A is for Assassin who makes your heart stop cold B is for the Burglar who deftly picks your lock C is for the Cutpurse who swipes your gold and runs D is for the Dodger, all mischief and street smarts
E is for Enforcer who’s bursting through your door F is for the Filcher who lifts coins, jewels, and all G is for the Grifter who takes you for a ride H is for Highwayman, your money or your life
I’s for Infiltrator, the spy who gains your trust J is for the Jack of All Trades, master of none K is for the Knave who lacks an honest bone L is for Lawbreaker who fought the law and won
M is for the Mountebank whose swindles are an art N is for the Ne’er-Do-Well, that trouble-seeking scamp O is for the Outlaw, that outcast robber bold P is for the Pícaro who begged, borrowed, and stole
Q is for the Quack who lies and leads you on R is for the Rogue who takes the crooked road S is for the Scoundrel who’s not afraid to swing T is for the Thief who swiftly palms your ring
U is for the Urchin who on barricades stood tall V is for the Vagabond who roves, rambles, and roams W is for the Waif who’s cast out like a tramp X is for the X-Con who is free but wears the brand
Y is for the Yardbird who’s always in the slammer Z’s for daring Zorro and all dashing swashbucklers Rascals and rapscallions all, we cheat and steal and lie, and gathered here we do avow that never shall we die
from Pathfinder’s Council of Thieves: “Thieves’ Guilds in History”
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
This unorthodox list of “Thieves’ Guilds in History”, in Pathfinder’s Council of Thieves (2010), was regarded with some suspicion. “Surely this can’t be right!,” a friend of mine thought, and showed it to me in disbelief. But I’ll defend it, because it does what it says on the tin. Just the small print of the tin, not the large title. It ‘s not literally a list of historical thieves’ guilds, but it’s definitely a list of parallels, “organisations that can be conceptualised as thieves’ guilds” to quote the text, and whose characteristics might resemble your standard fictional Thieves’ Guild in some regard, I would add. If we look at it that way, it’s not that much of a stretch.
No joke at all, depending on how we define organised crime, we might unintentionally include all sorts of organisations, because as it happens, the features, structure, and tactics of the Mafia (and the Yakuza and the Triads etc) can also be found in corporations, sovereign states, and so on. OPEC qualifies, and so does NATO and the IMF. The IMF is the probably the worst, and it would be my first choice if I was making that list. The blackmail of entire countries and their subsequent strangulation via debt isn’t very different (of better) than the blackmail of individuals and their subsequent murder via Colombian necktie.
In rural areas, resistance movements of all kinds (and rebel groups, irregular liberation armies, what have you) operate like bands of bandits. It’s inevitable, it simply doesn’t work otherwise. Their ultimate goal may vary wildly, ranging from admirable to appalling, but if the intermediary goal is “kick out the occupying army and/or defeat the national one with guerilla warfare”, what are they gonna do? Work 9 to 5 at the office and sabotage the bridge at 6? No, they need hideouts in the wilderness, and friendly locals, and supplies that they’ll acquire by any means necessary. Just like bandits.
Pancho Villa and followers. The Mexican Revolution makes it obvious (and iconic, thanks to the visual of the bandoliers), but the very thin and blurry line between bandit and (rural) revolutionary applies almost everywhere if you look close enough.
So again, this is not a list of historical thieves’ guilds by any means (there is no such thing), but we can take it as food for thought, a nudge for more research, and inspiration for worldbuilding.
The source: Pathfinder 1E, Council of Thieves Adventure Path, Part 5 of 6: “Mother of Flies“
Precious daggers are cool and all, but I’m very fond of simple pocket knives, made to get shit done. So here are a few farmer / peasant knives, ranging from penknife- to sickle-sized.
1. Grafting knife (greffoir) from Thiers, France
This little multi-tool has a curved blade (very used and sharpened, it was originally wider) and a smaller wavy blade. It’s primarily for cutting the stock plant and the plant shoot (or bud) that you mean to graft, though it’s also good for small pruning jobs and general utility. It locks by slipjoint, the standard pocket knife locking mechanism that you’ll find in Swiss army knives. The small flat thing is a bark lifter, it’s made of bone and it’s used for bud grafting: when you insert a bud beneath the bark of a stem, you have to be extra careful to not injure the bark, so you don’t want sharp edges there.
The handle has scales of bone, carved like this in order to look like stag (which is rarer and more expensive). A similar way to accomplish this is “jigged bone” scales, found in a lot of old/classic American and English knives:
Sheffield hunting knife by Joseph Allen / American folding knife (looks like an electrician’s knife) by Camillus
which I honestly think is too… regular, sometimes it looks machine-made even when it’s handmade. But this handle here is sculpted, it’s a work of art, I love it.
Manufactured sometime in *waves vaguely* the 20th century (probably 1930s-1960s) by the cutlery A. Bardin-Dozolmé. The blade is stamped “57 BARDIN Garanti”, which tells us nothing useful, this stamp’s been around since the 18th century. It’s 9.2 cm closed and 14.7 cm open. (3.62 / 5.79 inches)
I’ve shown you this before, it’s got a curved carbon steel blade, a horn handle, and “friction lock” as they call it nowadays i.e. no lock whatsoever, it’s a clasp knife. And it’s the simplest, most convenient tool, I adore it.
Made by the cutlery Hermanos Campins in Consell, Mallorca, stamped “HNOS CAMPINS / CONSELL”, mid-20th century, 9.7 cm closed and 17 cm open. (3.82 / 6.7 inches)
3. Shepherd knife (couteau de berger) from Corsica, France
Another clasp knife (doesn’t lock), different shape, with a ram horn handle. Shepherd knives look like utility or bushcraft knives, their blades are not usually curved but they often have a clip-point shape, and they’re quite sturdy.
This is an outlier, it wasn’t really made for work, it’s for tourists or collectors. However, it’s handmade in the tradition of Corsican knife-making (as opposed to the more famous vendetta knives which were manufactured in mainland France, though I should clarify this shape isn’t uniquely Corsican either, it was widespread in both France and Italy), with a couple of modern touches: the blade is forged with a decorative flair, and the horn is first carved at the ridges (to emphasise it’s ram, I’m guessing) and then polished like a mirror.
It’s a strong, solid knife, and absolutely gorgeous.
Made by a local knife-maker (unfortunately I don’t know the name, the blade is signed but with a symbol) in Sartène, Corsica, maybe a decade ago. 11.5 cm closed and 19 cm open. (4.53 / 7.48 inches)
4. Folding billhook (roncola) from Italy
Billhooks are farming tools for cutting and pruning, though usually they have fixed blades. This one isn’t just folding, it’s an actual picklock, like a switchblade. (I mean with the same locking mechanism, it doesn’t open automatically or anything). The blade is carbon steel (that’s a lot of carbon, folks!) and the handle is beautiful, made of carved wood, with brass (I think) insets, and with a fancy external backspring.
Folding billhooks were exported from Italy to the UK. From 1961, a lot of them were imported by Whitby Knives, stamped “Whitby”, and were made in Maniago by Mauro Mario, a prolific knife-maker who also made a ton of switchblades. They looked like this:
The one I got looks earlier to me, but honestly I have no idea when it’s from. Early 20th? Late 19th? *uncertain noises* In any case, it’s 12 cm closed and 22.5 cm open. (4.72 / 8.86 inches)
5. Huge pruning knife (saca tripas) from Guanajuato, Mexico
And last but not least, a big fuck-off pruning knife, which locks securely with a ratchet and unlocks with a pull-ring. This is basically a folding sickle, you reap stuff with it, and can cut thick branches. The very curved carbon blade (it’s not over-sharpened, that’s its original shape) is stamped with a “J”, and the handle is made of horn, with an iron backspring.
The name is extravagantly bloodthirsty, it means “disemboweller” (saca tripas = “pulls out intestines”), and is of course a misnomer: this isn’t a weapon, it’s a farming tool. (Could it be used as a weapon? Well of course, but so can kitchen knives.) I’m not entirely sure if it’s really called that way, or only as a jest, or for the express purpose of selling one of them to bloodthirsty types, i.e. to morons. [Pet peeve: mislabeling work knives as “military” or “fighting” or “tactical”, when they’re clearly for utility, and often for some specific farming job. I even saw an ad for a knife like this describing it as a torture implement, for fuck’s sake people, IT’S FOR CUTTING PLANTS.]
So anyway, these knives can be found all over Mexico, and this one hails from the city of Guanajuato, or at least it was bought there at some point. It’s 16 cm closed and 28.5 cm open. (6.3 / 11.22 inches)
The lot of them
Despite the fact that all these are work knives (except the Corsican, but only technically: it emulates a specific, older work knife, and it’s still 100% functional), a clear effort has been made to make them pretty. And I LOVE this. Even the trinxet, which has a monochrome handle and no frills at all, is elegant in its simplicity, and they all have something going on, carvings, decorations, handles shaped to please the eye, materials chosen for their nice colour.
Aesthetically speaking, I think knives went to shit when plastic was adopted. (Practically speaking, I admit plastic is a lot more resistant to the elements; a handle of horn or bone must be kept dry or it shrivels, wood must be kept from dryness or it shrinks, bugs and mites eat it, it’s a mess.)
Not one blade here is stainless steel, and it shows.
Only the handle of the grafting knife (the smallest one) has scales riveted on a metal frame. Not coincidentally, it’s the most industrial production, it came out of a Thiers factory. (Thiers is a major cutlery centre, like Sheffield and Solingen.) The rest were hand-made in a workshop or at most a cottage industry (a bunch of people in a village construct parts and someone assembles them), and their handles are solid blocks of material (horn or wood), with a slit in the middle to fit the folded blade. That’s the simpler, older construction.
‘Gold is for the mistress—silver for the maid! Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.’ ‘Good!’ said the Baron, sitting in his hall, ‘But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all!’ — Rudyard Kipling, “Cold Iron”
Folklore
Drudenmesser, or “witch-knife”, an apotropaic folding knife from Germany
The notion that iron (or steel) can ward against evil spirits, witches, fairies, etc is very widespread in folklore. You hang a horseshoe over your threshold to deny entry to evil spirits, you carry an iron tool with you to make sure devils won’t assault you, you place a small knife under the baby’s crib to ward it from witches, and so on. Iron is apotropaic in many many cultures.
In English, we often come across passages that refer to apotropaic cold iron (or cold steel). “All uncouth, unknown Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly so much as by cold Iron”, says Robert Kirk in 1691, which I believe is the earliest example. “Evil spirits cannot bear the touch of cold steel. Iron, or preferably steel, in any form is a protection”, says John Gregorson Campbell in 1901.
Words
So what is cold iron? In this context, it’s just iron. The “cold” part is poetic, especially – but not only – if we’re talking about either blades (or swords, weapons, the force of arms) or manacles and the like. It just sounds more ominous. There are “cold yron chaines” in The Fairie Queene (1596), and a 1638 book of travels tells us that a Georgian general (in the Caucasus) vowed “to make the Turk to eat cold iron”.
Green’s Dictionary of Slangdefines “cold iron” as a sword, and dates the term to 1698. From 1725 it appears in Cant dictionaries (could this sense be thieves’ cant, originally? why not, plenty of words and expressions started as underworld slang and then entered the mainstream), and from ~1750 its use becomes much more common.
NGram Viewer diagram for 1600-2019.
In other contexts, cold iron is (surprise!) iron that’s not hot. So let’s talk a bit about metallurgy.
Metals
In nature, we can find only one kind of iron that’s pure enough to work with: meteoritic iron. It has to literally fall from the sky. Barring that very rare occurrence, people have to mine the earth for iron ore, which is not workable as is. To separate the iron from the ore we have to smelt it, and for that we need heat, in the form of hot charcoals. Throwing the ore on the coals won’t do much of anything, it’s not hot enough. But if we enclose the coals in a little tower built of clay, leaving holes for air flow, the temperature rises enough to smelt the ore. That’s called a bloomery.
clay bloomery / medieval bloomery / beating the bloom to get rid of the slag
What comes out of the bloomery is a bloom: a porous, malleable mass of iron (that we need) and slag (byproducts that we don’t need). But now we can get rid of the slag and turn the porous mass to something solid, by hammering the hot bloom over and over. And once the slag is off, by the same process we can give it a desired shape in the forge, reheating it as needed. This is called “working” the iron, hence “wrought iron” objects, i.e. forged.
a blacksmith in his forge, with bellows, fire, and anvil (English woodcut, 1603)
This is the lowest-tech version, possibly going back to ~2000 BCE in Nigeria. If we add bellows, the improved air flow will raise the temperature. So smelting happens faster and more efficiently in the bloomery, and so does heating the iron in the forge, making it easier to work with. And that’s the standard process from the Iron Age all through the middle ages and beyond (although in China they may have skipped this stage and gone straight to the next one).
If we make the bloomery bigger and bigger, with stronger and stronger bellows, we end up with a blast furnace, a construction so efficient that the temperature outright melts the iron, and it’s liquified enough to be poured into a mould and acquire the desired shape when it cools off. This is “cast iron”.
a blast furnace
So in all of this, what’s cold iron? Well, it’s iron that went though the heat and cooled off. (No heat = no iron, all you got is ore.) If it came out of a bloomery, or if it wasn’t cast, it’s by definition worked, hammered, beaten, wrought, and that happened while it was still hot.
Is there such a thing as “cold-wrought” iron? No. In fact, “working cold iron” was a simile for something foolish or pointless. A smith who beats cold iron instead of putting it in the fire shows folly, says a 1694 book on religion, so you too should choose your best tools, piety and good decorum, to educate your children and servants, instead of beating them. When Don Quixote (1605) declares he’ll go knight-erranting again, Sancho Panza tries to dissuade him, but it’s like “preaching in the desert and hammering on cold iron” (a direct translation of martillar en hierro frío).
Minor work can be done on cold iron. A 1710 dictionary of technical terms tells us that a rivetting-hammer is “chiefly used for rivetting or setting straight cold iron, or for crooking of small work; but ’tis seldom used at the forge”. Fully fashioning an object out of cold iron is not a real process – though a 1659 History of the World would claim that in Arabia it’s so hot that “smiths work nails and horseshoes out of cold iron, softened only by the vigorous heat of the sun, and the hard hammering of hands on the anvil”. [I declare myself unqualified to judge the veracity of this statement, let’s just say I have doubts.] And there is of course such a thing as “cold wrought-iron”, as in wrought iron after it’s cooled off.
Either way, in the context of pre-20th century English texts which refer to apotropaic “cold iron”, it’s definitely not “cold-wrought”, or meteoritic, or a special alloy of any kind. It’s just iron.
Fiction
The old superstition kept coming up in fantasy fiction. In 1910 Rudyard Kipling wrote the very influential short story “Cold Iron” (in the collection Rewards and Fairies), where he explains invents the details of the fairies’ aversion to iron. They can’t bewitch a child wearing boots, because the boots have nails in the soles. They can’t pass under a doorway guarded by a horseshoe, but they can slip through the backdoor that people neglected to guard. Mortals live “on the near side of Cold Iron”, because there’s iron in every house, while fairies live “on the far side of Cold Iron”, and want nothing to do with it. And changelings brought up by fairies will go back to the world of mortals as soon they touch cold iron for the first time.
In Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (1954), we read:
“Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason.”
In Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) the unicorn is imprisoned in an iron cage:
“She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain.”
Poul Anderson would come back to that idea in Operation Chaos (1971), where the worldbuilding’s premise is that magic and magical creatures have been reintroduced into the modern world, because a scientist “discovered he could degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces”. And that until then, they had been steadily declining, ever since the Iron Age came along.
There are a million examples, I’m just focusing on those that would have had a more direct influence on roleplaying games. However, I should note that all these say “cold iron” but mean “iron”. Yes, the fey call it cold, but they are a poetic bunch. You can’t expect Robin Goodfellow’s words to be pedestrian, now can you?
RPGs
And from there, fantasy roleplaying systems got the idea that Cold Iron is a special material that fey are vulnerable to. The term had been floating around since the early D&D days, but inconsistently, scattered in random sourcebooks, and not necessarily meaning anything else than iron. In 1st Edition’s Monster Manual (1977) it’s ghasts and quasits who are vulnerable to it, not any fey creature. Devils and/or fiends might dislike iron, powdered cold iron is a component in Magic Circle Against Evil, and “cold-wrought iron” makes a couple of appearances. For example, in AD&D it can strike Fool’s Gold and turn it back to its natural state, revealing the illusion.
Then Changeling: The Dreaming came along and made it a big deal, a fundamental rule, and an anathema to all fae:
Cold iron is the ultimate sign of Banality to changelings. … Its presence makes changelings ill at ease, and cold iron weapons cause horrible, smoking wounds that rob changelings of Glamour and threaten their very existence…. The best way to think about cold iron is not as a thing, but as a process, a very low-tech process. It must be produced from iron ore over a charcoal fire. The resulting lump of black-gray material can then be forged (hammered) into useful shapes.
— Changeling: The Dreaming (2nd Edition, 1997)
So now that we know how iron works, does that description make sense? Well, if we assume that the iron ore is unceremoniously dumped on coals, it does not. You can’t smelt iron like that. If we assume that a bloomery is involved even though it’s not mentioned, then yes, this is broadly speaking how iron’s been made since the Iron Age, and until blast furnaces came into the picture. But the World of Darkness isn’t a pseudo-medieval setting, it’s modern urban fantasy. So the implication here is that “cold iron” is iron made the old way: you can’t buy it in the store, someone has to replicate ye olde process and do the whole thing by hand. Now, this is NOT how the term “cold iron” has been used in real life or fiction thus far, but hey, fantasy games are allowed to invent things.
Regardless, 3.5 borrowed the idea, and for the first time D&D made this a core rule. Now most fey creatures had damage reduction and took less damage from weapons and natural attacks, unless the weapon was made of Cold Iron:
“This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties.”
— Player’s Handbook (3.5 Edition, 2003)
Pathfinder kept the rule, though 5e did not. And unlike Changeling, this definition left it somewhat ambiguous if we’re talking about a material with special composition (i.e. not iron) or made with a special process (i.e. iron but). The community was divided, threads were locked over this!
So until someone points me to new evidence, I’ll assume that the invention of cold iron as a special material, distinct from plain iron, should be attributed to TTRPGs.
Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick is approaching the finish line, and it’s crazy to think that it launched in 2003 as a light-hearted parody of D&D rules – starting with the transition from 3rd Edition to 3.5. It’s crazy that we’re now on strip #1262 #1295, 1295 comic strips with stick figures, 1295 punchlines, together making an amazing story which goes so beyond escapism.
OotS features one of my favourite antagonists of all time. Redcloak is a villain with an Actual Point and a hell of a backstory, and his arc, to my joy, is now coming forward. Plot-wise, I think the whole comic is Redcloak’s story – the Order reacts to his plans and machinations, and Xykon is the Big Bad only in terms of raw power, which he seeks for power’s sake. But Redcloak is a motherfucker with a cause, and a large chunk of OotS’s themes revolve around that cause.
In the most recent strip, “Two Villages”, we see the Extremely Wise bugbear (and goblinkin) Oona giving her insight on how much, and how exactly, Redcloak cares about actual living goblins.
“Intentions are sparkly, like fresh snow on mangled corpse. But little bald man is dong in his life what we bugbears are calling “living in two villages.” First village is named Doing-Very-Best-For-Goblins, where we are skipping and playing and not worrying about getting smushed by dwarf or elf. Second village is named Right-All-Along, and all the rocks and trees there are telling little bald man he is being very smart and justified.”
“Anyway, little bald man is liking both villages and is owning fancy cottage with indoor fireplace in each. Okie dokie! Villages are across river from each other. No big whoop to be living in both. Lunch in one, dinner in the other! Everyone is happy!
But problem with living in two villages is: what if one day, bridge over river is being eaten by angry dolphin? Which village will little man be living in then? Which choice will he be choosing when choosing time is here?”
Oona is not worried that Redcloak will choose his ego over his cause. Oona KNOWS he will do that, and that’s why she’s helping him and “fighting off dolphins”, so that the bridge stays intact and he never has to make that choice in the first place.
Like. Dude. The SHIT you can SAY with STICK FIGURES while being HILARIOUS at the same time, I love comics so much, I love D&D, I love fantasy, it’s amazing.
So, “lui c’est juste Ken” (he is just Ken) sounds exactly like “lui sait juste ken” (he just knows fucking).
“Ken” is a slang / argot word, and specifically verlan, a type of back slang.
Back slang is a type of cant where words are pronounced backwards. In English, a back slang of street sellers (costermongers) emerged in early Victorian London, so they could talk among themselves behind the customers’ / constables’ back. Possibly prisoners also used it (or something similar) to talk behind the wardens’ back. The words are pronounced backwards phonetically, more or less. So “boy” becomes yob, “pot of beer” becomes top o’ reeb, “no good” becomes on doog. But it’s not always straight forward, rules are always hazy in cant, so for example “police” becomes esclop. Cool the namesclop = look at the policeman.
The French equivalent is verlan. Its origins are hazy, elements of it appear from the Middle Ages, the criminal underworld probably used it (in some regions, at least) in the 19th century, it shows up in literature in the 20th, later the youths of the banlieues picked it up, rap and hip hop ran with it, and by now it’s pretty much mainstream, if informal.
Verlan reverses the syllables, transposing the last syllable to the start of the word. So “métro” become tromé, “bizzare” become zarbi, and “mec” becomes keum (with signle-syllable words it can go backwards phonetically). Sometimes it further truncates them, so zarbi becomes zarb. And “niquer” (“to fuck”, an argot word in the first place) becomes first keni, and from there ken.
[Speaking of niquer: during one of the many rebellions of the Parisien banlieues, a local tv station had sent a crew all the way to Paris to cover the riots, and the reporter found herself in front of a wall with large graffiti that said “SARKOZY NIQUE TA MÈRE”, and awkwardly said to the camera “and here we see a phrase that means, uuuh, ‘down with Sarkozy'”.]
Another famous back slang is Argentinian Lunfardo, which also reverses the syllables, so tango becomes gotán. (Hence, the Gotán Project.) Lunfardo was supposedly the slang of the criminal underworld and Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, circa late 19th-early 20th century. It features in songs and in literature (see Borges’s “Streetcorner man”), though I should note its seedy origins are disputed. Roberto Arlt, an Argentinian author who didn’t just write about the underworld, he was of the underworld, commented that he doesn’t use Lunfardo in his writings because he doesn’t know it, he’d never heard it in real life in the shady dens he frequented. So it may have been a literary invention to some degree.
Other back slangs which reverse syllables are Xhosa Ilwimi, used mostly by teenagers, Japanese tougo, Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian šatrovački, used originally by criminals and later by youths in general, and Greek podana, which means exactly the same as the French verlan, it’s the word “backwards” (anapoda / l’envers) backwards, and is a somewhat dated criminal / subculture slang (mostly stoner-related tbh), only minimally taken up by hip hop.
Rule of thumb: hip hop is now the ultimate indicator of cant/slang. If a slang word or type of slang doesn’t take off there, it’s dead. If it’s widely used there, it’ll become mainstream informal in no time. (I believe the AAVE->tumblr speech pipeline is a subset of that, though that’s probably a bit more complicated.) And there’s a sweet spot in between where it’s alive but still marginal.
City of witches and of asphalt, port with no exit to the sea! — La Portuaria, from the port of Buenos Aires
Some cities have a port, and some port cities have a port culture. That’s how I call it, anyway. It’s a very special thing. It’s created by the furious economic activity that concentrates around the coming and going of ships, cargo, and people. A port needs to cater to all of that, the ships and the cargo, the shipowner and the dockworker, the captain and the deckhand, the tourist and the sailor and the fisherman. And that transforms the entire city.
Where a port city meets the sea, there’s shipping companies, travel agencies, imports/exports, truck companies, posh hotels, shitty hotels, fancy bars, seedy bars, brothels, strip clubs, theatres, restaurants, casinos, bookshops, tool shops, souvenir shops, fishing supplies, and fresh fish. There’s peddlers and businessmen, porters and accountants, all sorts of people, and they all mingle. They have to! The port’s there!
Port cities have their own landmarks and geography, with docks, wharfs, piers, depots, gates, shipyards, and people can orient themselves by relation to the water.
My gold watch and my pocketbook and lady friend were gone And there was I, Jack all alone, stark naked in the room — the port of New York City
Port cities attract furious criminal activity. Firstly and obviously, everything that’s smuggled will be smuggled through here, from cocaine to counterfeit handbags to guns to oil. (I mean crude/refined oil, though with the prices we’ve seen lately, olive oil is equally plausible.) Port authorities, customs, shipowners and workers, all can have a hand in the pie, a little finger or both hands shoulder-deep, depending on how high up the ladder they are.
Second, ports are always full of newcomers, sailors and passengers, and all newcomers are potential marks. Con artists, scammers, and grifters of all sorts can ply their trade here. There’s also a lot of shilling for more or less legitimate businesses (come buy this, sir! rent a room here, ma’am! oh but you must have a drink there, buddy!), and peddling less then legitimate goods (may I interest you in a fine watch? Rayban glasses, I have Rayban glasses! 100% genuine!). And then there’s good old pickpocketing. Although in most cases, pickpockets are not allowed to operate within the port itself: it’s bad for everyone else’s business, and unlike cops, “everyone else” can actually enforce that.
And third, there’s the entertainment sector: the trifecta of night life, sex work, and gambling, all going hand in hand with the sale and consumption of drugs and booze. Expect the port city to be much more entangled in all that than other cities, and the port itself to attract the bulk of it, or the worst of it. Things that are theoretically illegal might be tolerated here, things that are heavily regulated elsehwhere might follow their own rules here, and things that are otherwise unheard of can be found here. What are you into? Step right up but beware: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
The upshot of all this is that people in the port’s vicinity (not the whole city, though) are more likely to be involved, or at least personally know someone who’s involved, in profoundly shady and/or illegal business. And that certainly affects the culture. Breaking the law is more “eh” than “oh my!”.
All my life I’ve lived beside the waters that they call the Clyde I build the ships and watch them glide down the Broomielaw, sir Trudge to work in sleet and rain, labour for another’s gain know yer place and don’t complain, that’s the rich man’s law, sir — Alistair Hulett, from the shipyards of Glasgow
A port displays furious political activity. Unions are strong here, because labour is not only working, it’s working hard, manually, in the same spaces (so they can talk about it!), and facing the same dangers to life and limb. Working on the docks, handling cargo containers, and ship-building and maintenance are very hazardous jobs (scrapping even more so, I’d say dramatically so), and under these conditions, it’s easier to spot the enemy. Not automatic though. Port cities are traditionally, but not unconditionally, strongholds of the left.
Today, it’s extremely important for the left to take the ports, because if it doesn’t the fascists will. The workforce here has significant ethnic diversity, coming both from inland (immigrants and local minorities) and from the sea (sailors who go around the world sometimes end up working in random ports). So basically, this either goes “proletarians of the world unite” or “foreigners are stealing our jobs”, no middle ground.
By the way, if all your knowledge about port unions comes from The Wire, or worse (for our older readers) from On the Waterfront, please be aware that these are slanted depictions, and you don’t actually know anything. [They’re not equally slanted, The Wire is nowhere near the other one’s level of shameless propaganda, nor so completely divorced from reality. I mean yes, unions can be involved in shady business; so can literally everyone else in the port. But On the Waterfront, without the slightest exaggeration, is to American organised labour what Birth of a Nation is to Black Americans.]
Amo el amor de los marineros que besan y se van. Dejan una promesa. No vuelven nunca más. — Pablo Neruda, from the port of Valparaíso
The port’s culture seeps through the rest of the city. This is where sailor lore gets created and spread, and a port by definition loves travel and the ocean. Many non-sailors fall for it hook, line and sinker, and write poems and sing songs and their heart swells at the mere thought of sailing. But their fascination is often rose-tinted, whereas people who make a living from the sea typically have a love/hate relationship with it.
Maiden voyages are important occasions in shipbuilding ports. A ship’s last voyage, before it goes to scrap, is also memorable. If the ship regularly docks there, it will be the talk of the town, and if it’s a passenger ship [this assumes a geography with regular passenger runs], a whole mess of people will be sharing stories and memories, waving it farewell, shouting, applauding, crying a little. It can get very emotional.
There’s also a silly sort of localism/professional pride going on, where even the port’s accountants, who’ve never set foot below decks IF they’ve actually boarded a ship, feel like they’re a different species of accountant, inexplicably tougher and saltier than their more, er, inland colleagues. No matter who you are and what you do, it’s badge of honour to say you’re from and/or work at the port, like you’re automatically endowed with tenacity and street smarts. It doesn’t make sense, but there you have it.
In the port of Amsterdam there’s a sailor who dies Full of beer, full of cries, in a drunken town fight In the port of Amsterdam there’s a sailor who’s born On a hot muggy morn by the dawn’s early light — Jacques Brel (in David Bowie’s adaptation), from the port of Amsterdam
A port is filthy, grubby, and hopelessly romantic. If it faces somewhat west, it’s on fire every sunset. Silhouettes of enormous cranes are framed by red clouds like alien tripods. The sun sinks into the ocean, and tell me, in the whole wide earth, is there a sweeter sight? Ships approach looming like giant sea beasts, and dock in their usual place like old friends.
A port carries the whiff of grease and petrol, the cool sea breeze, and the incessant sounds of waves and engines and – most of all – people. A port IS people, passing. And tell me, in the whole wide world, is there anything more exciting and heartwrenching than people passing? A port city can fill you with wanderlust and feel like a prison, or a warm welcome, or a devastating farewell.
And if you point a gun to my head and force me to describe a port in a single word, I’ll have to say: desire.
Love me, leave me, hold me tight, walk away, forget. Look at how I broke inside, and how the sea has swelled! It’s pouring out a riot of colours, scents, and lights, and in the city’s gutter it’s building paradise. — Ξύλινα Σπαθιά, from the port of Thessaloniki
“In English, the only correct plural of ‘dwarf’ is ‘dwarfs’ and the adjective is ‘dwarfish.’ In this story ‘dwarves’ and ‘dwarvish’ are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, foreword to The Hobbit
frequency of “dwarves” vs. “dwarfs” 1930-2019, with Tolkien-related dates [Ngram Viewer graph generated by tuulikki]
“And why dwarves? Grammar prescribes dwarfs; philology suggests that dwarrows would be the historical form. The real answer is that I knew no better. But dwarves goes well with elves; and, in any case, elf, gnome, goblin, dwarf are only approximate translations of the Old Elvish names for beings of not quite the same kinds and functions.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, to the editor of the ’Observer’, 1938
“[T]he printing is very good, as it ought to be from an almost faultless copy; except that the impertinent compositors have taken it upon themselves to correct, as they suppose, my spelling and grammar: altering throughout dwarves to dwarfs; elvish to elfish; further to farther; and worst of all, elven – to elfin. I let off my irritation in a snorter to A. and U. [George Allen and Unwin, Tolkien’s publishers in London] which produced a grovel.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien, from a letter to Christopher Tolkien, 1953
Oof.
D&D used the spelling “dwarves” from the start (along with other Tolkien ideas, such as hobbits, only later renamed to halflings for obvious reasons). Before the start, even. In 1972 Gygax published Chainmail, which was a wargame and not an RPG, but it included a fantasy supplement and it had stats for dwarves and hobbits. From 1974 on, all D&D publications (AFAIK) spell it “dwarves”.
It is debatable how much impact that had, and it’s tempting to guess “none at all”, given the HUGE overlap of “D&D players” and “people who’ve read Tolkien anyway”, and how recently D&D became mainstream enough to make a dent anywhere. But I think that would be ignoring D&D’s indirect impact via other media (official or otherwise), from Forgotten Realms novels to video games to webcomics to Critical Role, which reached a reasonably large audience NOT exclusively comprised of Tolkien readers. Anecdotally (but I think not weirdly for non-anglophone countries), I played D&D before I read Tolkien, and in fact that’s why I read Tolkien, thanks to D&D osmosis – and for a long time I totally thought that “dwarves” was the only spelling lol.
The graph is from google’s Ngram Viewer, it only takes printed sources into account, so no internet-only material. Here’s an updated version with 2 corpora, English fiction (there are more dwarves than dwarfs here, hah!) and English in general, plus a few extra dates.
frequency of “dwarves” vs. “dwarfs” 1930-2019, with Tolkien- and D&D-related dates [Ngram Viewer graph]
Swindling is carried on very extensively in the metropolis in different classes of society, from the young man who strolls into a coffeehouse in Shoreditch or Bishops-gate, and decamps without paying his night’s lodging, to the fashionable rogue who attends the brilliant assemblies in the West-end. It occurs in private life and in the commercial world in different departments of business. Large quantities of goods are sent from the provinces to parties in London, who give orders and are entirely unknown to those who send them, and fictitious references are given, or references to confederates in town connected with them.
We select a few illustrations of various modes of swindling which prevail over the metropolis.
A young man calls at a coffeehouse, or hotel, or a private lodging, and represents that he is the son of a gentleman in good position, or that he is in possession of certain property, left him by his friends, or that he has a situation in the neighbourhood, and after a few days or weeks decamps without paying his bill, perhaps leaving behind him an empty carpet bag, or a trunk, containing a few articles of no value.
An ingenious case of swindling occurred in the City some time since. A fashionably attired young man occupied a small office in White Lion Court, Cornhill, London. It contained no furniture, except two chairs and a desk. He obtained a number of bracelets from different jewellers, and quantities of goods from different tradesmen to a considerable amount, under false pretences. He was apprehended and tried before the police court, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
At the time of his arrest he had obtained possession of a handsome residence at Abbey Wood, Kent, which was evidently intended as a place of reference, where no doubt he purposed to carry on a profitable system of swindling.
Swindlers have many ingenious modes of obtaining goods, sometimes to a very considerable amount, from credulous tradesmen, who are too often ready to be duped by their unprincipled devices. For example, some of them of respectable or fashionable appearance may pretend they are about to be married, and wish to have their house furnished. They give their name and address, and to avoid suspicion may even arrange particulars as to the manner in which the money is to be paid. A case of this kind occurred in Grove Terrace, where a furniture-dealer was requested to call on a swindler by a person who pretended to be his servant, and received directions to send him various articles of furniture. The goods were accordingly sent to the house. On a subsequent day the servant called on him at his premises, with a well-dressed young lady, whom she introduced as the intended wife of her employer, and said they had called to select some more goods. They selected a variety of articles, and desired they should be added to the account. One day the tradesman called for payment, and was told the gentleman was then out of town, but would call on him as soon as he returned. Soon after he made another call at the house, which he found closed up, and that he had been heartlessly duped. The value of the goods amounted to 58l. 18s. 4d.
The legendary thief and escape artist Jack Sheppard (1702-1724) was, to quote an excellent article by Executed Today, “a romantic hero, a highwayman of the urban proletariat, a Houdini whom no prison could hold.” He met his end on the gallows, but before that he managed to sensationally escape from prison 4 times, with nothing but an improvised tool, some skill, and a lot of nerve. He inspired, among other things, several theatrical plays, from dead serious dramas to burlesque comedies. Well, at least one burlesque comedy. And interestingly, in the 19th century, it appears a lot of women took his part on stage.
Now, the theatre has always been an ideal environment for cross-dressing, gender swaps, and assorted non-conformity, so a woman playing the role of Jack wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering novelty. But Jack Sheppard was famously slim and short of stature (which helped with his escapes), and this was part of his legend as much as his skills. The public loved the fact that a slip of a man had managed to repeatedly break out of manacles, chains, and prisons, and ridicule the authorities (and many larger men out to get him) at every turn. He was quite literally a little guy sticking it to the man, and everyone loves that.
So as it happened, women playing the role of Jack on stage became the norm rather than the exception. In period illustrations and photographs, we often see them posing in [what we’d now think of as] impeccable swashbuckler fashion.
The real Jack Sheppard never carried or used a sword: he was a thief, not a killer. (Other than one time when he clocked a guard to get his girlfriend out of prison, he never hurt a soul.) And he dressed less extravagantly than the costumes suggest. (Which makes sense, I mean it’s the theatre, of course it will exaggerate.) Still, judging from the visuals, these castings seem very appropriate.
1728 portrait of Jack Sheppard in Newgate Prison awaiting execution / 1839 portrait of actor Mary Anne Keeley as Jack Sheppard; there’s even a physical resemblance, and her costume is more or less accurate
In 1724, at the age of 22, Jack Sheppard was hanged at Tyburn, in front of a massive adoring crowd that celebrated his life and exploits, and literally stole his corpse so that it wouldn’t end up dissected by some anatomist. Less than two weeks later, the first play inspired by him was produced in London. There would be many many more over the next century and beyond. I hope we’ll continue to remember him in the 21st century.
Roguish 