A ring of untruth

A couple of years ago in Paris, a man approached me on the street and, stooping, affected to pick up something under my feet. It was a ring: chunky and gold-coloured. “Is it yours?” he asked in French. No, I said. So he started to pocket it and then, as if in afterthought, pressed it into my hand, with a gesture to the effect that the luck was meant for me.

Then he was gone, or nearly. In another apparent afterthought, he came back and mentioned that he was short of money. I was now vaguely aware of a rodent-like smell in the vicinity, but I gave him some change. And when he suggested it wasn’t enough, bearing in mind the treasure he had bestowed, the full rat-like odour of the situation became obvious.

I promptly returned the ring, which – like the man’s neck – was 100 per cent brass, gesturing that he needed the luck more than I did. Despite being two euros up on the deal, he didn’t seem happy. But he was a hard-working conman. And not 10 seconds later, in full view of me, he was finding the ring again, this time at the feet of a couple waiting to cross the street.

The man was probably of eastern European origin. So too, I guessed, was his ring trick. Either way, I didn’t think much more about it until a reader sent me a British newspaper cutting recently about a time-honoured scam known in England as the “Fawney Ring”.

The journalist’s wife had fallen for it recently. And sure enough, it started with the apparent discovery of a ring in the street and ended with the shake-down. The wife parted with £2. But in some cases, she later learned from police, people paid a lot more.

The trick seems to have been practised in England for at least several centuries. In any case it was already well enough established to be included in a seminal 1785 work: the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose.

Well-named in the circumstances, Grose was a soldier and student of antiquities who also compiled a lexicon of rude and slang words. Wherein, under F, is listed the Fawney Rig – “A common fraud, thus practised: A fellow drops a brass ring, double gilt, which he picks up before the party meant to be cheated and to whom he disposes of it for less than its supposed, and ten times its real, value.”

The dictionary does not go into the term’s etymology. Nor does it attribute the con to any nationality. But Irish readers will have already added two and two together here, suspecting the involvement of fainne. And the suspicions will be supported by another Grose definition, for Fawney itself, ie: “a ring”.

It could be just linguistic coincidence. Indeed there have been alternative explanations offered for the slang term’s origins: one of them involving a supposed manufacturer of cheap jewellery called Forney. Fainne, however, seems the most likely culprit. And not just for the ancient practice of Fawney-dropping – mentioned in London as far back as the 1500s – but for an even more dubious linguistic prize.

According to my OED , the English word "phoney" is of "origin unknown". But Brewer's Dictionary describes it as an American colloquialism derived from the "obsolete underworld cant word", fawney. And in his 2007 book How the Irish Invented Slang , the late New Yorker Daniel Cassidy made the ultimate leap, claiming "phoney" for Irish America, via the ring-trick.

Getting back to Grose’s dictionary, incidentally, it remains – 230 years on – both entertaining and educational. Looking up “fawney”, for example, I couldn’t help noticing its near neighbour under F, the verb to “feague”, meaning: “to put ginger – and formerly, as it is said, a live eel – up a horse’s fundament, to make him lively and carry his tail well”.

This was so common once, Grose says, that a servant who neglected to do it while showing a horse was liable to a fine. Nor, I suspect, has the practice died out entirely. If you’re buying a pony at Puck Fair this year, you might want to check more than its teeth.

As for the Fawney Ring, I don’t know what they call it in Paris. But looking back on my experience, I have to suppress a feeling of perverse national pride at the durability of a scam that seems to have started on this island may centuries ago before being globalised and becoming an internationally recognised classic. Maybe Ireland should seek protected heritage status for it, after the manner of Parma Ham and Argentinian Tango. I wonder who we should call?

fmcnally@irishtimes.com