Beware the “auld faggot” in spite of judge’s ruling
By
KEN COATES
The word “faggot,” said the learned judge in an Auckland court recently, was not insulting, and the police were being too sensitive. He dismissed a charge against a student who yelled “faggot” to an undercover policeman. The judge might well have been implying that the case was trivial — that the police would be much better occupied with catching criminals. Lest anyone be lulled into a false sense of security by the judge’s reported comments, and address a wife or female friend as “'you old faggot,” it could be worth examining the origins and use of this ancient word. It has had frightening, shady, derogatory, and downright insulting connotations. A faggot is simply a bundle of sticks used for fuel, or for filling ditches, though it also applied to a bundle of lengths of iron or steel. But in the days when heretics were burned alive, an embroidered representation of a faggot was worn on the arm of those who recanted. » This showed what they merited but had so narrowly escaped. To
“burn one’s faggot” was to recant a heresy, while in French, “sentir le fagot” was to savour of heresy. Faggoting was a term used in embroidery to describe the process by which a number of threads were drawn out and cross threads tied in the middle. From the sixteenth century, a faggot has been a term of contempt or reproach for a slattern or a worthless woman. In dialects it has been written fagot, facket, fagget, fakket, vaggot, and faggit. “Ye impitent faggit, ” they said in Northumbrian dialect. In Yorkshire, she was “a mucky, saucy faggit.” The term was widely used to imply a false, hypocritical woman - “that ooman’s reglar owd faggit; ’er imposes on the paas’n shameful.” In many dialects it was preceded by ”awld.” The wretched woman could also be a lazy, gossiping, and idle faggot. Sometimes children would be so described: “Wbere’ve- ye bin, ye
little faggot?” A woman of bad character was “a nasty, stinking faggot or vaggot.” In low slang, to faggot meant to copulate with, and to frequent barlots. So much for the distant past. For a clue as to how the word has been applied in more recent times and today, where better to turn than to a dictionary of the underworld. A volume of this sort is no doubt mandatory reading for all judicial personages. It covers both British and American terms used by convicts, racketeers, criminals, crooks, beggars, tramps, con men in commerce, white slave and drug traffickers, and spivs (which dates it to the late 19405, though it was revised and enlarged in 1908.) In such circle, a faggot is a whore; probably, it is stated, a derivation from slatternly appearnance. In French, “s’habiller comme un fagot” is to be dowdy. It can also mean the madam of a house of ill repute. A road kid t
with homosexual tendencies was a faggoty and “faggoty” meant homosexual tendency, in America, in the 19405. Faggot or fag is equated with “queer” or “fruit” in slang, and even Heineman’s New Zealand Dictionary gives what it terms an informal meaning faggot as homosexual. Whether use of the term is insulting depends on the tone of voice, the circumstances, and person so described — questions the learned judge may well have had in mind after all. I well remember, to my shame, causing lasting and extremely hurtful insult through the use of the term “witch.” A faggot was also a hired person who took the place of another at the muster of a regiment — hardly a man of great status. Then there were “faggot votes.” These were obtained by the transfer of property to individuals in the days when this was a necessary qualification for voting rights. The minimum was a 40 shilling freehold, and the faggot in the context was a bundle of pro-
perty divided into small lots. It also came to mean votes obtained for party purposes on spurious qualifications. Another early use of the term was in the phrase to “go upon the faggot and storm,” which apparently meant breaking into people’s houses and tying and gagging all inside. It was sometimes practised by highwaymen. In many parts of Britain, a faggot was a dish, usually a small cake, rissole or sausage, made of the liver, lungs, and innards of a pig or sheep, mixed with sage, onions, and herbs. “Hot faggots every night,” read the sign-board of a Cheltenham eating house in the nineteenth century. They were also called “fackets, faggits, or fagots.” Should the term be inadvertently mis-used or misunderstood today, perhaps the best way to soothe ruffled feelings would be over a “bouteille de vin de derriere les fagots.” Loosly translated, it means that hidden bottle of wine kept fqr emergencies.
Beware the “auld faggot” in spite of judge’s ruling
Press, 10 December 1985, Page 13
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