In the crowded streets of modern London the loudest and most persistent cry is that of the omnibus conductor—“Benk,” “Chairin’ Krauss,” “Pic’dilly”; or it may be, “Full inside,” or “’Igher up”; to which the cabman’s low-pitched and persuasive “Keb, sir?”—he is afraid to ply too openly for hire—plays an indifferent second. Judging from Rowlandson’s illustration, his predecessor the hackney coachman shared cabby’s sometimes too pointedly worded objection to a strictly legal fare.
The “under-street” Cries heard in our own time at the various stations on the railway enveloping London, in what by courtesy is termed a circle—the true shape would puzzle a mathematician to define—form an interesting study. While a good many of the porters
Rowlandson Delin. 1819.
“Wot d’yer call that?”
are recruited from the country, it is a curious fact that in calling the names of the various “sty-shuns” they mostly settle down—perhaps from force of association “downt-tcher-now”—into one dead level of Cockney pronunciation.
As one seldom realizes that there is anything wrong with one’s own way of speaking, pure-bred Cockneys may be expected to quarrel with the phonetic rendering given; however, as Dr. James Cantlie, in his interesting and recently published “Degeneration amongst Londoners,”[10] tells us that a pure-bred Cockney is a rara avis indeed, the quarrelsomely inclined may not be numerous, and they may be reminded that the writer is not alone in his ideas as to Cockney pronunciation. Appended to Du Maurier’s wonderfully powerful picture of “The Steam Launch in Venice” (Punch’s Almanac, 1882), is the following wording:—
’Andsome ’Arriet: “Ow my! if it ’yn’t that bloom-in’ old Temple Bar, as they did aw’y with out o’ Fleet Street!”
Mr. Belleville (referring to Guide-book): “No, it ’yn’t! It’s the fymous Bridge o’ Sighs, as Byron