Then comes a pale-looking woman with little bunches in her hand, who, with a feeble voice, cries “Buy my sweet Briar, any Rosemary?” There are still, however, plenty of saucy wenches—of doubtful morality—in the more crowded and fashionable thoroughfares, who present the passengers with moss-roses, and violets. Gay tells us:—
| “Successive cries the seasons’ change declare, And mark the monthly progress of the year. Hark! how the streets with treble voices ring, To sell the bounteous product of the spring.” |
We no longer hear the cries which had some association of harmonious sounds with fragrant flowers. The din of “noiseful gain” exterminated them.
The Water Carrier.
“Any fresh and fair Spring Water here?”
This was formerly a very popular London cry, but has now become extinct, although it was long kept in vogue by reason of the old prejudices of old fashioned people, whose sympathy was with the complaints of the water-bearer, who daily vociferated in and about the environs of London, “Any fresh and fair spring water here! none of your pipe sludge?”—though their own old tubs were often not particularly nice and clean to look at, and the water was likely to receive various impurities in being carried along the streets in all weathers.—“Ah dear?” cried his customers, “Ah dear! Well, what’ll the world come to!—they won’t let poor people live at all by-and-bye—Ah dear! here they are breaking up all the roads and footpaths again, and we shall be all under water some day or another with all their fine new fandangle goings on, but I’ll stick to the poor old lame and nearly blind water-carrier, as my old father did before me, as long as he has a pailful and I’ve a penny, and when we haven’t we must go to the workhouse together.”
This was the talk and reasoning of many honest people of that day, who preferred taxing themselves, to the daily payment of a penny and very often twopence to the water-carrier, in preference to having “Company’s water” at a fixed or pro-rata sum per annum.
