NEW YET OLD

Dunstan Times, Issue 3513, 16 March 1931, Page 3

NEW YET OLD

TRADITIONS OF ROGUERY To-day the obliging strangers who offer to change notes for gold and forget to return with the geld, or who tempt us to bet that we can tell which of throe walnut shells conceals a ,pea, are called spielers and spruikers (says the Melbourne ‘Argus’). The spieler is the man who plays the game, and the spruiker is the man who does the talking. Both are German terms adopted apparently to conceal the fact that there arc good old English names for these bad old English rogues, and that there is no trick known to the confidence man of to-day, in his trousers and velour hat, that was Tiot practised by Elizabethan knaves in their doublets and hose. There were three persons in the railway carriage when we entered—two youths, evidently on their way to spend a holiday in the city, and, in one corner, a benign fellow of middle ago with the air of a shrewd man of the world. As the train was starting a voluble person who had evidently taken some liquor stumbled into the carriage and established himself in the middle of the seat opposite us. He talked without ceasing, and then—the innocent rogue—he produced a pack of cards and offered to show us a trick which was done with three of them—-two knaves and a queen. We others exchanged meaning glances. We had not come down in the last shower. The shrewd, middle-aged fellow in the corner went so far as to wink. The card manipulator did not want us to bet. He only wanted one of us to see whether he could pick the queen after the manipulator had thrown the three cards on to his rug face downwards. Sometimes we picked the right card; less often we picked the wrong card; wo all joined in the game. At about the sixth throw we noticed that the corner of the queen was turned up. The man in the corner—a prosperous farmer, we tliought—noticed this, too, and he whispered to the youth next to him. The man in the corner said that he thought that perhaps he would bet 10s that he could pick the card which the voluble passenger described as “ the lady.” The cards were thrown. He picked “ the lady,” and he won 10s. The cards were thrown again, and he won 10s more. The sharper’s lips trembled nervously, and a new flush seemed to appear in his already flushed cheeks. He would not bet with the man in the corner again, he declared, but he would take a bet with any other gentleman. The corner of the lady was turned up invitingly. One of the holi-day-makers placed a £5 note on the rug. The cards were thrown. He picked the one with a bent corner and looked at it. It was the knave of spades. Just then the train drew up at a station. The tipsy card player left the train. The benign and prosperous looking man in the corner followed him out. It was an old device with a history as long as the faces of those who fall victims to it. Robert Greene and Thomas Dekker have described the technique of the confidence men of sixteenth century London with suspicious minuteness. The latest trusting person to hand his notes to the kind stranger who offers to change them for gold has live satisfaction of knowing that similar kindnesses were being done at least three and four hundred years ago. One chronicler has described “ people that travel up and down the whole land, sometimes in the habit of Servingmen, sometimes as Grasiers, Farmers, and plaine fellowes, maintaining themselves onely by the cozenage they use in Garde playing.” The players in this “ knavish comedy of wily-beguily ” were five, and the three chief players bore a ridiculous resemblance to three of us in the railway carriage. There was “ the Cozen,” who was “ the partie that is taken,” the “ Verser,” “ a fellow more grave in speech and habit, and seems to be a Landed man,” and the “Bernard,” who was “the chiefe player, for he counterfets many parts in one, and is now a drunken man, anon in another humour, and shifts himselfe into so many shapes, onely to blind the Cozen, and to feede him with more delight, the more easily to beguile him. The Elizabethan team of rogues had another member whom the invention of the railway has rendered unnecessary. He was the “ Rutter,” who began a fight in the “ taverne ” when the cozen had been relieved of his money—having been “ allured with the sweetness of gaine and hope of wynning, seeing tlvo other half drunke, as he imagines”—-so that, under cover of the brawl, the Verser and the Bernard could depart unobtrusively. There is a substantial Elizabethan literature on the ways of these rogues and vagabonds, Nashe, Greene, Dekker, and their other equally disreputable colleagues fulfilled a duty now performed by police reporters, of recounting the deeds of malefactors and of warning law-abiding citizens against them. Fashions change. But roguery remains the same, and there are always fat pigeons for slim hawks to feed upon.