Reflections on 1831 "jazz"

[Jonathon Green]

Jaser:

Like Douglas Wilson I can find no 'sex' use of _jaser_ other than that in
Farmer's Vocabula Amatoria.  In Le Roux' _Dictionnaire Comique, Satyrique,
Critique, Burlesque' (Amsterdam 1750) it is defined as 'Pour causer,
babiller, caqueter, parler avec exces'; Barrere's _L'Argot_ (1902) has only
'(thieves) to pray'; the more recent Harrap's French-English Dict of Slang &
Colloquialisms_ (J. Marks, 1970) has '1. to divulge a secret, to blab; 2. to
pray'. Bruant's rather optimistically titled, for a 1905 publication,
_L'Argot du XXieme Siecle_ ignores 'jaser' completely.

I happen to have been reading a good deal of Farmer recently and while one
cannot deny the wide-ranging scope of his researches, a close analysis of
his citations in _Farmer and Henley_, and of his setting down of certain
canting songs in _Musa Pedestris_ shows that accuracy of transcription is
not always his strongest point. Among those whose works he manages to mangle
in the dictionary are Shakespeare and Dickens, among a good many others. In
the canting songs the problem lies in his faithfulness to the texts he has
copied: a number of lines appear to have been rewritten, typically
'quaffing' [drinking] replacing the original  'quiffing' [to have
intercourse], to suit the moral climate of the late 19C. (Although it may be
that the editions of some songs that he consulted may already have been in
bowdlerised form.) With this in mind, is it too far fetched to wonder
whether his definition of 'jaser' might not have been a confusion for the
much better attested 'baiser', which definitely does refer to intercourse. I
accept that he does offer a source, _La Comedie des Proverbes_ and I admit
that my knowledge of french literature is minimal. Still, it might be worth
pondering.

Jonathon Green