Let not the ballad singer’s shrilling strain
Amid the swarm thy listening ear detain:
Guard well thy pocket, for these syrens stand
To aid the labours of the diving hand;
“Ye maidens and men, come for what you lack,
And buy the fair Ballads I have in my pack.”
—Pedlar’s Lamentation.
Confederate in the cheat, they draw the throng,
And Cambric handkerchiefs reward the song.
A state of things very graphically delineated in another print of “Barthelemew Fair” (1739), where a ballad singer is roaring out a caveat against cut purses whilst a pick-pocket is operating on one of his audience.
The old cry of “Marking Irons” has died out. The letters were cast in iron, and sets of initials were made up and securely fixed in long-handled iron boxes. The marking irons were heated and impressed as a proof of ownership.
Hence ladders, bellows, tubs, and pails,
Brooms, benches, and what not,
Just as the owner’s taste prevails,
Have his initials got.
“My name and your name, your father’s name and mother’s name.”
Hone says: “I well remember to have heard this cry when a boy. The type-seller composed my own name for me, which I was thereby enabled to imprint on paper with common writing-ink. I think it has become wholly extinct within the last ten years.”