Meaning of sketches, 18thc

Subject: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 04:22 PM

Hi all,
Sounds familiar but the meaning I'm after is not in any of my half a dozen historical slang dictionaries including cant.

Working on early versions of 'Seventeen come Sunday' the earlier broadsides have a less happy ending from the girl's point of view. Here is one of the stanzas he replies with to her request to marry her.

Of sketches I have got enough
And money in my pocket
And what care I for any one
It's from the girls I got it.

I have a vague memory of a sketcher? being a coin or something similar. Any offers please?
Also while I'm on, the previous stanza mentions the hautboy. From Googling it I get the impression the hautboy was displaced by the oboe in the early 18thc. How far on in time would the hautboy be still generally referred to in song I wonder?

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 05:16 PM

There was a Saxon coin - sceata; it has the wrong pronounciation, but could possible evolve into sketch??

On hautboy - was the sense definitely musical Steve? OED gives other meanings as lofty trees as opposed to shrubs- 1700, the strawberry - 1731. OED gives oboe=hautboy as 1794 (but an oboe organ stop from 1700). I don't know offhand how long hautboy persisted (woodwind not really my thing), but could do some digging.

Mick

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 05:38 PM

ca1790 seems to be the date that oboe replace hautboy, at least amongst musicians. In The Eloquent Oboe - A History of the Hautboy from 1640 to 1760, Bruce Haynes gives the title of several tutors for the instrument using Hautboy 1770, 1780, Oboe or Hoboy 1780, Hautboy 1790, Oboe or Hoboy 1790, and notes By 1792 Wragg was calling his treatise (which was relatively advanced for its day) The Oboe Preceptor or the Art of Playing the Oboe.

Mick

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: MartinRyan
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 05:42 PM

Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang has, as one meaning of sketch: A small amount; a drop (of liquor)

Sounds a likely one.

Regards

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 05:58 PM

In French music, the hautbois seems to have persisted to the late 18th C., but it is hard to interpret the notes I find with recordings of music made with old instruments; the instrument was modified, but I find references in music of the 1790s. Did the French name persist among some musicians rather than the Italian? Use of original instruments for Baroque and older music again has become common since the mid-20th C.
Not much help with the date for a general changeover by musicians to the oboe.

No luck with 'sketches' in that stanza. One meaning was 'a drop, or small amount', but that doesn't help with that stanza- I can't make sense of it.

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 05:59 PM

You found it while I was still looking, Ryan. It also is in the OED.

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 06:09 PM

Many thanks to all. It looks like hautboy would be fine in the late 18thc which is when the broadside was printed. I still have that nagging feeling that 'sketcher' was a cant term for a coin or am I thinking of 'tester'? Grey matter and senility are battling away in there.

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Snuffy
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 07:00 PM

If he has sketches and money in his pocket, then presumably the sketch is not money but something else.

In French "monnaie" means coins or loose change: could "money" have had a similar meaning in the English of the 1780s and 90s? In which case it might not have been too fanciful to call a banknote of the time a "sketch", as it was clearly not a proper painting - the first coloured banknotes were not issued until 1928, and were also the first notes to be printed on both sides.

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 07:30 PM

Text doesn't really imply that the sketches are in the pocket....

Regards

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 03:37 PM

Snuffy,
Best suggestion yet! These things often don't care much for grammar or consistency. The word is however consistent through different printings.

Subject: RE: Meaning of sketches, 18thc
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 05:00 PM

While it´s probably not relevant here, there was a general called Sketcher who inspired a "Sketcher's March", popular at the end of the 18th century.