“Stinking Fish!”
demanded; as “Oratorio oranges,” and so on. A jovial rogue whose beat extends to numerous courts and alleys on either side of Fleet Street, regularly and unblushingly cries, “Stinking Shrimps,” and by way of addenda, “Lor, ’ow they do stink to-day, to be sure!” His little joke is almost as much relished as his shrimps and bloaters, and they appear to be always of the freshest. Were it not that insufficient clothing and an empty stomach are hardly conducive thereto, the winter cry so generally heard after a fall of snow, “Sweep yer door away, mum?” might fairly be credited to an attempt at facetiousness under difficulties, while the grave earnestness of the mirth-provoking cry of the Cockney boot-lace man, “Lice, lice, penny a pair boot-lice!” is strong evidence that he has no thought beyond turning the largest possible number of honest pennies in the shortest possible space of time.
A search in our collection of books and ballads for London Cries, humorous in themselves, discovers but two,—
“Jaw-work, up and under jaw-work, a whole pot for a halfpenny, hazel-nuts!”
and—
“New laid eggs, eight a groat—crack ’em and try ’em!”
A somewhat ghastly form of facetiousness was a favourite one with a curious City character, now defunct. He was a Jew who sold a nameless toy—a dried pea loose in a pill box, which was fastened to a horse-hair, and on being violently twirled, emitted a vibratory hum that could be heard for some distance. Unless his unvarying cry, “On’y a ’a’penny,” brought buyers to the fore, he gave vent to frequent explosions of strange and impious language, which never failed to provoke the merriment of the passer-by.
Among the many living City characters is the man—from his burr evidently a Northumbrian—who sells boot laces. His cry is, “Boot laces—AND the boot laces.” This man also has a temper. If sales are
