Mícheál Ó hAodha · 2011 · PDF · Calibre ID 13399
Resurfaced in The Private Core (2026-10-18).
Role in the triad
Oblique edge: Shelta as a living private core, likely formed in the same Irish-to-English shift; its outside ‘discoverers’ as the philologist’s counterpart to the sappers
Why this book
Gives the Victorian origin myths of Shelta and the modern view that it was formed during the language shift; shows outsiders valuing a hidden tongue only for antiquity and reading concealment as degeneracy.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “most scholars who have examined Shelta are now of the opinion that Shelta was formed in the modern period, possibly at that juncture when the language shift from Irish to English was taking place” (p. 18)
- “I would scarcely have taken much interest in Shelta, if it were nothing but tinkers’ cant, fabricated from Irish in modern times, of a kind not superior to the backslang of costers and cabmen.” (Meyer, quoted p. 21)
- “moral and social code, like his language, is certainly of the backslang order” (Sampson, quoted p. 21)
- “the most curious linguistic discovery of the century, the fifth British Celtic tongue!” (Leland, quoted p. 17)
- “the subaltern or ‘Other’ is represented and ‘translated’ through the essentialist language of the dominant culture” (p. 56)
- “They break into this when unwilling to be heard at their business.” (IFC respondent, p. 89)
Themes
anti-language · Cant · Gammon · Gypsy Lore Society · language shift · origin myths · road-signs · Shelta · Tinker Questionnaire