résistance at every Scotch dinner-party is a haggis.
It is a mistake to believe that a Scotchman does not enjoy a joke every bit as much as an Englishman.
It is a mistake to believe that a Scotch Sabbath in the country is a whit more triste than an English Sunday in the provinces. ”

“ All slang phrases are for the same reason vulgar; but there is nothing vulgar in the common English idiom. Simplicity is not vulgarity; but the looking to affectation of any sort for distinction is. A cockney is a vulgar character, whose imagination cannot wander beyond the suburbs of the metropolis: so is a fellow who is always thinking of the High-street, Edinburgh. We want a name for this last character. An opinion is vulgar that is stewed in the rank breath of the rabble: nor is it a bit purer or more refined for having passed through the well cleansed teeth of a whole court. ”

“ An Awkward Name.—'Arry, on a marine excursion, hearing mention made of the two sea-birds the great auk and the little auk, inquired if the little auk was a sparrow-'awk.
"He is the greatest liar on (H) earth," as the Cockney said of the lap-dog he often saw lying before the fire.
[Pg 17]
The Vernacular.
"Yer know that young Germin feller as come ter sty in our 'ouse six months agow? Well, w'en fust 'e come, I give yer my word'e didn' know nothink but 'is own lengwidge; but we bin learnin' 'im English, an' now e' can speak it puffick—jes' the sime as wot you an' me can." ”

“ All the same, if I were to attempt to represent current "smart" cockney speech as I have attempted to represent Drinkwater's, without the niceties of Mr. Sweet's Romic alphabets, I am afraid I should often have to write dahn tahn and cowcow as being at least nearer to the actual sound than down town and cocoa. And this would give such offence that I should have to leave the country; for nothing annoys a native speaker of English more than a faithful setting down in phonetic spelling of the sounds he utters. ”

“ A great many of them do not speak English; they speak British, a very different thing. An Englishwoman of breeding has a wonderful speaking voice; as pure as a Boston woman's and more liquid; as soft as a Southern woman's and with more attention paid to the R's. But the Cockney type—Wowie! During a carriage ride in Florence with a mixed company of tourists I chanced to say something of a complimentary nature about something English, and a little London-bred woman spoke up and said: "Thenks! ”

“ When he arrived abreast of us he shouted in very good English: "It's a long way to Tipperary, boys, isn't it?" This was promptly answered by a Cockney in the crowd: "Yus! And it's a ruddy long way to Paris, ain't it?"—C. A. Cooke, O.B.E. (late R.N.D.) , 34 Brandram Road, Lee High Road, S.E.
A Prisoner has the Last Laugh
Scene: A small ward in Cologne Fortress, occupied by about twelve British prisoners of war.
Time: The German M.O.'s inspection. Action: The new sentry on guard in the corridor had orders that all must stand on the M.O.'s entry. Seeing the M.O. coming, he called out to us. ”

“ Such being the universal condition of the world, we should rather be proud than otherwise, that, in England, we can boast of a secondary tribe, made, perhaps, by some of nature's journeymen, but that yet imitate humanity so respectably, so amiably, and so amusingly, as the Cockney must be admitted to do.
A Cockney is by locality very much what a tailor is by trade. Though a remote sub-multiple of a man, he is enterprising, indefatigable, cutting his way to his object through every thing with a ready tongue and a quick wit. ”

“ Noiselessly surmounting the barbed wire, we crept up to him and in a second Ginger was on him. Pointing his bayonet in Fritz's back, he said, "Nah, then, you blighter, show us the way 'ome."
Very coolly and without the slightest trace of fear, the German replied in perfect English, "I suppose you mean me to lead you to the British trenches."
"Oh!" said Ginger, "so yer speak English, do yer?"
"Yes," said the German, "I was a waiter at a restaurant in Piccadilly before the War."
"Piccadilly, eh? You're just the feller we want. ”

“ Now I hold this Frenchman to be quite a genius in his way. He sees the leading foible of the people with whom he has to deal, and humours them to the top of their bent. Many a cadaverous Cockney has he dismissed from his apartment exulting and frolicsome in spirit, and convinced in his inmost soul that he has now some tangible connexion with the aristocracy, and may possibly be able to persuade some country chambermaid that he is the scion of a noble house. ”

“ There were fully a score of Americans in the crowd, the non-sailors being 'tramps royal,' the men whose 'mate is the wind that tramps the world.' They were all cheerful, facing things with the pluck which is their chief characteristic and which seems never to desert them, withal they were cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing. The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion. ”

“ It is wonderful, however, to see with what success a Cockney can sometimes disguise himself. He will write you a book, in which, several pages on end, you think you are reading the thoughts of some ordinary mortal. ”

“ In short, I suspect that Cockney things have become commonplace because there has been so long lacking in them a certain savour of sacrifice and peril, which there has been in the nursery tale, for all its innocence, and which there has been in the Parisian street, for all its iniquity. ”

“ Should he by chance be found there, rest assured it is in some mongrel state: some Britisher with the ravishing strain of the hilarious, inconsequential, romantic Irish; or the Odyssean strain of the Italian cavalier or Spanish hidalgo’s blood pulsing in his veins. Though, stay—there was one, by name Bill Grimes, a representative of the much-abused Cockney.
Men have toiled over the inscrutable wonders of Cockneyism. The short clay pipe, the black teeth, the perky shuffle of vile impertinence and blasphemous oaths have bedecked many a novelist’s pages with inky crime. ”

“ His hard strong face was calm, the eyes level and steady, and, more significant, the hands and fingers quiet and reposeful. Studying his friend, John Bull noticed the absence of any symptoms of excitement, nervousness, or anxiety. There was no moistening of lips, no working of jaw muscles, no change of posture, no quickening of speech. It was the same old Buck, large, lazy, and lethargic, with the same humorous eye, the same measured drawl, the same quaint turn of speech. In striking contrast with the immobility of the American, was the obvious excitement of the Cockney. ”

“ He cares little about his own advantages, if he can only make a jest at yours. Every feeling comes to him through a medium of levity and impertinence; nor does he like to have this habit of mind disturbed by being brought into collision with any thing serious or respectable. He despairs (in such a crowd of competitors) of distinguishing himself, but laughs heartily at the idea of being able to trip up the heels of other people’s pretensions. A Cockney feels no gratitude. ”

“ The illiterate do not quote melodrama; melodrama quotes them.
Again and again this has been proved in London police-courts. When the emotions are roused, the Cockney does not pick his words and alight carefully on something he heard at the theatre last week; nor does he become sullen and abashed. He becomes violently vocal. He speaks out of himself. Although he seldom enters a church, the grip of the church is so tightly upon him that you may, as it were, see its knuckles standing in white relief when he speaks of solemn affairs. ”

“ The provincial cockney, poor thing, imagines himself in the forefront of style, but he is merely a caricature of the London cockney plus his own accent, which, wedded to cockney slang, is peculiarly offensive. ”

“ The other story-teller, again, was a Wapping man; a lively, impudent young Cockney, who had the most miraculous faculty of telling lies—not only palpable lies, but lies absolutely impossible: yet they were so sublimely told often, and he contrived to lug into them such a quantity of gorgeous tinsel ornament, as, in his happier efforts, decidedly to carry the day against his opponent. The London hand had seen life too, of which, with respect to what is called the world, his competitor was as ignorant as a child. ”

“ Near the close of his life Hunt wrote: “The jests about London and the Cockneys did not affect me in the least, as far as my faith was concerned. They might as well have said that Hampstead was not beautiful, or Richmond lovely; or that Chaucer and Milton were Cockneys when they went out of London to lie on the grass and look at the daisies. The Cockney School is the most illustrious in England; for, to say nothing of Pope and Gray, who were both veritable Cockneys, ‘born within the sound of Bow Bell,’ Milton was so too; and Chaucer and Spenser were both natives of the city. ”

“ Cockney dialect is closely akin to Kentish, and abounds in venerable verbal relics: “The stranger enters, but he nonetheless pays his toll; he does not leave any mark on London, but London leaves an indelible stamp upon him. The children of the foreigner, the children of the Yorkshireman or Lancastrian, belong in speech neither to Yorkshire nor Lancashire, they become more Cockney than the Cockneys ”

“ But not the piece of shrapnel that came out when he withdrew his hand from inside his tunic!
"The only thing that ever I had sent me—and that from Jerry!" says Jack. "We was always taught to love our enemies!"
They sure loved us, for shortly after I received my little gift of love, which put me to by-by for several months. But that Cockney lad from East London never grumbled at his hard lot. He looked at me, his corporal, and no wonder he clung round my neck, for he has told me since the war that he was only sixteen then. A brave lad!—D. C. Maskell (late 20th Battn. Middlesex Regt.) ”

“ Cockney youth, with fantastic picturesque tendencies as to dress, and crude love in the wagonettes, descended to the ground, alighting before the inn, and swarmed into the drinking-bar, thirsty with the swallowing of dust and much shouting, buxom beauty hanging upon their arms with proud gaze boldly cast upon their noisy lords from under the heavy hair that shaded their frankly vulgar eyes, and with ear-racking laughings from their full red lips to greet all their swaggering gentlemen’s uttermost ribaldries. ”

“ To tell the truth, the wit of, I will not say, an Englishman, but a Cockney, is not within the reach of the Scot. Jokes, play upon words, and bantering are not in his line. A pun will floor him completely; but I hope to be able to prove, by means of a few anecdotes, that Donald has real wit, and humour above all—humour of the light, subtle kind, that would pass by a Cockney without making the least impression.
I do not wish to say that there is more intelligence in Scotland than in England; but I can in all security say there is more intellectuality. ”

“ A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having fixed the epithet of the Cockney School to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. ”

“ As his ancestors leaving the shores of Holland and Ireland, as millions of men and women had done with the Old World dwindling away in the distance, he looked towards America for the answer to existence.
Ten days after his admission he was allowed to leave the hospital for his rooms in St. James's Square.
He took his leave of the little group who had been his companions for the time—the little Cockney with his incessant exuberance; the French-Canadian, picturesque of language and imagination; the one remaining Australian, vigorous of thought and forceful of temperament ”

“ To be a right Cockney is to be impotent of any outlook but from our own Charing Cross or other restricted observatory, in which moral sense we are all by nature Cockneys, some more, some less. There are Cockneys of time as well as of place. ”

“ This trip was a memorable one, and no doubt Cockney made the best haul of his life. We were together in Liverpool, Cockney, Donovan and myself, 116 and as usual drinking. A stranger, hearing by our conversation that we hailed from America, invited us to drink; and in the course of conversation expressed a regret that he was out of work, and had no means of visiting America. "Nothing is easier," said Cockney, "if you place yourself unreservedly in our hands. ”

“ His personal vanity is thus continually flattered and perked up into ridiculous self-complacency, while his imagination is jaded and impaired by daily misuse. Every thing is vulgarised in his mind. Nothing dwells long enough on it to produce an interest; nothing is contemplated sufficiently at a distance to excite curiosity or wonder. Your true Cockney is your only true leveller. Let him be as low as he will, he fancies he is as good as any body else. He has no respect for himself, and still less (if possible) for you. ”