Wotcha, me ol china ! Take a butchers at this, make sure you got yer 'ampsteads in first, mind, an soon yer'll be rabbitin away with the best of 'em... Would I tell porkies ?

Blimey! Would yer Adam n Eve it ?!

Expressions like "telling porkies" (pork pie = lie) and "rabbiting on" (rabbit and pork = talk) have certainly been absorbed into standard modern English. The nearer the East End you go, or to the places where East Enders moved out to after the war, the more rhyming slang you will hear, and nearly always with the second (rhyming) half missed out.

For anyone who loves this sort of thing, I thoroughly recommend "The Bible in Cockney" written by Mike Coles, Head of Religious Education at Sir John Cass School in Stepney, East London. (ISBN 1 84101 217 3) As a 'for instance' - The heading for Matthew 9:18-26 reads: "A geezer called Jairus and his bottle-of-water and some woman what touches Jesus' weasel".

Cheers !
- jeanie