Young lambs to sell, young lambs to sell.
Two for a penny, young lambs to sell.
If I’d as much money as I could tell,
I wouldn’t cry young lambs to sell.
Dolly and Molly, Richard and Nell,
Buy my Young Lambs and I’ll use you well!
The later song—
Old chairs to mend, old chairs to mend.
If I’d as much money as I could spend,
I’d leave off crying old chairs to mend—
—is obviously copied from the original cry of “Young Lambs to Sell.” In addition to a few tools, the stock-in-trade of the travelling chair-mender principally consisted of rushes, which in later days gave place to cane split into strips of uniform width—a return to more
“Young lambs to sell.”
“Buy my fine Myrtles and Roses!”
ancient practice. The use of rush-bottomed chairs, which are again coming into æsthetic fashion, cannot be traced back quite a century and half. The chairs in Queen Anne’s time were seated and backed with cane; and in the days of Elizabeth the seats were cushioned and the backs stuffed. Many years ago an old chair-mender occupied a position by a stone fixed in the wall of one of the houses in Panyer Alley, on which is cut the following inscription:—