Illywhacker - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Peter Carey (ч. 2)

For my mother and father, with love and thanks

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

– Mark Twain, More Tramps Abroad, London, 1897

Illywhacker: A professional trickster, esp. operating at country shows [derived by Baker (1945: 138) from spieler]

1941 Kylie Tennant The Battlers 183-4: An illy-wacker is someone who is putting a confidence trick over, selling imitation diamond tie-pins, new-style patent razors or infallible "tonics"… "living on the cockies" by such devices, and following the shows because money always flows freest at show time. A man who "wacks the illy" can be almost anything, but two of these particular illywackers were equipped with a dart game.

1943 Baker 40: Illywhacker A trickster or spieler.

1975 Hal Porter The Extra 15: Social climber, moron, peter-tickler, eeler-spee, illy-wacker.

– G. A. Wilkes, A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, Sydney, 1978