Of the Street-sellers of Hot-Cross Buns, and of Chelsea Buns.
Perhaps no cry—though it is only for one morning—is more familiar to the ears of a Londoner, than that of “One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot-cross buns,” on Good Friday. The sale is unknown in the Irish capital; for among Roman Catholics, Good Friday, I need hardly say, is a strict fast, and the eggs in the buns prevent their being used. One London gentleman, who spoke of fifty years ago, told me that the street-bun-sellers used to have a not unpleasing distich. On reflection, however, my informant could not be certain whether he had heard this distich cried, or had remembered hearing the elders of his family speak of it as having been cried, or how it was impressed upon his memory. It seems hardly in accordance with the usual style of street poetry:—
“One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot-cross buns!
If your daughters will not eat them, give them to your sons.
But if you hav’n’t any of those pretty little elves,
You cannot then do better than eat them all yourselves.”
A tradesman who had resided more than fifty years in the Borough had, in his boyhood, heard, but not often, this ridiculous cry:—
“One-a-penny, poker; two-a-penny, tongs!
One-a-penny; two-a-penny, hot-cross buns.”
The sellers of the Good Friday buns are principally boys, and they are of mixed classes—costers’ boys, boys habitually and boys occasionally street-sellers, and boys street-sellers for that occasion only. One great inducement to embark in the trade is the hope of raising a little money for the Greenwich Fair of the following Monday.