This glossary of terms which were used in various communities in the nineteenth-century appears in Appendix III of my latest book, A Trip and a Tumble. Enjoy —and please feel free to share with your friends!
When Felix's newspaper sends him up to Victoria, B.C. to report on a visiting circus Ken inevitably tags along, "like a dutiful puppy", as Addie says. Meanwhile, Jacob's sent north to Victoria as well, as an ambassador for the cycling company he represents. Addie tells him to keep an eye on the chums, but no one ever could keep Ken and Felix from stumbling into scrapes. When a vivacious high-society belle and a surprisingly timid circus bicyclist enter the picture, things heat up quickly.
Be prepared for a grand circus pageant —let the show begin!
A Trip and a Tumble:
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Bill: Poster. The word "bill" meaning "sign or poster" has somewhat fallen out of use in modern America, although it may still be seen in the familiar prohibition "POST NO BILLS" which is often seen on walls and poles in public spaces.
Boston: American. (Aboriginal trade jargon of the American Pacific Northwest and Southwestern Canada, early and mid-nineteenth century.) This term referred to any white American, regardless of his city or region of origin: to an aboriginal person in this part of the world, Yankees and Southerners alike were simply "Bostons". See also King George Man and Passaieux.
Canvas men: Rough laborers in a circus.
Celestial: Chinese. Historically the Chinese referred to China and the countries it occupied as the Celestial Kingdom or the Celestial Empire. Some modern scholars have taken umbrage with the term, but nineteenth-century Anglophones who referred to Chinese as Celestials were using a direct translation of what the Chinese called themselves at the time.
Circus mother: A matron who manages the aspects of circus life falling under women's sphere. Whereas the (male) manager supervised the business end of circus life, the circus mother managed the performers' personal affairs, acting as everything from banker, to nurse, to chaperone and wardrobe outfitter for them. Source: Thompson, W.C. On the Road With A Circus, New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, 1905. pp. 130—132.
Clallam: A tribe of American Indians living on the Olympic Peninsula, in what is now Washington state. Chief Chetzemoka was the nineteenth-century leader of the group of Clallams living in and around Port Townsend, the real city which inspired the town of Chetzemoka in this series.
Cully: Friend. (Circus jargon.) Source: Frost, Thomas. Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. London: John Child and Son, 1876, p. 309.
Dona: Lady (Circus jargon, from the Italian donna.) Source: Frost, Thomas. Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. London: John Child and Son, 1876, p. 306.
En garçon: Used in reference to married men temporarily away from their wives. (French: literally, "as a boy" or "as a bachelor".) Source: Jenkins, Edward. The Captain's Cabin. Belfast: William Mullan and Son, 1877. p. 14: "On the left is the purser's table, frequented mostly by bachelors, old and young, and by leery commercials, who are married when at home, but are travelling for the voyage en garçon—a most lively table, where…rough joke and broad story are never wanting…"
Goney: A great goose, a stupid fellow. (New England origin.) Source: Dictionary of Americanisms, Ed. John Russell Bartlett, Boston: 1877. p. 253.
Guy: Man. The very british Oxford English dictionary credits the origin of this term to effigies burned on Guy Fawkes day, but the term had a different connotation in circus culture: "Circus dialect for a man is always 'guy,' and the proprietor of the show is invariably styled 'the main guy,' or the 'main squeeze.' The former appellation is probably adapted from the fact that the main guy rope holds the tent in position."[1] It is worth noting that "guy" was not a very common term yet for a man in the American population in general in 1885, but it was common in circus communities. It is also worth noting that nineteenth and twentieth-century Americans did not celebrate Guy Fawkes day as a culture, but they did watch a lot of circuses. Which context truly led to its adoption in America is left to the reader's judgement.
Hello: 19th-century exclamation of surprise. The term didn't become a generic greeting until after telephone use grew widespread.
Hey Rube!: A circus call for help. It orders all circus workers to drop what they're doing and rush to the aid of the person who yelled it. (Circus jargon.)
High climber: A logger (lumberman) who climbs up tall trees to cut off the limbs and tops in preparation for the rest of the tree being felled.
Hook: To steal. (Late nineteenth-century slang.) Source: Dictionary of Americanisms, Ed. John Russell Bartlett, Boston: 1877. p. 293.
Header (active form, "take a header"): A crash or fall. In the high wheel era, this term referred to any fall from a bicycle: it did not (as commonly believed) mean falling on one's head, it was simply slang for a crash. It applied equally when the unfortunate wheelman landed on his hands, his knees, or any other body part. (Similarly, we now use the term "crash" to describe any fall from a bike, even when the actual sound involved is more of a thwack, a thud, or a shriek.) Confusion about terminology led to the widely held misconception that riders who fall off high wheel bicycles frequently fall on their heads, but such a landing is actually extremely rare. In 1883 a medical doctor writing on high wheel bicycles described the actual physiology of a typical fall: "When the wheel meets with any obstruction upon the road, either unobserved by the rider or thrown by some mischievous urchin, the rider is pitched forward upon his hands and knees, in the same way as if he had stumbled while running upon his feet. This is called "taking a header." The wrist is sometimes sprained in these involuntary dismounts, but the rider is never seriously injured unless he is going at an inordinate rate of speed."[2] In the very rare cases when someone did fall on their head —usually in the position which would now be called a "face plant"— the appropriate term was a "cropper". This phrase was borrowed from equestrianism and comes from the fallen rider landing in a position that resembles a horse cropping the grass with its teeth.
Falls in general from high wheel bicycles were far less dramatic and certainly less slapstick than farcical depictions of them in the twentieth and twenty-first century. An instructor on high wheel riding advised, "In order to avoid a fall, keep the wheel turned a very little out of the perpendicular, your hands ready to adjust the handle, and your toes lightly pressing on the pedals. If you feel that you must fall —if you cannot check your descent by gently and slightly turning the front wheel in the direction of its incline, prepare to go down as easily as possible. Put out your leg, and yielding to the inclination of the Bicycle, come down easily, and without a jerk."[3] Note that in this description, the fall is again one towards the side of the bicycle, not over the handlebars. As the writer says, this is the natural inclination of the bicycle.
My husband Gabriel has been riding high wheel bicycles with extreme frequency for years, and his copious experience with them confirms the statements of these nineteenth-century writers. He's never even once gone over his handlebars, and the small handful of times he's fallen to the side were because I crashed into him on my own wheel, which can hardly be considered the fault of his machine.
Ink-Slinger: "One who habitually writes for publication; particularly an editor or reporter of a newspaper." (Late 19th-century slang.) Source: Dictionary of Americanisms, ibid., 1877. p. 786.
Keester: Trunk. (Circus Slang.) Source: Thompson, W.C., On the Road With a Circus, New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, 1905. p. 23.
King George / King George Man: British. (Aboriginal trade jargon of the American Pacific Northwest and Southwestern Canada, early and mid-nineteenth century.) Aboriginal trade jargon continued to designate the British this way even after Queen Victoria assumed the throne in 1838. See also Boston and Passaieux.
Klootchman: An American Indian woman, or a female animal —pejorative. (Aboriginal trade jargon of the American PNW and Southwestern Canada.) In terms of both offensiveness and meaning, the closest term familiar to modern audiences would be "squaw". This word was in fairly common usage by traders in this region (both white and native) in the mid-nineteenth-century but it was considered increasingly derogatory as time progressed. In the early days of exploration and trade, the ambiguity of a word which could refer either to a woman or a female animal was more a linguistic side-effect of the inarticulate nature of pidgin languages than it was any deliberate attempt to be offensive. However, as relationships deepened and English became the lingua franca of the region, this dual-meaning jargon word shifted from being an accepted term to being a slur.
By 1885, when A Trip and A Tumble takes place, the term was inappropriate for polite society; on the Pacific coast at the time it was considered even more offensive than squaw. The scene where Theresa calls herself a klootchman in order to shock Jacob was taken almost verbatim from an Englishman's non-fiction account of his visit to Victoria in 1887. In this autobiographical work, the Englishman meets a woman who challenges him to guess her ancestry. After he fails several times the lady laughs at him and calls himself a klootchman to scandalize him. He makes a very clear point of stating that although the woman had referred to herself by this term, she "would have been very indignant indeed if I had called her that."[4]
Lumberman: Logger.
Macadam: A smooth road surface favored by cyclists.
Main: Very. (Late 19th-century slang.) Source: Alger, Horatio, The Young Acrobat, New York: Hurst & Company, 1889, p. 134. "I'm main tired and hungry." / "They must have been main strong."
Mash: A crush. (Nineteenth-century slang.) Source: McIlvaine, C.W. "Censor". The Nassau Herald. Princeton College, 1878, p. 60: "Boys, you know Miss B… I took her to a cotillon one evening and got a terrible mash on her."
Missed (my) tip: Fail in an aim to do something, as when an acrobat fails in a catch. (Nineteenth-century slang.) Source: Stradling, Arthur, "A Broken Neck", Time, March, 1883, p. 360: "Almost the first part of an acrobat's education is to learn how to fall properly when he "misses his tip" —a principle which might be introduced with advantage into the course of training for some other professions."
Mosquito Fleet: A collective term for the great variety of ships that plied the waters of the greater Puget Sound region in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For more on these, see Newell, Gorden R. Ships of the Inland Sea, Portland: Binsfords & Mort, 1960. and Findlay, Jean Cammon and Robin Paterson, Mosquito Fleet of South Puget Sound, Images of America, USA: Arcadia Publishing, 2008.
Multum in parvo (M.I.P.) Literally, "much in little" (Italian.) A style of leather or canvas bag which straps to the backbone of a high-wheel bicycle behind the seat. They were especially popular for touring cyclists.
Mumble the Peg: A boy's game. "It consists in endeavoring to draw out with the teeth a peg driven almost wholly into the ground. The successful one of course wins." Source: Dictionary of Americanisms, Ed. John Russell Bartlett, Boston: 1877. p. 413.
Old horse: Especially hard and dry salt beef (Nautical slang.) In Two Years Before the Mast (1840), R.H. Dana recounts a rhyme he'd heard sailors reciting at mealtime when they came across a particularly bad piece of meat: "Old horse! Old horse! What brought you here? / From Sacarap' to Portland pier / I've carted stone this many a year; / Till, killed by blows and sore abuse, / They salted me down for sailors' use. / The sailors they do me despise: / They turn me over and damn my eyes; / Cut off my meat, and pick my bones / And pitch the rest to Davy Jones." Dana credits the euphemism (and the resulting rhyme) to a story about a beef dealer in Boston who was convicted of selling old horse meat for ship's stores and being sentenced to imprisonment until such time as he had eaten the whole of it. The story is very likely apocryphal, but it stuck.[5]
Passaieux: French. (Aboriginal trade jargon of the American Pacific Northwest and Southwestern Canada, early and mid-nineteenth century.) See also Boston and King George Man. The spelling used here was found in James G. Swan's book The Northwest Coast (1857). Swan reports:
"Formerly the Americans had a very extensive trade of furs on the Northwest Coast, and this was carried on principally by the merchants of Boston. The Indians, hearing the name of Boston so often repeated, supposed that to be the name of the country these people and ships came from; consequently, all Americans are to this day [1857] called by the Northwest Coast Indians Boston tillicums, or Boston people. English, Scotch, and Irish are called King George People, and the French, Passaieux. The derivation of this last term… is undoubtedly [derived from] some Canadian French patois word."[6]
Orthography of trade jargon words varied substantially between different sources. As Swan put it, "no two writers of Indian words fully agree as to the proper method of spelling."[7] Among many other alternatives, this word was also spelled "pasiuks"[8]; and "pasai-ooks".[9]
British ethnographer Horatio Hale attributes the word's origin to a mispronunciation of the French "Français" by people unable to pronounce f, r, or nasal n sounds. However, this explanation seems questionable since Swan, who lived at close quarters with Northwest tribes for a number of years, reported their extreme linguistic skills: "The Indians are very quick to detect any difference in the intonation or method of pronunciation of the whites, and sometimes think we speak different languages. An Indian asked me one day (while pointing to a cow) what was the name we called that animal. I told him cow. He said that he had just asked another white man, and he called it a caow. By this means, different Indians who have been with the whites acquire a habit of pronouncing such English words as they pick up in the same style and manner as the person from whom they learn them."[10]
Phaeton: A light carriage. For a picture of a phaeton and other horse-drawn vehicles from the nineteenth-century, see <http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/blog/a-visit-to-the-northwest-carriage-museum>.
Potato jacket: Potato skin / peel.
Queer a pitch: Spoil a performance. (Circus jargon.) Source: Frost, Thomas. Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. London: John Child and Son, 1876, p. 307.
Razorback: A man or boy who helps load and unload circus materials. (Circus jargon.) Source: Alger, Horatio, The Young Acrobat, New York: Hurst & Company, 1889, p. 68.
Running Gear: A horse-drawn vehicle used for hauling large loads like timber. Different from a wagon in that a running gear didn't have sides. For a picture of a running gear and other horse-drawn vehicles from the nineteenth-century, see <http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/blog/a-visit-to-the-northwest-carriage-museum>.
Sacred cattle: A breed of cattle from the Indian subcontinent, popular with nineteenth-century menageries.
Sociable: A cycle for two riders with seats side-by-side. (Tandems have seats fore and aft.) A sociable has two large wheels to propel it, a smaller wheel for stabilization, and usually an additional even smaller wheel to prevent tipovers on hills. This technically makes it a quadricycle, although since the smallest wheel rarely touches the ground it is often termed a tricycle.
Tá: Is / it is / that's so. (Irish Gaelic). Irish is a somewhat unique language in not having words for "yes" or "no". Instead, questions are answered by giving the affirmative or negative form of the verb —in this case, the affirmative of "to be". Centuries of English rule have led to a dwindling number of speakers of the Irish language. A school inspector in 1884 reported that it was no longer taught (Ross, Donald. The Gaelic Journal, March, 1884, p. 95.), and in modern times the World Languages Project lists its status as Endangered. However, certain Irish words have persisted in the speech of the country. When I visited Ireland in 2000 I found it interesting to note that the word Tá still retains a sort of slang status in the twenty-first century, even amongst young urban Dubliners.
Top: Tent. (Circus jargon.)
Tyee: The highest caste in aboriginal society in the Puget Sound Region. Usually translated as "chief", it is more appropriately translated as "person of high-rank" or "titleholder". Aboriginal societies in the Pacific Northwest were stratified into three castes: titleholders, commoners, and slaves. For more on this, see Professor Leland Donald's book, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America.
Wheel: Bicycle or tricycle.
Wheelman / Wheelwoman: Cyclist.
Worth: Charles Frederick Worth, one of the 19th-century's most famous fashion designers. The idea of a show mother being "the Worth of circusland" was cribbed from Thompson, W.C. On the Road With A Circus, New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, 1905, p. 132. For more about Worth himself, see "Worth and His Dresses", The Domestic Monthly, June, 1885, p. 196. <https://tinyurl.com/y84g4lnn>.
[1] Thompson, On the Road With A Circus, New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, 1905, p. 23.
[2] Kinch, Charles A., M.D. "A Medical Symposium: The Bicycle and Tricycle for Physicians and Patients." The Wheelman. August 1883, p. 362. The full text of this article can be found at <http://tinyurl.com/hc9n8yt>.
[3] "A Practical Bicyclist" [Nom de plume.] The Bicycle and How to Ride It. London: Ward, Lock And Co., 1882. p. 36—37.
[4] Roper, Edward. By Track and Trail: A Journey Through Canada, London: W.H. Allen & Co., Ltd., 1891, pp. 243—244.
[5] Ibid., ch. 30.
[6] Swan, James G., The Northwest Coast. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857. pp. 95—96.
[7] Swan, ibid, p. 308.
[8] Hale, Horatio. An International Idiom: A Manual of the Oregon Trade Language. London, Whittaker & Co., 1890. p. 8.
[9] Bryce, George. The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1900. p. 410.
[10] Swan, ibid., pp. 308—309.
In a seaport town in the late 19th-century Pacific Northwest, a group of friends find themselves drawn together —by chance, by love, and by the marvelous changes their world is undergoing. In the process, they learn that the family we choose can be just as important as the ones we're born into. Join their adventures in
The Tales of Chetzemoka
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