However, its language combines early thieves’ cant with contemporaneous slang: prigis cant for “thief”, dating from 1566 and the very dawn of English rogue literature, but rumblermeaning a carriage of some sort is strictly 19th century. Gatrell assumes it was reprinted from an earlier broadside, because it has “antique references to Tyburn and to transportation to Virginia”. The list of crimes in which he jubilantly proclaims his skill, is mostly the writer’s attempt to demonstrate the humorous breadth of cant.
The exhaustive list of definitions at the bottom of the broadsheet, however, invites the reader to share in the humour of the language rather than be excluded from it. The idea that a criminal class had its own unique sublanguage was often cited as evidence that they existed as a subclass to the rest of society. In order to create a satirical representation, ‘The Song of the Young Prig’ is written entirely in ‘flash’: a form of argot or cant supposedly used by the beggars and thieves. Among the many ballads of that period which “engage juvenile convicts as their narrative voice”, this is an example of the satirical type (the other types being valedictory, betrayal, and confessional ballads): This ballad was printed c.1819-1828, and collected in Musa pedestris, three centuries of canting songs and slang rhymes (1536-1896).
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