In a play called Pygmalion written by the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, two characters meet by chance on a rainy night in London. One of them is Henry Higgins, a rich professor, who is very interested in how language works. The other one is a young woman called Eliza who is selling flowers for a living. They start talking, and Henry is fascinated by the very different way in which they speak the same language. This is mainly because Eliza is a cockney.
origins
The word ‘cockney’ was first used in English in 1362 to mean a ‘small egg with a strange shape’. Later, the word changed meaning and was used to describe city men — this is because the people living in villages considered them weak and similar to women. In the 19th century, a cockney was a person who lived in East London. In this community, many people were poor. Some of them were involved in petty crimes like pickpocketing, so they were often in trouble with the police. This is why they invented a special language which worked like a code: they could talk to each other without the police understanding what they were saying.
RHYMES
For example, if Eliza’s father wanted to steal someone’s wallet, he could say to his friend, “Follow this man, he has a lot of bees and honey,” meaning ‘he has a lot of money’. Or if he wanted to talk about a beautiful woman’s legs without her knowing, he was able to say, “Look at her bacon and eggs!”, which means ‘look at her legs’. A phone was ‘dog and bone’ and ‘Adam and Eve’ meant ‘believe’. So how about using some cockney English next time you are on the ‘dog and bone’?
pearly kings and queens
Pearly Kings and Queens, also known as ‘pearlies’, is a tradition of working-class London very much associated with the cockney culture. It originated in the 19th century, when street traders appointed a king and a queen as leaders of their community each year. These traders were called ‘costermongers‘ – ‘costard’ being an apple and ‘monger’ being a seller–. Costermongers liked to imitate wealthy people, who used to wear pearls and parade on Sundays in London’s parks. They took this one step further by sewing lines of mother-of-pearl buttons into their waistcoats, caps and working trousers.