OLD LONDON STREET CRIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIX, 30 January 1936, Page 9

OLD LONDON STREET CRIES

From the ancient simple trade cries, “What d’ye lack, my masters?” developed the picturesque and often melodious cadences of the itinerant street vendors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—those quaint trades and queer cries that attracted the notice of artists so long ago as tho second half of the seyenteenth century, when Marcellus Lauion’s rare and highly prized etchings of London street cries were published. In these pictures we. see the man who cries “Fine Writing Ink.” There, too, is the man wTiom at first sight of his picture you suspect to be a milkman, for he has a yoke on his shoulders with a pail suspended on either side of him. But he is no milkman; he vends water. You cannot today imagine anything in London more antique than that. But it is curious to note that it is so late as'the nineteenth century he finds a market' for it, calling, “Any New River Water Here? None of Your Pipe Sludge.” “Buy a New Fork or a Shovel” : “Buy a New Almanack” (with a “k”); “Buy any Wax or Wafers” were everyday cries: while "Piping Hot Fritters,” “Who’ll Have Some Hot Sweet Murmenty?” and “Hot Codlins” were familiar in cold weather. ' “Buy my Dutch Biskets,” “Who’s for a Mutton Pie or a Christmas Pie?” “Lilly-white Vinegar” wero of every day. Then there were in days of very long ago the man who called “Buy my Fine Singing Glasses”— —trumpet-shaped glass tubes of various lengths; and the man, or men, who called “Hobby Horses!” for children. Among the most intriguing of the old-

time street cries was that of the doleful person who sold toy lambs. He cried—

‘Young.lambs to sell. If I had as much money as I con’d tell, I w wouldn’t be crying ‘Young lambs to sell ?’ ”

“Tell” is used in the very old sense of meaning “to count.” To-dav it survives only in the name o f “tellers” in banks.”