Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day With Heaps of Quaint Cuts

9781465643490

281 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

DATES, unless in the form of the luscious fruit of Smyrna, are generally dry. It is enough therefore to state that the earliest mention of London Cries is found in a quaint old ballad entitled “London Lyckpenny,” or Lack penny, by that prolific writer, John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, who flourished about the middle of the fifteenth century. These cries are particularly quaint, and especially valuable as a record of the daily life of the time. Since Lydgate’s time the cries of London have been a stock subject for ballads and children’s books, of which, in various forms, some hundreds must have appeared within the last two centuries. The cuts, unless from the hand of a Rowlandson or a Cruikshank, are usually of the mechanical order; and one finds copies of the same illustrations, though differently treated, constantly reappearing. In the books there is usually a cut on each page, with a cry printed above or underneath, and in addition a verse of descriptive poetry, which, if not of the highest order, serves its purpose.