Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 27 Aug 15 - 01:51 AM

'Wagging', or 'Playing the Wag' here in the Backwoods of Lincolnshire too, Desi C.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 07:28 PM

When I went to school in Birmingham in the early 60's it was known as 'Wagging it' or 'playing the wag'
Knockin on the door and running away was 'Knock down Ginger'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: BanjoRay
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 06:58 PM

Where I grew up in Loughor (West of Swansea) in the forties we used to mitch, and the truce words I heard were maclusky or pararusky. Dylan Thomas talks about "playing mwchins" in Under Milk Wood.

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 04:57 PM

Further to Mark Ross's NY citation above of "playing hooky", it's certainly "hookey" in Tom Sawyer (C19 Missouri); about the third or fourth page Aunt Polly says to Tom, "I made sure you'd played hookey and been a-swimming."

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 04:41 PM

In Newport, 1940s.

'Bunking off' or 'Mooching' for missing school. 'Knock up ginger' for the door game and 'cree' for a truce in running/chasing games. I don't recall a truce phrase in battle games (or battles).

We had a good variant of knock up ginger - the lower block of our street had 100 houses, semi-detached and facing each other across the street. Up to 1947 there was very little traffic (there were only 3 cars on the estate of 400 houses in 1945). Then we had a bus - a double decker which ran half-hourly.

Half an hour was just enough time for a determined team to tie opposite knockers together with black cotton. The next bus knocked 100 doors! Result!! But only once or twice a summer.

Phil

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 04:19 PM

In Liverpool, it was 'sagging school' or 'sagging off' (without the final 'G', of course; you'd take your life in your hands talking like that). I first heard the term 'bunking off' in my second or third year of secondary school - high school, as it's now called. A teacher arrived late for a lessn one afternoon, by which time, two lads had absconded via the classroom window, which looked out onto the sreet. There was, as somebody up the thread has suggested, a difference between bunking off - leaving unofficially early, and sagging - not showing up in the first place. 'Doing a bunk' is, of course, a well-known phrase for absconding. 'Barley' was the truce phrase, but was also widely used to claim immunity from being caught. It was accompanied by crossed fingers (in immitation of barley sugar?).
The knocking on the door and running away game was, in my experience, confined to 'Mischief Night' - which I think was Halloween, and I don't remember the game having a name. Not that I ever did that sort of thing, you understand.
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Mark Ross
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 04:14 PM

In Queens, In New York City in the '50's and '60's it was "PLaying Hooky".

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 12:59 PM

In Rhode Island (USA) it's called bunking or bunking school and there's a day in late spring called National Bunk Day when lots of kids don't go to school. I haven't heard it called bunking anywhere else in the US.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 12:42 PM

'Mitch' meaning cited by Martin Ryan above as skulk or lurk is presumable connected to Hamlet, III. ii ... "Marry, this is miching malhecho. It means mischief!"

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Alan Ross
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 12:14 PM

I just looked up the word Jooping - on Google. I wish I hadn't. It now means something entirely different in a horrible sexual way. I apologise for the modern misappropriation of an innocent childhood word.   In our North of Scotland dialect, jooping or juping meant playing truant. Somewhere along the line the word has now acquired a new cultural meaning to others.   When I was a kid you jooped School. I cannot believe there is another word using the term, but I'm afraid there is! No offence intended.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 12:03 PM

In the fifties just east of Plymouth, the term for truancy was mitching. Our truce word was bargees,probably a local version of barley.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Alan Ross
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 11:56 AM

Up here in the North of Scotland, dodging school was known as "jooping" or "juping" off school. Must try Googling it!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 11:29 AM

As an American overseas, I grew up with the terms Skipping (school) or Playing Hooky in English, and with "(aller a, or faire) l'ecole buissonniere" (go to bush{y} school) in French.

I am FASCINATED with all the different British ones. I have read about skiving, I read a lot of British children's books growing up. That is also where I read about King's X for truce.

The French kids did "pouce" (thumb) for that, either raising the thumb or calling the word.

The American kids cried "uncle" in the same situations. We didn't say Truce, we gave up/surrendered, very different. I don't think the Americans HAD a truce as in suspension of play hostilities. We have "time out" (both hands flat forming a T, or call the words), but without the connotation of temporary PEACE, just the connotation of hang on, we need to clarify the rules by which we will keep fighting.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 10:21 AM

Going "on the bounce" in Dublin.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 07:28 AM

"mitch" was obviously pretty widespread in Britain and Ireland. According to Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (great app version, incidentally!), it originally meant "to lurk out of sight, to skulk" up to about mid-16th C. before acquiring its "play truant" meaning.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 02:10 PM

Could 'twagging' be one of the 'wag' family, on the widespread variants of which I have already commented?: possibly from a Northern-style pronunciation of 'playing, or hopping the wag' as 'hopping &c t'wag'; whence maybe an aphetic noun~verb usage, 'twagging', by one of those familiar 'noun-to-verb & vice-versa processes so loved of all real English users, tho so frequently decried by foolish writers to newspaper correspondence columns who don't appreciate the exquisite flexibility of the language.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Skribla
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 01:17 PM

In Grimsby (N E Lincs) truancy was twagging
Game was Knock-Door-Run
As for truces, no such thing on the Nunsthorpe Estate where gangs took no prisoners!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 11:16 AM

Where I grew in Ireland, the word used was "slingeing" (pronounced "slinjing".)

Interesting. Haven't heard that word for many years. In my (Dublin) childhood we used it a bit less specifically, I think. It meant something like "slouching along", "dragging your heels", even "malingering" - but not specifically in the context of truancy. Of course, a "slinjer" might well be "on the gur"!

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Fiolar
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 07:43 AM

Where I grew in Ireland, the word used was "slingeing" (pronounced "slinjing".) Many counties had their own local words.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 08:19 AM

When I went to school in Birmingham (UK) it was termed 'playing the wag' or 'wagging it' Which I was guilty of a few times

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Mo the caller
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 07:42 AM

Bags (bags I, baggys) in London ('40s) too.

Though I wonder how reliable our memories are. I've moved around a bit. Childhood in N. London, the 4 years in N. Staffs mixing with students from all over the place, first job on Teeside, married a Yorkshire man and lived in Cheshire ever since. Plenty of chance for cross-contamination.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: s&r
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 04:22 AM

Nottingham - I remember crosses or cross kings as a truce term, dobby as tig bags or baggsy to lay claim to something (tax used by local kids in Blackpool)

Stu

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 11:53 PM

'Swinging the lead' was, I believe, originally servicemen's slang for going sick to avoid duty; sounds like nautical slang originally ~~ here is one explanation I found online: "Some sailors [in the days of sail] felt swinging the lead (to take soundings} was an easy job and swinging the lead came to mean avoiding hard work. In time it came to mean feigning illness to avoid work." {edited from SOME OLD SAYINGS EXPLAINS [sic] By Tim Lambert}
http://www.localhistories.org/sayings.html

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Floksnog
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 01:57 PM

My friend from the midlands says his dads words from about the 1950's was the really old sounding "Swinging the lead"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Floksnog
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 08:16 AM

"Mitching" for Totnes 1980's a friend told me... (Type 6!)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Floksnog
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:08 PM

Forgot the Frisian - "skûdeltsje" - Type 20, seeing as I have written out Canadian, Usa, Jamacan and Eire, as well as British?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:07 PM

Brilliant, Floksnog. Thank you...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Floksnog
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 03:06 PM

Its no in depth analysis but here is a first draft of what we have so far for truanting -

(the type numbers are arbitrary)



Type 1 = "Bunking", "Bunking Off", "Plunking", "Plunk the Schuil"

1950's-1960's and 1990's-2000's

Bristol, Dublin, Dundee, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Scotland, USA, West Riding of Yorkshire


Type 2 = "Skiving", "Skiving off", "On the Skive"

1940's-1990' inclusive

Bath, Birmingham, Bliston (Yorkshire), Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, London, Middlesex, Norfolk, Scottish borders


Type 3 = "Wagging", "The wag", "Playing waggy", "Playing wag", "Wagged it", "Wagging it", "Hopping the wag", "Wagging Schuill", "Playing twag", "Twagging", "Twagging off", "Sagging", "Sagging school" "Sag off school"

1940's-1960's, 1980's, 2000's

Australia, Bath, Cheshire, Hull, Lanarkshire, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Northampton, Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire


Type 4 = "Playing Hookey", "Hooked off"

1940's, 1960's, 2010's

USA, Canada


Type 5 = "Poking it"

East coast of Scotland


Type 6 = "Mitching", "Mitch off", "Mooching"

1930's, 1950's-1960's, 1980's

Bristol, Cardiff, Dublin, (Ireland), Northern Ireland, Torquay


Type 7 = "Playing the nick"

Durham, North East England


Type 8 = "Dogging"

1950's

Lanarkshire


Type 9 = "Lakin"

South Yorkshire


Type 10 = "Slamming School"

1960's

Bradford (Yorkshire), West Riding of Yorkshire


Type 11 = "Knocking Off"

1960's

Bradford (Yorkshire)


Type 12 = "Taking the Air"

1990's

Bath


Type 13 = Jigging school"

1950's-1960's, 1980's

Australia, Selby


Type 14 = "On the hop", "Hopping the wag" (also see Type 3)

1950's, 1960's

Dublin, London



Type 15 = "On the gur"

1950's

Dublin


Type 16 = On the lam"

1950's

Dublin


Type 17 = "Jouk the schuill"

(Scotland)


Type 18 = "Kip"

(Scotland)


Type 19 = "Skylarking"

Jamaca



(some of these are from me asking the same question of my friends)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 02:09 PM

Thanks for that, Al. Reminds me of my yesterday's entry at 0632 AM, about how we needed some statistics, & suggesting that variants of 'wag' appeared perhaps the most widespread usages.

Anyone feel like doing any sort of regional/statistical analysis of terms, even just as they appear thus far in thie thread. I'd undertake it myself if I were not hopelessly innumerate tee-hee!

~m~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:18 PM

The truant officer was 'the wagman'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: keyofzed
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:02 PM

Liverpool again.
Bunking - leaving school before hometime
Sagging - Not going to school
The truant officer was Mr White (Whitey) but I never met him

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Lady Nancy
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:02 PM

Knock-a-day-run for knocking on doors and running away.

LN

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Lady Nancy
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:02 PM

Here in the (old) West Riding of Yorkshire it was slammin', twaggin', and 'bunking off'.

Our word for "safe" was "barlow".

LN

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Bert
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:01 PM

Late Forties London.

Don't remember a particular word for truancy, though we did it.

Knock Down Ginger for knocking on doors

and Fainites for truce.

Later in Hampshire 'Cavey' was for look out someone's coming.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Richard from Liverpool
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 12:53 PM

I used to sag off school (1990s Liverpool)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 12:19 PM

Mention of the Truant Officer (usually now known as an Education Welfare Officer) earlier might bring in some related folklore. In Hull (we had 16 of them back in the 60s) they were usually called the School Board Man. There hadn't been School Boards since 1902!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 12:04 PM

Sagging school in Liverpool
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: GUEST,PatrickH
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 12:02 PM

See http://alangarner.atspace.org/times4.html for a bit on Garner recognizing much of the ("North Mercian") dialect in Sir Gawain, including the word barlay for a truce. So perhaps not from the French...
We used barley in Wallasey.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Floksnog
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:19 AM

I have put together some Westcountry wplayground rhymes and words on my blog - http://westcountryfolklore.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-draft-of-playground-rhymes-games.html

Glad this post got so much interest (I was the Thomas who posted originally - become a member now!)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 03:13 PM

At some point I acquired "skylarking" from Jamaican. Can't say that's what "we" as school kids called it, but nowadays that's the word comes to mind.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:50 AM

That, Martin, is a most interesting variant ~~ if, indeed, it is one.

These are Deep Waters, Watson...

~Sherlock~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:45 AM

A number of words have bounced merrily between Irish and English of various persuasions for manys-the-year! Colloquial Dublinese (and to some extent Cork) also preserved quite a few English words which even the respectable slang dictionaries regarded as "obsolete" a long time ago!

Incidentally, I see "on the lang" as Cork slang for truancy - origin unknown.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:36 AM

Could well have come into NY usage from the vast numbers of Irish in that city in C19 indeed, Martin. (I once read that there were more Irishmen in NY than in Ireland, & more Jews there than in Israel. How true, I wonder?). But then, as you say, that would have been Irish Irish; so only tenuously to be regarded as a British import, would you not agree?

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:29 AM

Daniel Cassidy's book How the Irish Invented Slang claims it derives from the Irish word "léim" meaning jump - hence "flight". Hmmmm... I dunno.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:25 AM

Ooops! How did I miss Partridge... That sense is not in the Penguin Historical Slang which is abridged from his work.

I was mainly seeing references to a piece by H L Mencken where he seemed to argue that the word came to America with something like the "beating" sense and moved into gangster slang (no shortage of Irish in that community!), changing slightly. Runyon's literary use might then give it another impetus.

I no longer live in Dublin but will try to follow up when the chance arises.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:12 AM

"Lam" for beat is certainly old English; pretty well standard rather than slang, I should judge - not shown as 'slang' in Chambers. Whether connected to the "taking on the lam" for flight I doubt.

Partridge gives: "on the lam", on the run (from justice), in Britain adopted about 1944 from US servicemen. Where was your 'quick check', which seems to conclude differently, conducted, Martin?

I seem to recall Runyon using derivative "laminger" for a man on the lam: so, Martin, would a truant have been called that in Ireland in the 50s?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:58 AM

We also had, now that I come to think of it, "on the gur". Now that one IS very local. If Liberty Boy or Fergie spot this, they'll recognise its origin.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:37 AM

A quick check suggests that "on the lam" was British slang before moving across the pond - and possibly coming back again to some people! We also had "lam" as "hard blow" or "thrashing", both noun and verb: "He gave him a right lam!" "I lammed into him.." etc. "lambaste" is connected also, in all probability.

Regards

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:34 AM

I think "Skiving" and "bunking off" are fairly widely used throughout the UK.

Found another couple in the online Scots dictionary: "plunk the schuil". "jouk the schuil", "kip".

Telling on someone is "cliping" up here.
I thought "grassing" came from rhyming slang originally: there's a reference to "grasshopper" rhyming with copper (policeman) from a dictionary of slang from as far back as 1893, and originally a "grass" was someone who told on someone to the Police. It's suggested that to "shop" someone also comes from grasshopper. Then there's cop, squeal, squeak, snout.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Childhood words for truanting?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:10 AM

"on the hop" was also common, IIRC.

Regards