A couple days ago a friend wrote of her interest in Cockney rhyming slang. Coincidence, I wrote back, because I had just seen an example of it in the remake of Ocean's 11 (2001). "We're in Barney. Barney Rubble. Trouble" says explosives expert Basher Tarr to his colleagues after something besides his shaky Cockney accent goes awry.
Yesterday afternoon I did some googling and found evidence that Cockney rhyming slang is rooted in the coded language of 19th century East London stallholders and criminals, a way of communicating openly without drawing the attention of eavesdropping bobbies.
Last night's DVD, The Good Shepherd (2006), is the story of a U.S. English Lit major, Edward Wilson, who is recruited by the newly-formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS) shortly after his country enters the Second World War. Deployed to London, Wilson meets the former Yale poetry professor whom he had turned-in after U.S. security officials asked Wilson to find any evidence he could of the professor's Nazi sympathies. Wilson went through the professor's satchel, found a list and submitted it.
As it turns out, the professor is, and always had been, a British spy, an expert in counter-intelligence and now an ally of Wilson and his country. Pictured up top is a scene where the professor explains to Wilson the finer points of counter-intelligence. Cockney rhyming slang is not dissimilar, for the focus is not on the words you are seeing and hearing, but on what is going on behind them. No wonder British spies like David Cornwell were so good at it: they had the poetry of their people to draw on.
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