Indeed, some of the cries in our own day would appear to be just as difficult to distinguish. A lady tells me that in a poor district she regularly visits, the coal-cart man cries: “I’m on the woolsack!” but what he means is, “Fine Wallsend Coal!” The philologist will find the pronunciation of the peripatetic Cockney vendor of useful and amusing trifles—almost invariably penn’orths, by the way—worthy of careful study. Here are a couple of phonetically rendered examples: “Bettnooks, a penny fer two, two frer penny.” [Button hooks, a penny for two, two for a penny.] “En endy shoo-awn frer penny.” [A handy shoe-horn for a penny.]
Amongst the twelve etched London Cries “done from the life” by Paul Sandby, in 1766, and now scarce, are the following curious examples:—
My pretty little gimy [smart] tarter for a halfpenny stick, or a penny stick, or a stick to beat your Wives or Dust your cloths!
Memorandum books a penny a-piece of the poor blind. God bless you. Pity the blind!
Do you want any spoons—hard metal spoons? Have you any old brass or pewter to sell or change?
All fire and no smoke. A very good flint or a very good steel. Do you want a good flint or steel?
Any tripe, or neat’s foot or calf’s-foot, or trotters, ho! Hearts, Liver or Lights!
The simplers, or herb-gatherers, who were at one time numerous, supplied the herb-shops in Covent Garden, Fleet, and Newgate Markets. They culled from the hedges and brooks not only watercresses, of which London now annually consumes about £15,000 worth, but dandelions, scurvy grass, nettles, bittersweet, red valerian, cough-grass, feverfew, hedge mustard, and a variety of other simples. Notwithstanding the greater pungency of the wild variety, preferred on that account, of late years watercress-growing has been profitably followed as a branch of market gardening. In third-rate “genteel” neighbourhoods, where the family purse is seldom too well filled, “Creeses, young watercreeses,” varied by shrimps or an occasional bloater, would appear to form the chief afternoon solace. Towards the end of the last century scurvy-grass was highly esteemed; and the best scurvy-grass ale is said to have been sold in Covent Garden at the public-house at the corner of Henrietta Street.
The modern dealer in simples, who for a few pence supplies pills and potions of a more or less harmless character, calculated for the cure of every bodily ailment that afflicts humanity, flourishes in the poorer districts of London, and calls himself a herbalist. During the progress of an all too short acquaintanceship struck up with a simpler in an Essex country lane through the medium of a particularly fragrant and soothing herb, the conversation happened on depression of spirits, and dandelion tea was declared to be an unfailing specific. “You know, sir, bad spirits means that the liver is out of order. The doctors gives you a deadly mineral pizen, which they calls blue pill, and it certainly do pizen ’em, but then you run the chance of being pizened yerself.” A look of astonishment caused him to continue. “You’ve noticed the ’oles in a sheep’s liver after it’s cut up, ’aven’t you? Well, them ’oles is caused by slugs, and ’uman bein’s is infested just the same. So is awsiz (horses), but they don’t never take no blue pill. Catch ’em! The doctors knows all about it, bless yer, but they don’t talk so plain as me. I calls out-of-sort-ishness ‘slugs in the liver,’ and pizens ’em with three penn’rth of dandelion tea, for which I charges thrippence. They calls it ‘sluggishness of the liver,’ and pizens ’em with a penn’rth of blue pill, for which they charges a guinea, and as often as not they pizens the patient too.” What a mine of “copy” that simple simpler would have proved to a James Payn or a Walter Besant!
The following at one time popular and often reprinted lines, to the tune of “The Merry Christ Church Bells,” are from the Roxburgh Collection of Ballads: