DOUBLE-SLANGED Slang fetters, double-slanged if both legs locked in chains Slung thrown into Newgate, the stone jug, for your pains Rook stealing like a brazen, black bird of thieving nature Rake a wastrel and pisspot affecting to cut a figure Cull a simpleton that pays for favours given Cell a stone cubby, dark and damp, with iron bars riven Whit where the Newgate nightingale sings high pitch Whet as if keening the blade to stick the snitch Chive filing away or sawing through chains and ring-bolts Chafe scars and sores rubbed black and blue by bracelets Spell wasting away in the lock-up, doing time ill-spent Spiel gaming at cards, dice, prick the girdle . . . Repent! Hull the cull’s shell rotting in some rank hell-hole Hulk whose creaking bulk stores vermin in its hold Flog striping skin to saltback for bolters sought at large Flag shaking your fist in defiance at blackguards and lobsters in charge Heap ropeable measures of a prig’s misfortune Hope a lag’s vain pleas for mercy to importune Sneak a boman prig showing off brain rather than brawn Snake a dissembling varlet, a sham Abraham, himself finally shorn Lurk extorting money by false pretences, going on a racket Lark a frolic or game or rum fraud to cop a packet Sweat clipping coins for gold dust with nimble hooks Sweet a honey-tongued forger of queer screens cooking the books
Bind making fast the beak’s law or debt or shackles Bound destined to bolt-in-tun with raised hackles Mab a covey of slatterns working Covent Garden and Drury Lane Mob among rabblings top dogs snarl and reign Pop a pistol flashed by a prigger of prancers on the gallop Pup a young popinjay with the affected airs of a fop Croak giving your dying speech from the crooked tree Choke breaking the neck, the hangman’s hempen quinsy
Michael Small August 23-28, 2014