From a snicket in Yorkshire to the scandalous doings of the Merry Wives of Windsor

My brother's most recent post on his blog News from Nowhere reawakens the debate on the title of one of the photographs that Bill Brandt took of my native town of Halifax, Yorkshire. His 1937 photograph is shown below, along with one that my brother took of the same scene forty years ago. Both photographs are masterful. However, the controversy lies not in the scene, but in Bill Brandt's title: Snicket in Halifax. In Yorkshire terminology, is it a snicket or a ginnel? 


Bill Bran Brandt's Snicket in Halifax 1937.          

     

     Alan Burnett's photograph taken 40 years later.

As an apprentice engineer in the 1960's I climbed those cobbles many times over. In Halifax there are some streets so steep that it is hard work working down them and this is one of them. I cannot remember it being referred to by any particular name. 

It was the debate "Is it a Snicket or a Ginnel that led me to the scandalous doings in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. I am grateful to John Thompson for the following insight.

Contrary to the other answers posted here, the two terms are only tangentially related:

A ‘Ginnel’, in modern parlance, is any receptacle or device carried on one’s person for the purpose of smuggling liquor. However, classically, it had a much more specific meaning and referred to the small funnel one used to pour gin into a hidden liquor receptacle. Quite often, this would be a long cylindrical container sewn into the leather of one’s boots, but other more creative devices have been employed. Indeed, in the early 19th century, curved tubes of pewter or tin were inserted in the rectum by theater goers, and these were filled with gin (or rum) using a ‘ginnel’ for later consumption during the performance. Generally, a friend would be needed to help drain off small measures of liquor into a cup and the practice was widely known as ‘milking the bum’.

A ‘Snicket’ in contrast has always referred to a small amount of any food or drink that one indulges in secretly, and, in the case of alcoholic beverages, would have much the same meaning as a ‘nip’ of brandy, where taken surreptitiously. Although ‘snicket’ has wide application, it is obviously suited to situations such as the enjoyment of ‘bum milkings’, mentioned above… Probably the earliest recorded use of the term in that specific context is in Act 2 scene 3 of Shakespeare’s lesser known ‘Dirty Wives of Windsor’ where Amelia, feeling faint, is offered a ‘snicket o’ whisky’ from the small goatskin sack secreted in Balderstaff’s outsize cod-piece. Much hilarity was occasioned in the groundlings when Balderstaff’s wife enters (stage left) to find Amelia on her knees, taking a wee ‘snicket’ directly from the ginnel refill nipple protruding from the codpiece.

The above then led me on a merry search of the internet to find an artist brave enough to illustrate Shakespeare's more erotic scenes. Other than this illustration by Eric Gill (1882-1940) that illustrates an edition of All the Love Poems of Shakespeare, I drew a blank. 

Incidentally, Corona Virus restrictions have left me desperate for reading matter. New books cannot be shipped in and those on my bookshelves I have read many times over. That is, with the exception of an edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare that I purchased over forty years ago. Now that I have learnt to crack Shakespeare's code, I'm hooked!