“The Tinker.
| “Have you any work for a tinker, mistriss? Old brass, old pots, or kettles? I’ll mend them all with a tink, terry tink, And never hurt your mettles. First let me have but a touch of your ale, ’Twill steel me against cold weather, Or tinkers frees, Or vintners lees, Or tobacco chuse you whether. But of your ale, Your nappy ale, I would I had a ferkin, For I am old And very cold And never wear a jerkin.” |
The tinker’s “Cry” forms the opening lines of “Clout the Cauldron,” one of the best of our old Scottish songs:—
| “‘Hae ye ony pots or pans, Or any broken chanlers,’ I am a tinker to my trade, And newly come from Flanders.” |
But the song is so well known to all who take an interest in our northern minstrelsy, and is to be found, moreover, in every good collection of Scottish Songs, that it is enough to refer to it.
Honest John Bunyan was a travelling tinker originally. Reader! just for a moment fancy the inspired author—poet we may call him—of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” crying the “cry” of his trade through the streets of Bedford, thus—“Mistress, have you any work for the tinker? pots, pans, kettles I mend, old brass, lead or old copper I buy. Anything in my way to-day, maids?” While at the same time, through his brain was floating visions of Vanity Fair, the Holy War, the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Barren Fig Tree, the Water of Life, &c. beneath the long head of hair, shaggy and dirty, too, as a tinker’s generally is.
Hot Codlings:—A Catch.