piemen

[Wells Darla L]

Not to mention that they also ran with that degenerate, Simple Simon. "Simple
Simon met a pieman, going to the fair./Said Simple Simon to the pieman..."
>From what I remember of my Mother Goose,
Darla Wells


On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:53:16 -0500, Mullins, Bill wrote
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      piemen
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The OED definition for "pieman" is merely one who sells pies -- not a
> derogatory term in and of itself.  However, piemen apparently ran
> with a bad crowd, and are guilty by association:
>
> The Gaming-Table, by William A. Seaver, Harper's new monthly
> magazine. Volume 41, Issue 241, June 1870 p. 131 col 2. "Towards
> night, when ravenous beasts usually seek their prey, there come in
> shoals of hectors, trepanners, gilts, pads, biters, prigs, divers,
> lifters, mill kens, piemen, decoys, shop-lifters, foilers, bulkers,
>  droppers, gamblers, donnakers, cross-biters, etc. (a goodly
> vocabulary), under the general appellation of 'rooks;' and in this
> particular it serves as a nursery for Tyburn, for every year some of
> this gang march thither."
>
> Title: "Drifting about"; or, What "Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,"
> saw-and-did. An autobiography by Stephen C. Massett.
> Publication date: 1863. Carleton, NY p. 238
> "Men, women, and children, cabmen, merchants, longwharf Jew
> slopsellers, piemen, candymen, tailors, barbers, actors, priests,
>  circus riders, water carriers, omnibus drivers, editors, saloon
> proprietors, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Greeks and Swiss, "fancy
> women," -- pushed, shoved, crowded, jammed, raved, and stormed --
>  bumping up against one another, the perspiration rolling down their
> faces in streams."


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