No Subject

[buck@satyr.sylvan.com (Michael Butler)]

Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Path: buck
From: buck@satyr.sylvan.com (Michael Butler)
Subject: Re: New to Gaffa
Message-ID: <CJ5nJ3.Dv4@satyr.sylvan.com>
Organization: Sylvan Associates...  NOT!!
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 11:49:49 GMT
References: <9401050046.AA19147@relay1.UU.NET> <m0pHNag-000iluC@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu>

>The British
>slang term (still in use, see _The Crying Game_) "blowing the gaff"
>means to let the secret out.

>   The gaff is also the part of the carnival midway where all the games
>of chance are located.

Hi, Chris!  I still haven't gotten it together to ask you my 'leventy-
seven image-conversion questions... ;(

<clears throat>

Ummn.  Small correction: the term is, by my best available info,
originally an _American_ Carney expression dating from at least the
1890's--when Carneys went back over the ocean (the rides and
"attractions" made possible by cheap cast-iron mass-manufacturing
supplanting circuses, partially), the term went with them.
I am not absolutely sure that Carneys per se were an American
invention, but we tuned 'em up and shipped 'em back humming.

Usage may have varied, but here's the scoop from my quadrant:

In that context, a "gaff" is either (originally) a _rigged_ game of
chance _or skill_ (e.g., darts & balloons, ring toss, etc), or, by
extension, _any_ such attraction (on the theory that one _never_ gives
a sucker an even break); thus, metonymically, it can sometimes (but
not always) refer to all the aforementioned in one place (whether
cynically, or accurately).  At least originally, it did not mean
something that was merely physically tricky (damn darts are *not* very
sharp... not deliberately _dull_, mind you), but something controlled
by the game operator like a roulette wheel that always comes up "odd"
when you turn it counterclockwise or a magnet or hidden post holding
up the opaque wooden "milk bottles" Jimmy is trying to knock over with
those tennis balls, three for a quarter.

And _blowing the gaff_ (still originally _American_ Carney parlance)
means revealing the unfair nature, gimmick or hidden mechanism of a
gaffed rig to a sucker (errr, excuse me, a "guest"), or letting on
that it is rigged.  It is, particularly, showing or telling the rube
he has been "had", taken in, shellacked, rooked, fooled.  _That_ is
why it is particularly applicable to _The Crying Game_... not just
the revelation of a secret, but the revelation of a secret that will
make someone feel hoodwinked and/or get the show run out of town...

And, though it is a trifle dated, any con artist in the US worth his
salt will be likely to know what the expression means.

I grew up in the environment (Carney, not grifting), at least summers.
And my best friend of that era spent 7 or 8 years running a _straight_
scale ("guess yer age-yer-weight-the-month-y'r-born-WHO'S-NEXT?
--c'mon-c'mon--y'CAN'T-win if y'DON'T-play...").

Anyway...

All the best to you and Vickie, and a prosperous new year.

Michael Butler

PS, ObKate: I have a theory that the "Shiva dancing on skulls" image,
and its import, is one of the reasons KTB thanks Joseph Campbell.  

IMHO, a big part of the man's latter-day output concerns the joyful-
life-in-the-midst-of-death topic.  It's a big 'un, and dovetails with
(perhaps adjoins is a better word) the big Judeo-Christian "Problem of
Evil" (my favorite, and why I left The Church (tm) ;) ).