I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
So hollo, boys! hollo, boys!
Shout out the day!
Hollo, boys! hollo, boys!
Hollo, Hurrah!’
“After we’d finished our speech in one of the squares, and hollowed Hurrah! the beadle come out, and said he’d give us the stick about our backs, and the guy too, if we didn’t go away. So we went away, and got into Russell-square and Bedford-square; but there was such a lot of small guys out, that we did worse than ever we’d done before. When we was in Southampton-street, Holborn, I finished the speech with ‘Down with the Pope, and God save the Queen;’ so four shoe-black boys come up, and says, says they, ‘What do you say, Down with the Pope and God save the Queen for?’ And I says, ‘I didn’t mean no harm of it.’ With that they makes use of some bad language, and told me they’d smash my head and the guy’s too; and they was going to do it, when up comes a boy that I knew, and I says to him, ‘They’re going to knock me about;’ so he says, ‘No they won’t;’ so then the boys made their reply, and said they would. So I told ’em they was very fast about fighting, I’d fight one of them; so with that they all got ready to pitch upon me: but when they see this other boy stuck to me, they went off, and never struck a blow. When we got home I opened the money-box and shared the money; one had 5d., and two had 4½d. each, and I had 7d. because I said the speech. At night we pulled him all to pieces, and burnt his stuffing, and let off some squibs and crackers. I always used to spend the money I got guying on myself. I used to buy sometimes fowls, because I could sell the eggs. There is some boys that take out guys as do it for the sake of getting a bit of bread and butter, but not many as I knows of.
“It don’t cost much to make a guy. The clothes we never burns—they’re generally too good: they’re our own clothes, what we wears at other times; and when people burn a guy they always pull off any of the things that’s of use fust; but mostly the guy gets pulled all to pieces, and only the shavings gets burnt.”