A History of the Cries of London Part 13

New prunes two-pence a pound.

Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London town.

Here's cuc.u.mbers, spinnage, and French beans.

Come buy my nice sallery.

Here's parsnips and fine leeks.

Come buy my potatoes, ho!

Come buy my plumbs, and fine ripe plumbs.

A groat a pound, ripe filberts, ho!

Here's corn-poppies and mulberries.

Gooseberries and currants also.

Fine nectarines, peaches, and apricots.

New rice two-pence a pound.

Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London town.

Buy a rabbit, wild duck, or fat goose.

Come buy a choice fat fowl.

Plovers, teal, or widgeons, come buy my pigeons.

Maids, do you want any small coal?

Come buy my shrimps, my fine new shrimps, Two pots a penny, taste and try.

Here's fine saloop, both hot and good.

But Yorkshire m.u.f.fins is the cry.

Here's trotters, calf's feet, and fine tripes.

Barrel figs, three-pence a pound.

Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London town.

Here's new-laid eggs for ten a groat.

Come buy water'd cod.

Here's plaice and dabs, lobsters and crabs.

Come buy my maids, and flounders, ho!

Come buy my pike, my fine live pike.

Two-pence a hundred c.o.c.kles, ho!

Shads, eels, and sprats. Lights for your cats.

With haddocks, perch, and tench also.

Here's carp and tench, mullets and smelts.

b.u.t.ter sixpence a pound.

Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London town.

Printed and sold at the Printing-office in _Bow-church-yard, London_.

"Holloway cheese-cakes" was once one of the London cries; they were sold by a man on horseback; and in "_Jack Drum's Entertainment_," a Comedy, 1601, in a random song, the festive character of this district is denoted:--

"Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it, l.u.s.tily, Strike up the tabor for the wenches favour, Tickle it, tickle it, l.u.s.tily.

Let us be seene on Hygate-Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway.

Since we are come hither, let's spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Drunken Barnaby, at the "Mother Red Cap," at Holloway, found very bad company:--

_Veni_ Holloway, pileum rubrum, _In cohortem muliebrem_, _Me_ adonidem _vocant omnes_ _Meretricis_ Babylonis; _Tangunt_, _tingunt_, _molliunt_, _mulcent_, _At egentem_, _foris pulsant_.

Addison, the essayist and poet, 1672-1719, contributed a capital paper to the _Spectator_, on the subject of London Cries, which we deem so much to the purpose, that it is here reproduced _in extenso_.

THE SPECTATOR.

No. 251. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18.

----_Linguae centum sunt, oraque centum, ----Ferrea vox_---- VIRG., En. 6., v. 625.

----A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, And throats of bra.s.s, inspir'd with iron lungs. DRYDEN.

There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frightens a country 'squire, than the _cries of London_. My good friend Sir _Roger_ often declares that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, _Will Honeycombe_ calls them the _Ramage de la ville_, and prefers them to the sound of larks, and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.

SIR,

I am a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burdening the subject, but I cannot get the parliament to listen to me, who look upon me forsooth as a crack, and a projector; so that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

The post I would aim at, is to be comptroller-general of the London cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

The cries of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together with the tw.a.n.kling of a bra.s.s kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman's thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder's horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore propose that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of her majesty's liege subjects.

Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and indeed so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries.

Milk is generally sold in a note above _Ela_, and it sounds so exceedingly shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest ba.s.s, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to mention broken gla.s.ses or brick-dust. In these therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets, as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares; and to take care in particular, that those may not make the most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the venders of card matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of _Much cry, but little wool_.

Some of these last mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the street where he lived; but what was the effect of this contract? Why, the whole tribe of card-match-makers which frequent that quarter, pa.s.sed by his door the very next day, in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

It is another great imperfection in our London-cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should indeed be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as fire; yet this is generally the case: a b.l.o.o.d.y battle arms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry, that one would think the enemy were at our gates.

This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit, under this head, those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest our streets in turnip-season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

There are others who affect a very slow time, and are, in my opinion, much more tunable than the former; the cooper in particular swells his last note in a hollow voice, that is not without its harmony; nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public are very often asked, If they have any chairs to mend? Your own memory may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature, in which music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cuc.u.mbers; but alas! this cry, like the song of the nightingale, is not heard above two months. It would therefore be worth while to consider, whether the same air might not in some cases be adapted to other words.

It might likewise deserve our most serious consideration, how far, in a well-regulated city, those humourists are to be tolerated, who, not content with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have invented particular songs and tunes of their own: such as was not many years since, the pastry-man, commonly known by the name of the Colly-Molly-Puff; and such as is at this day the vender of powder and wash-ball, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the name of _Powder-Watt_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLLY-MOLLY-PUFF.]

I must not here omit one particular absurdity which runs through this whole vociferous generation, and which renders their cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the public; I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of them aim at, of crying so as not to be understood. Whether or no they have learned this from several of our affected singers, I will not take upon me to say; but most certain it is, that people know the wares they deal in rather by their tunes than by their words: insomuch that I have sometimes seen a country boy run out to buy apples of a bellows-mender, and ginger-bread from a grinder of knives and scissors. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some very eminent artists of this particular grace in a cry, that none but their acquaintance are able to guess at their profession; for who else can know, _that work if I had it_, should be the signification of a corn-cutter.

Forasmuch, therefore, as persons of this rank are seldom men of genius or capacity, I think it would be very proper, that some man of good sense and sound judgment should preside over these public cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices in our streets, that have not tunable throats, and are not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their respective merchandises in apt phrases, and in the most distinct and agreeable sounds. I do therefore humbly recommend myself as a person rightly qualified for this post; and if I meet with fitting encouragement, shall communicate some other projects which I have by me, that may no less conduce to the emolument of the public.

I am, Sir, &c.

RALPH CROTCHET.

A curious parallel might be carried out between the itinerant occupations which the progress of society has entirely superseded, and those which even the most advanced civilization is compelled to retain. We here only hastily glance at a few of these differences.

Of the street trades which are past and forgotten, the small-coal-man was one of the most remarkable. He tells the tale of a city with few fires; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling "_Small Coals_" from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry had, however, a rival in that of "_Any Wood to cleave_."