Regular readers will know that I make my living as a professional sword swallower on theater stages across the country. As I have only around fifty active, living colleagues in my esoteric profession, general press mentions of my art are small in comparison to, well, just about every other form of performance art.
Though I tend to get a lot of press myself (for example), any mention of sword swallowing in the news is exciting to me, so when one of my favorite NPR shows made mention of sword swallowers I felt a surge of adrenaline rush to my fingertips.
Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Is the weekly comic news quiz hosted by Peter Sagal, judged by that ever-present NPR voice Carl Kasell and paneled by a somewhat-rotating group of writers, authors, humorists and assorted media personalities. Each show features a segment entitled Not My Job wherein a celebrity guest – this week, former SNL cast member Julia Sweeney – is invited on to answer a series of three questions designed to be as unrelated to their actual job as is possible.
This week’s topic: Carny Language! While my own work is about as far from carny as one can get, I have a deep personal interest in the subject and, doing what I do, many of my best friends are carny-folk through-and-through.
Among the questions asked of Ms. Sweeney was this (roughly quoted):
Among Carny’s, the sword swallower is known as a:
a.) Steel Nosher
b.) Blade Glommer
c.) Silverware Snacker
The answer is of course… b.) blade glommer. Kudos go to Ms. Sweeney for getting not only this question correct, but the other two as well!
Check out the Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! website to hear the show, or simply subscribe to the podcast edition.
Years ago I created the swordswallow.com website (now under different management) and you can still get a short list of other carny terms on the carny terms page of the site.
ADDENDUM
It’s curious that the term “glommer” became attached to the act of sword swallowing. To glom of course means “to grab, steal or latch on to something” as in he wanted to glom onto some of that money (glom. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)). Clearly this doesn’t well describe the act of ingesting a sword. The closest relationship between “glomming” and “swallowing” seems to be cited by Douglas Harper in the Online Etymology Dictionary, which lists “glom” as follows:
glom
1907, from glahm “grab, snatch, steal,” Amer.Eng. underworld slang, from Scot. glaum (1715), from Gael. glam “to handle awkwardly, grab voraciously, devour.” Sense of “look at, watch” (1945) is apparently derived from the same word.
The 1715 reference to the Gaelic term glam being used to mean “devour” seems to be the best explanation. Though I hope that in my own work, there is no sense of “to handle awkwardly”. ;)
Comments and insight are welcome here.
###