Some London Cries.

Evening Star, Issue 6913, 28 May 1885, Page 4

Some London Cries.

“Saloop—loop—loop!” was formerly a well-known cry in London. The decoction sold under this name seems, however, to have been superseded by coffee when that article became cheap. Saloop seems to have been sold down to modern times at streetstalls, from a late hour at night to early morning, just as coffee is sold now. Charles Lamb says of it: “ There is a composition, the groundwork of which I have understood to be sweet wood yclept sassafras. This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an effusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond, the China luxury. This is saloop, the precious herb-woman’s darling; the delight of the early gardener; the delight, and oh ! I fear, too often the envy of the unpennied sweep.” He goes on to speak of those “ who from stalls, and under open sky dispense the same savory mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake rolling home from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume the premature labors of the day, jostle one another.” Dealers in eatables seem to have given rise to most of the cries. Periwinkles are still sold to the cry of “ Wink—wink—wink—penny wink ” ; and we hear also of “ Boston shrimps !” whilst a big catch of mackerel on the coast is advertised over all London the next day by the cry of “ Mask-er-eel—fine mack-er-eel—four a shilling! ” In the old poem of London Lickpenny we find the lines—

Then comes me one cried Hot sheep's feet! One cried Mackerell Rushes green ; another 'gau greet.

Cooked sheep’s-feet are still sold in the poorer quarters of London under tire name of trotters. Rushes were used for the purpose of covering floors in houses of the better class, and even in royal chambers* so late as the time of Queen Elizabeth. The stage was strewed with rushes in Shakespeare’s time. The floors of churches were also covered in like manner, and in many parts of the country the annual renewing of the rushes in the church was made an important rustic ceremonial. The festival, known as Rush-bearing, was kept up till very recent times, and probably lingers to the present day in some of the remoter parts of the Kingdom. We have a large number of street vendors of flowers, and their cry “ Penny a bunch, violets!” “ Wall - flowers sweet wallflowers!” are not unwelcome; whilst the cry of “ Lavender —sweet lavender ! ” reminds us that summer is drawing to a close. A writer of the first quarter of the present century says; —“To the east of Temple Bar the flower-girl is the herald of spring. She cries ‘ Cowslips ! ’ then she screams ‘ Bow-pots—sweet and pretty bow-pots !’ When 1 was a child I got a bow-pot of as many wallflowers and harebells as I could then hold in my hand, with a sprig of sweetbriar at the back of the bunch, for a halfpenny—such a handful ! ” The quieter streets and squares of London are occasionally roused in winter evenings by men (generally in couples) who shout out “ Alarming news !” They generally contrive, by each crying a different portion of their news (as in singing a round) to confuse their hearers with such stray items as “orful trajordeo,” “square” or “street,” “neighborhood,” “ five children,” “orful,” “ trajerdee,” etc. ; and they always demand a high price for their paper, which seldom contains any very special information. Formerly it w r as the custom for newsmen to cry their papers through the streets, and they carried a tin horn wherewith to attract notice. Hone, in his “Everyday Book,” says :“ ‘ Bloody news ! ’ ‘ Great victory ! ’ or more frequently ‘ Extraordinary gazette 1’ were, till recently, the usual loud bellowings of fellows with stentorian lungs, accompanied by a loud blast of a long tin horn, which announced to the delighted populace of London the martial achievements of the modern Marlborough.” A copy of the gazette or newspaper they were crying was generally affixed, under the hat-band, in front, and the demand for a newspaper was generally one shilling. The use of a horn was soon afterwards prohibited. In the days of the original Marlborough the news was cried in the same fashion, for we read in the ‘ Spectator ’: “ A bloody battle alarms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry that one would think the enemy were at our gates.”—‘All the ’YearRound.’