I was buggering about on e-mail at work the other day, and after replying to one, I absent-mindedly
signed it with my nom de plume, "Cockney Jock." I've been using it too loosely lately. Pretty soon I
received a reply to my reply which asked, "What the hell is a cockney jock, matey?" So I got to thinking
(something I dinna dae very often, ye ken), "Good question; this needs to be remedied." So mayhap I
should enlighten those of us who are ignorant of this strange term. So here goes nuffink (that's cockney
for nothing).
First of all, what's a "cockney?" I was taught that to be a true cockney, one had to be born within the
sound of the church bells of Bow, the famous Bow Bells in the East End of London. (Well they're famous
in London, anyway!) The dictionary defines cockney as: a) a native of the East End of London; or b)
pertaining to the pronunciation or dialect of cockneys. The word is of Middle English origin meaning
"foolish person," literally, "cock's egg" (i.e., malformed egg). Nowadays the term cockney seems to apply
to anyone from old Smokey (that's what London was known by years ago when coal fires where the only
form of heating) and is a generic term for a Londoner. The cockneys were considered a lower class
novelty by the rest of London; working class people with the worst English grammar in the English
speaking world. (The most grammatically correct is that beautifully lilting Gaelic English spoken in the
Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland, or so I am told.)
The cockneys invented "Rhyming Cockney Slang." That's another article all together, but just to give
you a little taste, they would take words like "sun" and turn it in to the rhyming slang "currant bun," and
then drop the word "bun" and just leave the word "currant." The sentence, "The sun is hot today, ain't it
mate?" would be, "The old currant's really bleedin' ot t'day init squire?" Another characteristic of
cockney English is to drop the "h" off words, so "have" becomes "ave," "home" becomes "ome," and so on.
Yet another characteristic is to change "th" to "f" and the "g" to "k" so that words like "nothing"
becomes "nuffink," and "something" becomes "sumfink." So a sentence like, "Hey mate, you cant get
something for nothing," in cockney becomes, "Ere mate, ya can't git sumfink fer nuffink, yer stupid git."
Anyway, I'm digressing (runnin' off at the bleedin' mouf, in-I?).
Now to the second word, "Jock." A Jock has several meanings and it depends on which side of the
"pond" you're from. On this side of the Atlantic, jock is usually associated with sportsmen. Oops, sorry
ladies, that's not politically correct, is it? Sportsperson - primarily football players. On the other side
of the pond, it usually means a Scot. There is a slang word defining each of the Celtic peoples: the Irish
are "Paddies," which is slang for Patrick; the Welsh are "Taffies" (don't know where that comes from
but I don't think it has anything to do with candy), and the Scots are "Jocks." Again, if we go to the
dictionary the word is defined as: {jok} n. Scot, and Irish Eng. meaning "an innocent lad, a country boy."
However, I've been told by Del O'Dumfries that it may be another form of slang for John (i.e., John
McTavish would be Jock McTavish). Again, whatever its origin, it is now the popular slang word for
Scots, all Scots. Most English or Sasanachs (Gaelic for Saxon. Note the "chs" is pronounced as though
you were clearing phlegm from the back of your throat, not as in "packs" but like "aaaccchhhss," or as in
the case of "loch," "occchhh," not "lock.") address Scots as Jock: "So what part of Scotland are you
from, Jock?"
The term "Cockney Jock" refers these days to a London-born Scot. In my own case I was born in
London to Scots parents. My father was from Strathdon, a small farming and fishing community in the
wide valley (strath) of the river Don in Aberdeenshire (hence the name, Strathdon), home to the Lonach
Games, and Forbes and Gordon clan country. It lies fifty miles west of Aberdeen and is considered well
within the Highland Line. Like the cockneys, Aberdonians are famous for their thick brogue and unique
Scots-English dialect, replacing perfectly good English words with perfectly good Scots words such as
"puckle" for "few" and "muckle" for "many," or "quine" for "girl" and "loon" for "boy" or "chiel" for
"man." So the perfectly good English sentence, "There are many good boys and girls in that man's class,
but only a few gifted ones," is translated into the perfectly good Aberdonian sentence as, "There's o'er
muckle guid loons an quines in yon chiel's class, but jist a puckle gifted anes." But that's another article!
My mother was from Paisley, Renfrewshire, which is on Clydeside on the west of Scotland. She met my
old man when she worked in Strathdon, married and then moved to London where I was born after the
Second World War. She still lives in Southeast London. I come from North London, so the term cockney
in its true definition wouldn't apply, but as stated earlier, it's become a generic term for Londoner.
The term was first used for the London Scottish Society and the pipe tune Cockney Jocks was written
for the London Scottish Pipe Band. It is part of the Shasta Scots Pipe Band 4/4 set marches and is my
adopted signature tune when I play my pipes. Well folks, I guess you now know more than you ever
wanted to about Cockney Jocks or as "Pipey" Skinner calls me, the "Cock-eyed Jock," so I'll wrap this
snippet up before ye a fa asleep frae boredom.
