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This site includes the postings from the Irish Aires email list. This includes a listing of Irish/Celtic events in the Houston area and other information that the Irish Aires radio program posts.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
St Brigid Feast Day in Houston & How The Irish Invented Gambling Slang
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/4503175.html
St. Brigid: Feast day of St. Brigid, 6 p.m. Sunday (Jan
28th), Christ Church Cathedral, 1117 Texas, Houston, Texas.
At 7 p.m. Jill Carroll, associate director of the Boniuk
Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious
Tolerance, will lecture on "hospitality of the heart."
Brigid, a fifth-century Irish Celtic saint, founded a
monastery for nuns and monks based on equality.
----
St. Brigid, Or St. Bride Feastday – February 1st
St. Brigid was a native of Ireland, and has the honour to
share with St. Patrick the distinction of exercising the
spiritual patronage of that island. She was a daughter of
one of the princes of Ulster, and was born at Fochard, in
that province, soon after the first conversion of Ireland
to the Christian faith. As she grew up she became
remarkable for her piety, and having taken the monastic
vow, she was the first nun in Ireland, and has ever since
been reverenced by the Irish Romanists as the mother of
nunneries in that country. She built her first cell under a
large oak, which had perhaps been the site of pagan worship
in earlier times, and from whence it was named Kildara, or
the cell of the oak. Round this first Irish nunnery
eventually arose the city of Kildare. The date at which St.
Brigid founded her cell is said to have been about the
year 585. After having astonished the Catholic world by a
number of extraordinary miracles, which are duly chronicled
in her legends, she died, and was buried at Downpatrick,
the church of which boasted also of possessing the bodies
of the saints Patrick and Columba. Giraldus Cambrensis has
recorded how, in 1185, soon after the conquest of Ulster by
John de Courci, the bodies of the three saints were found,
lying side by side, in a triple vault, St. Patrick
occupying the place in the middle, and how they were all
three translated into the cathedral. This event appears to
have created a great sensation at the time, and was
commemorated in the following Latin distieh, which is
frequently quoted in the old monastic chronicles:
In burp Duno tumulo tumulantur in Imo Brigicla, Patricius,
atque Columba pins.'
For some cause or other Brigid was a popular saint in
England and Scotland, where she was better known by the
corrupted or abbreviated name of St. Bride, and under this
name a number of churches were dedicated to her. We need
only mention St. Bride's Church in Fleet-street, London.
Adjoining to St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet-street, is an
ancient well dedicated to the saint, and commonly called
Bride's Well. A palace erected near by took the name of
Bridewell. This being given by Edward VI to the city of
London as a workhouse for the poor and a house of
correction, the name became associated in the popular mind
with houses having the same purpose in view. Hence it has
arisen that the pure and innocent Brigid—the first of
Irish nuns—is now inextricably connected in our ordinary
national parlance with a class of beings of the most
opposite description.
----
More info at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid_of_Ireland
*************************
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Linguistics/irish4.html
How the Irish Invented American Gambling Slang into Irish
American Vernacular English.
The Sanas (Irish Etymology) of Faro, Poker and the Secret
Flash Words for the Brotherhood of American Gamblers.
By DANIEL CASSIDY 5/13/06
The Irish... gave American, indeed, very few new words;
perhaps speakeasy, shillelah and smithereens exhaust the
list." H.L. Mencken, 1937.
A Dictionary of Hiberno-English, corroborates the well-
known but puzzling fact that so few Irish words have been
absorbed into Standard English." Terence Patrick Dolan,
1999
"There's A Sucker (Sách úr, fresh new "fat cat") Born Every
Minute," Mike McDonald, 1839 - 1907
The Irish language in America is a lost, living tongue,
hidden beneath quirky (corr-chaoí, odd-mannered, odd-
shaped) phonetic orthographic overcoats and mangled
American pronunciations. Irish words and phrases are
scattered all across American language, regional and class
dialects, colloquialism, slang, and specialized jargons
like gambling, in the same way Irish-Americans have been
scattered across the crossroads of North America for five
hundred years.
Borrowed Irish American Vernacular English to American
English Irish was transformed by English cultural
imperialism from the first literate vernacular of Europe in
the 5th century, into the underworld cant (caint, speech)
of thieves and "vagaboundes" in the 16th century, and then
into the countless number of anonymous Irish words and
phrases in American Standard English, vernacular, slang,
and popular speech today.
From the early 19th century to the mid-twentieth century,
Irish-Americans played a key role in the development of
professional gambling and casinos in the United States.
With a potent political base made up of millions of Irish
immigrants and their American-born children, in cities as
geographically scattered as New Orleans, Chicago, New York,
Boston, Hot Springs, Dallas, and San Francisco, Irish
Americans built powerful urban political machines fueled by
the huge cash flow generated by the gambling underworld.
There were sure-thing tricksters and professional gamblers
of all nationalities from the earliest days of the American
Republic. French, Scottish, English, and Creole gamblers
and gambling syndicates were augmented in the late 19th
century by waves of impoverished southern Italians and
Sicilians, as well as Jews from the shetls of Eastern
Europe and Russia. But from the early 1800s until the
1930s, Irish urban street gangs, and the political machines
that grew out of them, controlled the tiger's share of the
profits from illegal gambling in the United States.
Irish-American bigshots Price McGrath, Jimmy Fitzgerald,
and Pat Herne were the leading faro bankers in the wide
open city of New Orleans in the first decades of the 19th
century. When the political "fix" curdled in the "Big Easy"
in 1830, clans of sure thing tricksters fled up the
Mississippi River and scattered to a hundred towns and
cities. Price McGrath opened up a Faro "rug joint" in New
York City, at 5 West 24th street, with former heavyweight
boxing champion, John Morrissey, as a partner. The two men
couldn't have been more different: McGrath was a sporty
swell (sóúil, sóghamhail, comfortable, prosperous, rich)
and Morrisey a world-class slugger (slacaire, a mauler, a
bruiser), but they both spoke the same language. Witchita
Faro
Secret Flash Words of the Secret Brotherhood of Gamblers
In the 1840s, a former professional gambler, faro mechanic,
and card sharp, Jonathan Harrington Green, announced in the
press that he had become a born-again evangelical
Christian, whose new mission in life was exposing the scams
('s cam) and gimmicks (camóg, a crooked device, a trick)of
a vast, secret "brotherhood of gamblers," ruled by a
mysterious underground, hierarchy of "Grand Masters." Like
all successful con men, Jonathan Harrington Green was a
master of the ballyhoo (bailiú, [act of] gathering a crowd)
and took his slick (slíocach, cunning, sleek) spiel (speal,
sharp,cutting, satiric speech) on the road, adding some
pizzazz to his born-again baloney (béal ónna, pron. bail
owny, silly talk), with fancy card tricks and elaborate
demonstrations of ingenious cheating devices, for overflow
audiences of zealous Christian reformers and middle-class
curiosity seekers.
In two best-selling autobiographical books, Green claimed
that this brotherhood of faro tricksters even communicated
in a secret language. The few examples Green gave of this
underworld lingo of "the Brethren" were, in fact, neither
"flash" nor "secret," but the American-English phonetic
spelling of fairly common Irish words.
In a chapter entitled "Flash Words of the Secret
Brotherhood of Gamblers," Green wrote: "The Grand Master
shall be fully invested with power to give out the
following catalogue of useful flash words. The six words of
quality are highly beneficial in conversation, and must, in
all cases, be used when one is present who is not known to
be a member. By this means can be found out strange
Brethren, who are ever ready for any sound so familiar to
their own ears." (Jonathan Harrington Green, The Secret
Band of Brothers, NY, 1841, pp. 107-113)
Below is a list of the Gambling Brotherhood's so-called
secret words, spelled first in Green's phonetic English and
then in Irish, with matching definitions. It is not
surprising that the Irish gambler's secret cant was as
Gaelic as the gamblers themselves.
Huska, good, bold, intrepid.
Oscar (pron. h-uscar),a champion or hero; a bold intrepid
hero. Oscartha (pron. h-uscarha),martial, heroic, strong,
powerful; nimble.
Cady, a highway man.
Gadaí (pron. gady), a thief, a robber. Gadaí bóthair, a
highway man.
Maugh, profession.
Modh (pron. moh), mode of employment.
Caugh, quarrelsome, treacherous.
Cath (pron. cah), battle, fight, conflict. Cathaitheoir
(pron. cauhoir), a mischief-maker.
Cully, a pal, a confederate, a fellow thief.
Cullaidhe (pron. cully), companion, an associate, a
comrade, a partner. (Dineen, p. 279)
Gaugh: manner of speech
Guth (pron guh): voice, manner of speech.
Glim: A light.
Gealaim (pron. galim): I light or brighten.
Geister: An extra thief.
Gastaire: A tricky cunning fellow; a person with artifice,
skill, ingenuity.
In fact, Jonathan Green was no huska (oscar, hero) of
Christian rectitude, but a caugh (cath, pron. cah,
quarrelsome) geister (gastaire, a tricky cunning fellow; a
thief), whose new maugh (modh, pron. moh, profession)
involved a smooth gaugh (guth, pron, guh, manner of
speech). "Doc" Greene put the glim (gealim, I light) on his
former cullys (cullaidhe, pron. cully, companion,
associate, comrade[s]) and cronies (comh-roghna, pron. cuh-
rony, fellow- favorites, mutual-sweethearts), while keeping
it off of himself. Green's secret lexicon demonstrates the
early pervasive influence of the Irish language on the
argot of American gamblers,-- a fact as secret today as it
was in the 1840s.
The Irish-American Big "Shot"
Seód, séad, seád, pron. shot, a jewel; fig. often a chief,
a warrior, a powerful person, Dwelly, p. 808)
The Ard Rí (High-King) of Faro and professional gambling in
America after the Civil War was the head Dead Rabbit
(ráibéad, a hulking person, a big galoot) of the Five
Points, former World Heavyweight Boxing Champ, Congressman,
and Tammany Hall Big Shot, John Morrissey, who owned the
swank (somhaoineach, valuable, wealthy) gambling casino, 18
Barclay Street, near The New York Stock Exchange, where he
plucked only the fattest suckers: bankers, stock brokers,
and merchants. But the jewel in "Old Smoke" Morrissey's Big
Shot crown was Saratoga, in upstate New York, where he
founded the world-famous racetrack and gambling casino in
the early 1870s -- at the dawn of the Gilded Age. (6)
In the 1880s, Mike McDonald was King of Slab (Mud)Town's
gamblers and popularized the famous aphorism "there's a
sucker born every minute." McDonald reigned over Chicago's
faro dealers, grifters (grafadóir), and crooked gambling
joints, with the aid of ward heelers (éilitheoir, a
claimsman, a friendly petitioner) Silver Bill Riley and Big
Jim O'Leary, until the old geezer's (gaosach, gaosmhar,
pron. geesar, a wise person or "wiseguy") middle-aged wife
ran off to Europe with a handsome young priest. King Mike
converted to Protestantism, got divorced, and shacked up
with a showgirl half his age. The world-class big shot had
turned into a world-class sucker and became the proof of
his own axiom. Mike McDonald was succeeded by the master
grafter (grafadóir, grubber, scrounger, raker) and
legendary diminutive boss of Chicago's wide open First Ward
and its infamous Levee District, "Hinky Dink" Kenna, and
his hulking, dapper partner, "Bathhouse" John Coughlin.
Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John ruled over Chicago's
underworld for more than three decades with iron hands that
were always palms up.
From his bailiwick (baile aíoch, hospitable home, friendly
locale)on New York City's Bowery, Big Tim Sullivan, the
High-King of the Tammany Ward heelers, replaced "Old Smoke"
Morrissey as the "Big Shot" of New York's underworld from
the 1880s to the first decades of the 20th century. Whether
five-cent "Policy" (pá lae sámh, pron. paah lay seeh, easy
pay day) banks, floating crap games in the East Side
tenement districts, or uptown "rug joints" and snazzy Faro
palaces a short block (bealach, pron. balock, a path, a
road)from Wall Street, the Sullivan Machine controlled New
York City gambling. The teetotal Big Tim was a degenerate
gambler himself, losing vast amounts ofdough during his
lifetime. (8)
The first decades of the 20th century saw the rise of New
York City's powerful Gopher (Comhbhá, pron. cofa, Alliance)
Gang and its leader Owney "the Killer" Madden. In the
decades leading up to Prohibition, Madden took a motley
crew of Hell's Kitchen Irish street gangs and transformed
them into a West Side alliance that became an international
underworld corporation. With the end of Prohibition and
the defeat of the Irish bootleg racketeers (racadóir, a
dealer, a seller, a sportive character) in The War Between
the Guineas and the Micks Madden "retired" and married
the postmaster's daughter in Hot Springs, Arkansas, once
controlled by the Flynn brother's southern-Irish political
machine. Owney "the Killer" became Owney "the Businessman"
and managed his considerable assets in bookmaking
operations, wire services, and racetracks, throughout the
Northeast and the South, until his death in "Bubbles" (Hot
Springs) in 1965.
In January, 1947, Benny Binion, an illiterate Irish-
American road gambler, policy wheel operator, dice "fader,"
and triggerman -- who had been a top player in Texas
gambling and political circles for more than two decades
decided it was high time toboogaloo. The Fix had shifted in
Dallas and the Chicago mob and Jack Ruby had invaded
Binion's old turf. Benny went on the lam (léim, jump),
scramming to Vegas with two million dollars in the trunk of
his maroon Cadillac. Benny Binion opened up the Horseshoe
Casino in 1951, with Meyer Lansky as a silent partner, and
in 1970 founded The World Series of Poker. He remained a
major figure in Las Vegas until his death at the age of
eighty-five in 1989.
But while it may have been Irish Americans like Price
McGrath, "Old Smoke" Morrisey, King Mike McDonald, Hinky
Dink Kenna, and Big Tim Sullivan who laid the foundation
for today's multi-billion dollar American gaming industry,
the foundation itself was the now-forgotten gambling game
called Faro.
The Sanas (etymology, secret knowledge) of Faro
Conventional wisdom on the history of the banking card game
of Faro is that it was derived from the Italian card game
Bassetta and first appeared in France sometime in the 17th
century under the mysterious name of "Pharaon," where it
was transformed into a fast-paced gambling game called
Faro.
Pharaon and Faro are said to be derived from the word
"Pharaoh" for an Egyptian monarch, supposedly a common
image on the backs of 16th and 17th century French card
decks, which were later imported to England. However, no
evidence of Pharaoh face cards in France or England in
17th, 18th, or 19th centuries has ever been documented.
What is certain is that by the 1700s, Faro had spread from
France to England and was "all the rage" among the slave-
owing, slave-trading muckety muck (mórgachtaí mórgachta,
majesties of majesty, highnesses of highness) English
aristocrats and nouveau riche merchant classes.
In Pharaon and Faro the main move is called "the Turn" and
occurs when the faro dealer turns out two cards together
from the card shoe and places them face up on the faro
layout. The first card is a loser and all wagers on it are
collected by the bank; the second card is a winner for the
gambler who has bet on it and pays two to one. The Irish
and Scots-Gaelic verbal phrase "fiar araon" means
precisely, "to turn both; to turn each of two; to turn both
together" and is the source of the mysterious word Pharaon.
(12)
Pharaon
Fiar araon
To turn both; to turn two together.
Fiar is an Irish transitive verb and means "to turn, twist,
coil, or bend; the adverb araon, means "together, both,
each of two." The verbal nominative of the Irish verb Fiar,
"to turn," is Fiaradh (pron. fearoo or fairoo) and is
defined as "the act of turning, twisting, or coiling."
Fiaradh (pron. fearoo, turning) is the Irish name for the
"Turning" Game of Faro.
Faro: a banking card game where the main move is called "a
turn."
Fiaradh, (pron. fearoo): Turning, a turn. Vn. Turning, (act
of) turning, coiling, twisting.
The Fiaradh (Turning) of the Irish "Wild Geese"
From an historical perspective, it is not surprising that
Irish words found their way into 17th and 18th century
French gambling "slang" and the Paris underworld. In the
two hundred years between the 'Flight of the Irish Earls"
in 1607 and the unsuccessful United Irish Uprising of 1798,
hundreds of thousands of Irish-speaking soldiers, rebels,
refugees, and Gaelic aristocrats fled to France in the
largest protracted Irish continental immigration in the
early modern period. In 1691, alone, 11,000 Irish soldiers
sailed to France after the Treaty of Limerick. This multi-
generational, mass Irish emigration to France, Spain, and
Catholic Europe is known in Irish history as the "Flight of
the Wild Geese."
The negative impact of this long Irish exile experience in
France and Spain has been highlighted by the historians
Maurice Hennessey and David Bracke, who traced the
pervasive crime and destitution in the ranks of the Irish
Regiments in France to military force reductions by Louis
XIV, following the Treaty of Riswick in 1697 . "A good many
of (the Irish) became highwaymen and robbers...formed
themselves into gangs and roamed the roads and farmlands in
search of prey." The Irish Wild Geese had shape shifted
into highwaymen, gamblers, smugglers, and buccaneers (boc
aniar, rogues from the west, playboy(s)of the western
world) of imperial France and Spain and their North and
South American colonies.
Gaelic New Orleans: 1717 - 1769
The Gaelic influence on the port city of New Orleans was
present from the very moment of its birth. In September,
1717, the Scottish world-class Faro (Fiaradh) banker, con
man, and financial wizard, John Law, and his Company of the
West, popularly known as The Mississippi Company, obtained
control of the entire French province of Louisiana by royal
grant.
A former high-stakes Faro mechanic (mí-cheannaíocht,
crooked, evil dealer) and sure-thing trickster, John Law
worked fast. He initiated a land and stock selling campaign
that swept France into a mad frenzy of financial
speculation. The French national currency was floated and
the "Mississippi Bubble," which would bring the country to
the brink of economic ruin, was inflated into the most
massive financial swindle in early modern European history.
Colonists willing to immigrate to Louisiana were needed to
create an illusion of success, so John Law's underworld
operatives ransacked French jails and hospitals to find
them: "Disorderly soldiers, black sheep of distinguished
families, paupers, prostitutes, political suspects,
friendless strangers, unsophisticated peasants, were all
kidnapped, herded, and shipped under guard to fill the
emptiness of Louisiana." The city of New Orleans was
founded a year later, in 1718, and by the 1740s had become
a prosperous port city with 2,000 inhabitants, including
three hundred French soldiers and three hundred African
slaves.
The new French royal colony came to a sudden end, in August
1769, when Don Alexander O'Reilly, an Irish Soldier of
Fortune, and one of the most celebrated of Na Géanna Fiáine
(the Wild Geese), landed at New Orleans with twenty-four
Spanish warships and three thousand soldiers -- many of
them the Irish-speaking buccaneers of the Spanish crown's
Irish brigades and took possession of the city for the
King of Spain. The bloody rule of Admiral O'Reilly set an
early pattern of Irish immigration to the Crescent City
that was to persist and grow for more than a hundred years.
In 1860, the United States Federal Census reported that
fourteen percent of the citizens of New Orleans were Irish-
born, equaling exactly the percentage of African Americans
(7% gens de coleur libre, free people of color, 7% slaves)
in the city's burgeoning population. If we add second,
third, and even fourth-generation Irish-Americans, whose
families had lived in the port city since the mid-18th
century, on the eve of the Civil War twenty to 25 percent
of the population of New Orleans was of Irish or hybrid-
Irish descent. (16)
By the 1820s, New Orleans had also become the premier
gambling city in the United States and Faro was its Tiger
(diaga, holy, divine) God of the Odds. From 1830 to the
Civil War, the underworld historian Herbert Asbury
estimated that between six to eight hundred gamblers and
sure-thing tricksters, most of them Irish-Americans,
regularly worked the steamboats that ran between New
Orleans and St. Louis. Famous Faro sharpers like Jimmy
Fitzgerald, Gib Cohern, Jim McClane, Tom Mackay, Charles
Cassidy, Pat Herne, and Price McGrath were all leading
members of the loosely organized, hybrid-Gaelic gambling
clans of New Orleans, who scattered throughout the south
and northeastern United States in the 1830s.
In New York City, the Big Easy Irishman Pat Herne teamed up
with the top Faro banker Henry Colton, who "was regarded as
a sort of supreme tribunal of gaming...and in gambling
circles throughout the United States his decisions were
binding." Henry Colton's moniker (alias or underworld name)
in Irish is An Rí Ghealltáin (pron. An ree Calltawn), and
means "the King of Wagers, Bets, and Promises."
From "Henry Colton" in the 1840s, to the panel-house
operator and gambler "Shang" (Seang, pron. shang, Slim)
Draper (Dribire, one who lays snares) in the 1880s, to the
"Yellow" (Éalú, absconding, escaping, sneaking away) Kid,
the nickname of both a famous newspaper cartoon character
and infamous Chicago con man in the early 1900s, to Owney
Madden's old underworld ally, Tanner (Dána, bold, intrepid)
Smith, at the dawn of the Jazz Age, underworld monikers
were often as Irish as the racketeers (racadóira, dealers,
sporty characters) themselves.
By the mid-19th century the Faro "Tiger" was on the prowl
from the prairies and wide-open cow towns of Texas to San
Francisco of the Gold Rush era. "Faro was the mainstay of
every important gambling house north of the Rio Grande
River...No other card game or dice game, not even Poker or
Craps, has ever achieved the popularity in this country
that faro once enjoyed." Faro also became the "first medium
of extensive card cheating seen in the United States," and
was the crooked foundation on which the world-famous
gambling casinos of New York City and Saratoga were built.
Rules of the Faro Game
Faro was one of the simplest gambling games ever devised.
Players bet against "the bank" or "the house," rather than
against one another's póca (pocket or purse) as in a poker
game. Punters (gamblers) placed their bets on a green baize
layout called a "sweat" (suite, set, established, fixed,
site) cloth, with the images of a suit of cards painted on
it, representing all thirteen denominations from Ace to
King. Once a Faro (Fiaradh) banker set out his "sweat
cloth" and "case keeper" in a saloon or gambling joint, he
was in business.
Sweat Cloth
Suite Cloth
A Set, Fixed, or Site (Cloth)
Unique to Faro was the "Case (Cas, Turn) Keeper," an
abacus-like device, set within a wooden cabinet with
miniature cards painted on to it, matching those on the
layout. A thin wire ran from each card picture on which
four button-shaped discs were hung, which another dealer's
assistant, also called a "Case Keeper," manipulated like a
miniature billiard counter, recording each of the cards as
they were turned out two at a time from the tellbox. The
Case Keeper allowed the bettors to determine which card
denominations had been turned out of the deck.
"Keepin' cases" in a Faro game took a sharp eye and became
a popular slang term for keeping a close watch on someone
or something. A variation of "keeping cases," which still
survives today, is the term "to case a joint," meaning to
check a place out carefully with the vigilance of a "case
keeper."
In Hughie, Eugene O'Neill's last play, set in a crummyhotel
near Times Square in 1928, a year before the Age of
Jazzbecame Age of the Stock Market Sucker, a small time
grifter and gambler named "Erie" Smith, complained about
his dead palHughie's wary wife.
Erie Smith: "In all the years I knew him, he never bet...on
nothin'. But it ain't his fault. He'd have took a chance,
but how could he with his wife keepin' cases on every
nickel of his salary? I showed him lots of ways he could
cross her up, but he was too scared." (22)
Case Keeper
Cas (Turn) Keeper
Cas, v., to turn, to twist, wind, coil.
Casadh, (pron. casah) Vn, act of turning, twisting,
coiling.
Cas is an Irish verb meaning "to turn, twist, or wind," and
its verbal nominative casadh (pron. casah) is translated as
"the act of turning, twisting, winding, or coiling." Cartaí
a chasadh (pron. cartee a casah) means "to turn the cards."
The Case Keeper was the Cas (Turn) Keeper. (23).
Two Irish and Scots-Gaelic words, Fiaradh and Cas, both
mean "turning and twisting" in a gambling game whose main
move was called "The Turn" in English.
For gamblers in an honest Faro game, the ideal time to
wager was after three cards of the same denomination have
been turned out. The house or bank had absolutely no
advantage then, so smart players could buck (buach, pron.
buak, go up against, defeat) the Tiger if the odds turned
in their favor.
Like any successful gambling game, whether in a swank "rug
joint" or the back lot of a carnival, Faro appeared to be a
game that could be beat.
But there was no such thing as a square ('s coir, is honest
and fair) Faro game; every Faro game was a scam ('s cam, is
crooked). (26)
Square
'S cóir, contraction of Is cóir (é.)
Fair play. Honest. (It) is honest. (It) is fair play.
Scam
'S cam. contraction of Is cam (é.)
A trick; a deceit. Lit. (It) is crooked; (it) is a trick.
Cóir, adj. & n., honest, just, fair; proper, decent.
Justice, equity, honesty, fairness.
Cam, n., crookedness, a deceit, a trick.
The turns, coils, bends, and twists of the "turning,
twisting" game of Faro mirrored the Celtic triple-spirals
sculpted onto the massive lintel stones of megalithic
monuments in the Boyne Valley, fifteen hundred years before
a Pharaoh built the first pyramid. The Tiger was the faro
gambler's god of the odds and the sweat cloth was his
altar.
The Tiger God of the Odds
Diaga, holy, diagaire, divine, and diagacht, a god, are all
modern Irish words descended from the Old Irish word dea,
meaning "a pagan divinity," and deacht, "a pagan god."
The American-Gaelic tricksters of the 19th and early 20th
centuries worshipped a god who gambled with the universe.
In a Faro Game ruled by the Tiger and dealt by a mechanic
(mí-cheannaíocht, an evil, crooked dealer), a sucker (sách
úr, a fresh new "fat cat") or a mark (marc, target) out on
a spree (spraoi, fun, sport, frolic) was lured by a roper
(ropaire, a scoundrel, a thief) into a Faro joint (díonta,
pron. jeent, a shelter, fig. house) where a skilled shill
(síol, pron. sheel, to propagate or seed) seeded the game
with the house's moolah (moll óir, a pile of gold or
money), while the capper (ciapaire, a goader) goaded the
swell (sóúil) to guzzle (gus óil, drink vigorously) and
slug (slog, swallow, gulp) the high class whiskey (uisce)
and wager his jack (tiach, pron. jiak, a purse, fig. money)
with abandon.
Mechanic, a crooked Faro dealer.
Mí-cheannaíocht, an evil dealer.
Sucker
Sách úr. a new, green, well-fed fellow. A fresh "fat cat"
Mark, a sucker who has become the "target" of a
professional gambler.
Marc, a target
Roper, the scoundrel who "ropes" suckers into a "braced"
(fixed) Faro game.
Ropaire, a scoundrel, a thief.
Joint, any place a Faro banker sets up his "sweat" cloth.
Díonta (pron. jynt or jeent), a shelter, fig. any type of
shelter from a shanty to a mansion.
Shill, the "shill" seeds the game with the faro banker's
moolah (money) and often wins big to lure the "marks"
into a fixed Faro game.
Síol, (pron, sheel), to propagate, seed, or sow.
A "Mark Anthony" what gamblers call a "super-sucker."
Marc andána: a rash and reckless mark.
The premier Faro rug joint of 19th century New York City
was the Tapis Franc, where the organization put the screw
to the slumming dude (dúd) and fleeced the flush (flúirse,
pron. flursh, abundant, plentiful) pockets of the "super-
sucker" known as a "Mark Anthony" (marc andána, pron. mark
antanay, a rash and reckless mark) who tried to buck the
Faro Tiger.
II. The Sanas (etymology, secret knowledge) of Poker
Poker (game)
Póca (game)
Pocket (game)
The American Heritage Dictionary sums up contemporary
scholarly opinion on the history and origin of the word
Poker: "etymology (and) origin unknown." The Oxford English
Dictionary is equally "uncertain" and traces one of the
earliest appearances of the word Poker in the American-
English language to an 1836 quote from Hildreth's Campaigns
in the Rocky Mountains. "M - lost some cool hundreds last
night at poker."
By the 1870s, Poker was the most widely played short card
game in the United States and was said to be based on the
ancient Persian game of As Nas, which had been imported
into France sometime in the 18th century. According to most
gambling historians, As Nas evolved into a French three-
card bluffing game called Poque, another word of mysterious
origin. As the story goes, Poque like Faro was carried to
New Orleans in the early 19th century by French and
European gamblers, where it ultimately emerged as the game
we know today as Poker.
Poker was described by Herbert Asbury as a hybrid short
card game "formed by superimposing two important American
innovations Jackpots and Stud... on the bragging (bréag,
to lie or exaggerate) or bluffing found in many English,
French, and Italian games like Brag, Primero...Poque and
Amigu."
Some dictionaries suggest that the word Poque might be
related to the German gambling game Pochspiel, or the
"pounding game," which contains an element of "bluffing."
But pounding on the table is never an effective poker bluff
- even in a German beer hall.
The Irish-American novelist and poker champion, James
McManus, in his book, Fifth Street, speculates that the
word Poque might be derived from the Irish word Póg (pron.
pogue), meaning a "kiss." However, the Irish language
scholar and lexicographer, Patrick S. Dineen in his
foundational Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, Irish-English
Dictionary derives the Irish word Póg (kiss) from the Latin
word "Pax," meaning "peace, and the early medieval
Christian practice of greeting people with the word "Pax"
and a Póg (kiss) on the cheek. Kissing and peace are
incompatible with poker.
It is possible McManus might be subconsciously referring to
the loud "Póg" heard in poker games in his birthplace of
the Bronx after a bad beat (béad, an injury, or a loss), in
the NY-Irish phrase "Póg mo thóin (pron. pogue ma hone),
meaning "kiss my ass," which turns the early medieval Irish
Christian practice on its head.
Perhaps, we should turn conventional wisdom on its head and
-- as in a Poker game -- go for the pocket? (31).
Poker is a short card game that is played out of your Póca
(pocket) and against the other gambler's Póca (pocket or
purse.) There is no bank or "house" in poker.. A Faro
(Fairadh, pron. fearoo, turning) game needs a skilled
dealer (a mechanic), an assistant dealer, and a case (cas,
turn) keeper, as well as cappers, ropers, and shills, to
seed the game with the house's jack, work the marks, and
feed a constant supply of fresh suckers to the Faro
"Tiger." Faro also requires a large bankroll for a house
bank.
Raising the nut (neart, pron. n'art, a sufficiency, enough)
for the bank and transporting the cumbersome Faro
paraphernalia, was difficult for the itinerant gamblers of
the 19th century American frontier. In a poker game the
gambler carried all his paraphernalia, a deck of cards and
a bankroll, in his back póca (pocket). There was a fresh
pocket to be plucked in each new hand of poker. The
possibilities of new pockets were as limitless as the
endless supply of suckers, who were, as Mike McDonald said,
"born every minute."
The Irish word Póca means "a pocket, bag, pouch, or purse"
in English and is said by American and English dictionaries
to be derived from the Middle English word poke, the Anglo
Saxon poca, and the English pocket. The German language
scholar Kuno Meyer, however, takes the Irish word póca from
the Norse pok. Norwegian and Danish Vikings, founded
Dublin, Waterford, and other Irish port cities in the 8th
and 9th centuries and left a considerable lexical imprint
on the Irish language.
Exactly when the transition in America from Poque to Poker
occurred is unknown. The Irish-American writer and poker
champion James McManus also speculated that the southern
pronunciation of Poque was "pokuh," which is precisely how
you pronounce póca (pocket) in Irish. What we do know is
that old Poque game evolved into the modern Poker game on
the fingertips of the professional card sharps, as the
rules were changed and the game was sped up and modernized.
The twenty-card deck was replaced with fifty-two cards to
accommodate as many as ten players. Flushes and straights
were introduced, and a draw of up to three cards was
permitted, producing more rounds of betting. This in turn
produced bigger payoffs and a larger pot for the gamblers,
as well as more opportunities to cheat. The old Poque Game
of New Orleans became the new Poker game we play today: the
hybrid short card game with the hybrid Irish and American
name.
Poker (game)
Póca (game)
Pocket (game)
The word "pocket" is a key term in modern No-Limit Texas
Hold "Em Poker (Póca, pocket) game. The two "hole" cards
each gambler is dealt down are called "pocket" cards. Two
aces are "pocket rockets" and two pair is a "pocket pair."
Beat, to get beat. A bad beat, a beat artist. A bad beat in
poker is when a powerful hand is defeated by one even more
powerful, known as a "nut" hand.
Béad: a loss, injury, robbery, crime; sorrow. To be robbed
or cheated.
Capper, the shill who goads the sucker to bet larger and
larger amounts. In New York and Brooklyn Irish-American
Vernacular to "cap" on someone means to goad or torment
them verbally.
Ciapaire, a goader. Ciap, to goad or torment.
In a Faro game all bets paid two to one, except the "Last
Turn" of the final three cards, which paid four to one. In
a Poker (Póca, pocket) game the limit to the pot is the
amount of the jack in the other person's pocket. There is a
new pot for every hand in a póca game and a new player can
add his or her pocket of fresh Jack to the pot. The poker
bank is as inexhaustible as the pockets of the players.
In the new democratic poker game, unlike aristocratic Faro
-- where the bank, or house, controls the deal -- there is
always a "new deal." The button (beart t-aon, one dealing)
rotates to all players.
Though, in the 1870s a new poker game called Stud became
popular. In Stud (stad, stop) poker the deal does not
rotate from player to player, but stops (stad, stop, fig.
stays) with the house dealer. It is a one button game. (35)
If a Poker game is square ('s cóir, is honest, fair) any
smart lucky punter (buainteoir, a winner) can be a winner.
But if a button" is snakin' (snoíochan, pron. snakin',
marking, clipping, cutting, meddling with) the deck,
"puttin' in the gaff (gaf, a trick or deceit, a crooked
device), or ringing (roinn, pron. ring, to deal) in a
crooked deck, every Punter is a loser. Cheating is as easy
in Poker as it is in Faro.
When a Poker game is a scam ('s cam, is crooked), the river
(ríofa, calculator, computer, enumerator, reckoning) card
always runs into the pocket (póca) of the "mechanic." No
matter how many times a mark shuffles and cuts the deck,
Fifth Street is always Beat (Béad, Loss, Crime, Injury,
Sorrow) Street.
A mark in a snaked game might as well muck (múch, pron.
muk, to turn over and smother) a nut (neart, pron. n'art,
power, strength) hand, the pot always winds up in the
pocket of the dealer with the gimmick (camóg).
The Poker (Póca, Pocket) game is the ideal name for the
premier short card game of the American crossroad. There is
no house bank. It is one pocket against another.
Sanas Beag (a small glossary) of Poker
Jack, money
Tiach, tiag (pron. jack): a purse, a wallet, fig. money.
"Jack" was the American playwright Eugene O'Neill's
favorite term for money. In the Iceman Cometh, O'Neill's
Pulitzer Prize winning drama, set in 1910 in Harry Hope's
saloon in a New York City slum, Rocky the bartender
discussed the benefits of Jack.
ROCKY: "... Not dat I blame yuh for not woikin'. On'y
suckers woik. But dere's no percentage in bein' broke when
yuh can grab good jack for yourself and make someone else
woik for yuh, is dere?" (38)
In O'Neill's final play Hughie, a down on his luck gambler,
Erie Smith, recalls the twists and turns of the gods of the
odds.
ERIE: "Some nights I'd come back here without a buck,
feeling lower than a snake's belly, and the first thing you
know I'd be lousy with jack, bettin' a grand a race." (39)
Jack as slang for money is now rare, unless you win a lulu
(liú luath, pron. loo luah, a howler, a scream) of a jack
pot (40)
Brag: The name for an early card game related to Poker
Bréag: A lie, exaggeration, deceit, deception.
According to Herbert Asbury, the early card game Brag's
influence on poker was so great that it was often called
"the brag game." In the early forms of Brag, the jack of
clubs and the ace and nine of diamonds were wild and called
braggers (bréagóir, a braggart, liar, and exaggerator). The
key endeavor of the Brag card game as described in
Seymour's Court Gamester, published in 1719, was " to
impose on the judgment of the rest who play...by boasting
or bragging of the cards in your hand."
The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology speculates that the
word "brag" might "possibly" have a Gaelic origin, though
inexplicably links it to a "Celtic" word meaning trousers;
"brag ...of uncertain origin; possible sources include
Gaullish or Celtic 'braca,' (a) kind of trousers..."
Barnhart also cites Provencal, French (Swiss dialect),
Scandinavian, and Old Icelandic as other possible sources
of the word "brag." (41)
Well into the late 19th century "brag" was considered
"slang" in American English. The underworld slang
lexicologist and warden of New York City's Tombs prison,
George Matsell, included "brag" in his Vocabulum or The
Rogue's Lexicon, defining it is a "boast." Professor
MacBain the Scots-Gaelic etymologist, derived the Irish
word bréag from Old Irish bréc, and related it to the
Sanskrit bhramca, a deviation.
The River Card
The Ríofa Card
Computer, Calculator, Reckoner Card.
The Card of Reckoning.
Ríofa, al. ríomhaire (pron. reever), reckoner, calculator,
computer; Ríomh, v.t. (pp. ríofa), Reckon, compose,
arrange, set in order, enumerate, calculate.
Ríomhadh (pron. reeveh) Reckoning, (act of) reckoning,
arranging, setting in order; calculating. Reckoner.
Calculator. al. rímhe (reeveh), m. (act of) reckoning,
composing, arranging, setting in order.
The River (Ríofa) Card, also known as "Fifth Street," is
the final and fifth community card in 7-Card Texas Hold
'Em. The Ríofa (computing, calculating, reckoning) card is
the card of final computation, calculation, and reckoning.
Everyone knows when the River (Ríofa) Card flows on Fifth
Street.
Nut; the nut hand; the nut cards; also the nuts
Neart (pron. n'art)
Power, physical strength, force. Enough, plenty, a
sufficiency; ability.
The Nut hand is the hand with the power in poker. The "Nut"
or "Nuts" is the strongest possible hand in 7 Card Texas
Hold 'Em. Any gender can have the nuts on Fifth Street.
In Irish American Vernacular the word "nut" is also used to
mean a "sufficiency" or "enough," as in, "I made my weekly
nut." To be a "nut" was also to be a "power" and was most
often a good thing in the speech of the 19th and early 20th
century North American breac-Ghaeltachta. Today, sadly, the
old "neart" has been reduced to the whacky "nut." Though,
even crazy "nuts" are powerful. As in the expression: "He
fought like a nut." That's the Irish neart in an Irish-
American nut shell.
Múch (pron. muk or mook, "ch" = "k") to cover over, deaden,
suppress.
Muck, to cover over your cards and "kill" them.
Muck is both a verb and a noun in poker: to muck means "to
turn your cards over face down in the center of the table."
The "muck" can also mean the pile of cards covered over
face down in front of the dealer. A pile of dead cards.
Check
Téacht (pron. chayk).
To freeze; to set.
When you check in poker you tap the table, freeze your bet,
and set.
Snakin' the deck
Snoíochán (pron. snakin')
(Act of) meddling; carving, cutting; filing.
Snakin' the deck means "to carve, mark, cut, or meddle
with" it; or to surreptitiously ring (roinn, pron. ring,
deal) in a "snaked" deck for a square one.
Kitty
Cuid oíche (pron. cuiddihy)
Some of the night. A share, a portion of the night, The
night's meal or livelihood or property..
The kitty also became a name for the money and swag that a
faro banker cut up with his crew: the mechanic, case
keeper, cappers, and shills at the end of the night. At the
end of the day, the cuiddihy, or "kitty," is "any shared
portion of money or benefits."
Piker
Picear
A cheap niggardly person. A two-bit lout.
A piker is a name for two-bit penny ante gambler or a cheap
lout.
Beat. To get beat. A "beat" artist.
Béad: A loss, injury, robbery, crime; sorrow. To be robbed
or cheated.
A smart gambler has the number of every sucker on Beat
Street.
The last word in Hughie, the last play by the Nobel-prize
winning Irish-American playwright, Eugene O'Neill, is
actually two Irish words concealed beneath the phonetic
orthography of that key American "slang" term, "sucker"
Sách úr (pron. saahk oor) A new, fresh, well-fed, self-
satisfied fellow. A fresh "fat cat."
"There isn't any such thing as an honest gambler." Richard
Canfield.
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Additional articles are located at:
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