Now up and down old London Town,
In windows every where,
There are bills that say, No Christmas boxes
Will be given here.
They may put their Christmas boxes up,
Said Bet to her old man,
And then she boxed him round the room,
And broke the frying pan.
Now all old ancient customs will
Be quickly done away,
Here’s a happy new Year, and may you live
Till another Boxing day:
But may Old Nick a visit pay
To them both far and near,
Who in their windows put,
No Christmas Boxes given here.
The illustration to this ballad has evidently done duty for a portion (most probably Macheath’s song of “How happy could I be with either”) of the “Beggar’s Opera,” first played at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, 1728. The Commode, or cap, of the ladies is that of the reign of Queen Anne; but it is probable that highwaymen’s female friends did not dress in the height of the fashion.
ST. JAMES’S AND ST. GILES’S.
To the tourist of London, who’s curious in fact,
I’ll point out some things in the principal tracts.
Two places there are, where the poor and the rich,
Live so like each other, there’s no telling which.
One parish, St. James’s, par excellence call’d,
The West end of town and the fashionable world;
The other St. Giles’s, if true rumour speaks,
Is inhabited solely by Emigrant Greeks.
Chorus.
So don’t be astonished at what I shall say,
St. James and St. Giles I have seen in my day,
In the former they live on the National Debt,
In the latter they live on what they can get.
In St. James’s there is but one Palace, I swear,
In St. Giles’s Gin Palaces everywhere,
At the Court of St. James’s they hang out the flags,
Up a Court at St. Giles’s they hang out the rags.
The Swells at St. James’s go shooting at noon,
In St. Giles’s the people go shooting the moon.[72]
In St James’s Hotel, boots are welted by nobs,
In St. Giles’s the welting is done by the snobs.
In St. James’s the nobs to the Opera go,
Because they can’t bear anything that is low,
In St. Giles’s that being too slap-up, ’tis agreed,
To go to the stall of “the Garden” instead.
In St. James’s there’s military pensioners dwell,
In St. Giles’s there’s lots of Old Soldiers[73] as well;
In St. James’s they pay, when a regiment they choose,
In St. Giles’s, for nothing, they get “in the Blues.”