CIRCUS TONGUE GONE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 136, 10 June 1937, Page 10

CIRCUS TONGUE GONE

No Special Slang of Profession

The King's English has become the ring’s English, says a writer from Lon-j don to the Christian Science Monitor The daring young man on the flying | trapeze, hits sister, the tight-rope walker, the white-fared clown—in fact, all cir I cus folk—speak slang no longer, or, at any rate, no special slang of their profession, according to Mr. John S Llarke, whose statement is confirmed by the authorities at Bertram Mills’s Circus in London, where there are performers from all over the world. Mr. Clarke was a rough rider at the age of ten, ami a trainer of hordes and wild beasts at. twenty two. Ki nee then he bus been an author am) lecturer find a member of Parliament. The tide of special circus slang, however, has not receded without leaving some flotsam ami jetsam behind, embedded in the fabric of common, everyday speech. The expression—“Cut the cackle, and get io the ’osset-*’—is a legacy of Hue sande.l ring, ami the barker who shouted its atiructions to the crowds gathered nnVide the travelling booths. \ eackler was a talker—Dickens’s Jupv. a circus artist iu “Hard Times,”

was said to be a good cackler, though ‘‘loose in his ponging” (tumbling)— and the exhortation merely means, Get the preliminaries over, and let the performance begin. One of the reasons for the rapid growth in earlier days of a vivid circus slang was the frequent inter-marriages that took place between well-known circus families, which tended to keep travelling showmen of this kind a special group of people cut off from the rest of the community, with fheir own customs and language. They ftill, however, have a large number of tpulmical terms, just as other professions have. The, move men I 1»y which an acrobat returns to :i sitting position on the horizontal bar, after hanging from it upside down, is known as “the Plymouth.” There arc several such terms, but these cannot be described properly as slang. But though slang is almost completely obso I'te, it still occasionally manages to throw nut a fresh phrase now and again. “Big Top.” which originate'! it America, has only recently spread fo Europe as a synonym for the circus [tent.