Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 212

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored….

Moon Rakers

This phrase, more commonly just moonrakers now, was arguably brought to light by Grose’s dictionary, where he defined it as “Wiltshire men: because it is said that some men of that county, seeing the reflection of the moon in a pond, endeavoured to pull it out with a rake”.

Firstly here, Wiltshire is one of God’s own counties, there’s no way Wiltshire folk would be this gullible. And, the actual story is more complex. Wiltshire folk are honest and good people, but there is a rumour that some locals were trying to recover a smuggled barrel of whisky which had been hidden in a lake. I’m sure they had been led astray…. Anyway, the revenue men found them, with the locals telling them that they were trying to rake in the moon’s reflection on the water. The revenue men thought that they were, frankly, bloody idiots and told the story to their colleagues, but it was actually them who had been taken in.

Who knows if this is true, but it was an enduring tale, which is said to have happened at The Crammer in Devizes. This sounds like the sort of thing that might happen in Devizes and as the lake is still there, I will hopefully get there at some point to go and have a look at it. And, God Bless Wiltshire.