The earliest record of London cries is, according to Mr. Charles Knight, in Lydgate’s poem of “London Lyckpeny,” which is as old as the days of Henry V., or about 430 years back. Among Lydgate’s cries are enumerated “Strawberries ripe and cherries in the rise;” the rise being a twig to which the cherries were tied, as at present. Lydgate, however, only indicates costermongers, but does not mention them by name.
It is not my intention, as my inquiries are directed to the present condition of the costermongers, to dwell on this part of the question, but some historical notice of so numerous a body is indispensable. I shall confine myself therefore to show from the elder dramatists, how the costermongers flourished in the days of Elizabeth and James I.
“Virtue,” says Shakespeare, “is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bear-herd.” Costermonger times are as old as any trading times of which our history tells; indeed, the stationary costermonger of our own day is a legitimate descendant of the tradesmen of the olden time, who stood by their shops with their open casements, loudly inviting buyers by praises of their wares, and by direct questions of “What d’ye buy? What d’ye lack?”
Ben Jonson makes his Morose, who hated all noises, and sought for a silent wife, enter “upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women,” to moderate their clamour; but Morose, above all other noisy people, “cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.”
In Ford’s “Sun’s Darling” I find the following: “Upon my life he means to turn costermonger, and is projecting how to forestall the market. I shall cry pippins rarely.”
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Scornful Lady” is the following:
“Pray, sister, do not laugh; you’ll anger him,
And then he’ll rail like a rude costermonger.”
Dr. Johnson, gives the derivation of costard-monger (the orthography he uses), as derived from the sale of apples or costards, “round and bulky like the head;” and he cites Burton as an authority: “Many country vicars,” writes Burton, “are driven to shifts, and if our great patrons hold us to such conditions, they will make us costard-mongers, graziers, or sell ale.”
“The costard-monger,” says Mr. Charles Knight, in his “London,” “was originally an apple-seller, whence his name, and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman.”