Saturday, 4 June 2011

Street cries

A visiting friend pointed out that I had a library of unread old books.  I knew that I already had 'Culpepper' and 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs' (nightmare book if ever you need one) and 'An Englishwoman's Love Letters' - so I plucked out this one:


Here are a couple more:





And a few cries:

'Songs, three yards a penny!  Southernwood that's very good!  Cherries, oh!  Ripe cherries O!'

and:

'Buy a goose?  Any bellows to mend?  Who's for a mutton pie, or an eel pie?  Who buys my roasting jacks?  Sand, ha!  buy my nice white sand, ho!  Buy my firestone?  Roasted pippins, piping hot?'

That'll do to go on with.  I have more.

Posted by at
Labels:

4 comments:

  1. Rog5 June 2011 at 06:37

    I'm just off to do a car boot. These cries will be just the thing to bring the customers rushing to my wares and no mistake guvnor!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christopher5 June 2011 at 11:45

    Thanks, Tim, for inspiration for today's post at my place. As a child I remember a man with a horse and cart coming round shouting of 'Ragzerbols! Ragzerbols!', which puzzled me until I discovered he meant 'Rags and bottles'. Clearly Rog has polished his diction since.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tim5 June 2011 at 11:59

    Rog, you are very versatile. Not many people sell geese and nice white sand while mending bellows at car boot sales.
    Christopher - from my childhood in Bournemouth I remember it as "Ragbo", which meant 'rags and bones'. No-one ever explained what he did with the bones, if any - boiled them up for supper presumablhy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Richard WalkL5 June 2011 at 22:56

    No-one ever explained what he did with the bones....

    I can tell you he bloody scared me.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)