#red lattice

Cantering Through Cant (19) - red rags, red lanes, religious painters and the curious practice of reverence

A red rag, according to Francis Grose in hisA Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), was the slang term for a tongue. Too much of the red rag was “too much tongue” and if you were exhorted to shut your potatoe trap and give you red rag a holiday the implication was that you were to shut your mouth and give your tongue a rest. It is no surprise, therefore, that the red lane was the…