huckster and haggler and hagler and cadger and cadge and sponge

Let's continue on the word haggler, spelled primarily as hagler in the 17th century. Before getting to the verb, to haggle, we need to follow one more thread. A haggler is a dealer, huckster or cadger. A modern dictionary defines cadge as to "beg or sponge," and the OED has "to get by begging," i.e., "where they can cadge a bit of food," but this significantion of the word only arose in the early 19th century. From 1846, "I be's good for nothin' now, but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch." The earlier signification of cadge/cadger was more neutral. To cadge simply meant to carry, as in this illustration from 1607: "Another Atlas that will cadge a whold world of injuries without fainting." Atlas cadges. I can see it as a bumper sticker, can't you? Thus, a cadger, from the early days of the 17th century and even before signified someone who carried around his goods in an itinerant fashion. More precisely, the OED has it, as "a species of itinerant dealer who travels with a horse and cart (or formerly with a pack-horse), collecting butter, eggs, poultry, etc. from remote country famrs, for disposal in the town, and at the same time supplying the rural districts with small wares from the shops. Thus, the cadger played a significant social role in late medieval/early modern England.

The Haggler/Hagler

A haggler/hagler did the same thing as a cadger. He sold in an intinerant fashion. But the word hagler conjures up a series of more vivid pictures to our minds, doesn't it? We see someone who not simply carries or delivers goods, not simply one who is a middle-man between the country and the town, but one who, well, "haggles" over the price of things. A haggler also was, from the 17th century, "one who haggles or stickles in making a bargain or coming to terms." From a 1698 translation of Aesop's Fables we have: "Twenty shillings more, twenty shillings less, is not the thing I stand upon. I'se no hagler, gadswookers!" I can't resist quoting also the 1602 attestation: "Thy Muse is a hagler, and weares cloathes upon best-be-trust." "Best-be-trust" means "most-trusted" or "those in whom most confidence was placed."

I would really go far afield here if I tried to go through the various meanings of "stickle" as a verb. Suffice it to say that I am only interested in definition 5, which defines stickle as "to make difficulties, raise objections or haggle about..; to hesitate, scruple, take offense at". From 1879: "His soul was too large to stickle about matters of no moment." So, let's return safely to the confines of haggle. Though there was the meaning of haggler as a person who "stickled," the original signfication was just of one who sold. The OED tells us that it is synonymous with higgler. A higgler, a word first attested in the 17the century, is "an itinerant dealer; esp. a carrier or a huckster who buys up poultry and dairy produce, and supplies in exchange petty commodities from shops in town."

Thus, a higgler seems to be the same as a cadger. Jeremy Taylor, the Anglican divine, was the first to use the term. From 1637: "There doth come from Great Marlow in Buckinhamshire some higglers or demi-carriers." Or, from Daniel DeFoe, "Higlers, and such People as went to and from London with Provisions." But even this more "neutral" characterization could also be tinged with some negative assessment, as a 1647 quotation shows: "Hucksters, Heglars that buy and sell and forestall the Markets." At common law forestalling was a crime. It meant to "intercept goods before they reach the public markets; to buy them up privately with a view to enhance the price." Forestallers were middle-men who, from the perspective of the common law, didn't add value to the product but merely jacked up the price illegally. But, even as late as the end of the 19th century, Thomas Hardy could use the term neutrally: "He was a foot-higgler now, having been obliged to sell his..horse, and he travelled with a basket on his arm."

Behind haggler or hagler stands the verb "to haggle." The OED suggests that it is derived from the verbs "hag" or "hackle," the former meaning "to cut, hew, chop, hack" and the latter also signifying "to cut roughly, hack, mangle by cutting." Thus, haggle at first meant to "mangle with irregular cuts..to hack, mangle, mutiliate." Shakespeare, from Henry V, has a particularly vivid usage of it: "Suffolke first died, and York all hagled over/ Comes to him, where in gore he lay...kisses the gashes/ That bloodily did yawn upon his face." But shortly after Shakespeare's time the verb could mean "cavil, wrangle, dispute as to terms, esp. to make difficulties in coming to terms or in settling a bargain; to stickle." John Cotgrave's mid-17th century work on The English Treasury of Wit and Language, defines "barguigner" as "to wrangle, dodge, haggle."

A Rumination on Language

Thus, we see language shifting right before our eyes. What had formerly (before about 1700) been used only as descriptive terms to indicate various kinds of sellers now took on a more sinister connotation. Hagglers were now people who cavilled; cadgers were people who "sponged" and, as we will see, hucksters also became people of disrepute. One wonders if these people, long honored as those who performed the necessary work of bringing goods from farm to market (and vice-versa), were gradually disparaged not because they did anything in a more underhanded fashion than previously, but simply because a new class of merchants wanted to put them down. That is, you wonder if the negative connotations surrounding these traditional salespeople were invented by people who themselves wanted to monopolize the trade in goods in early Modern England. Thus, the shopkeeper, who wanted to hire his own agent to take the goods to the farmers, might have characterized the higgler as one who "forestalled" goods--did indictable things.

This is all well and good, but it has taken us on a significant detour from just explaining some 19th century terms. Let's now return to that, returning by way that we entered into our "Narnia-type" world--pedlars.

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1698