Here's new-laid eggs for ten a groat. Come buy water'd cod. Here's plaice and dabs, lobsters and crabs. Come buy my maids, and flounders, ho! Come buy my pike, my fine live pike. Two-pence a hundred cockles, ho! Shads, eels, and sprats. Lights for your cats. With haddocks, perch, and tench also. Here's carp and tench, mullets and smelts. Butter sixpence a pound. Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London town. Printed and sold at the Printing-office in _Bow-church-yard, London_. "Holloway cheese-cakes" was once one of the London cries; they were sold by a man on horseback; and in "_Jack Drum's Entertainment_," a Comedy, 1601, in a random song, the festive character of this district is denoted:-- "Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily, Strike up the tabor for the wenches favour, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily. Let us be seene on Hygate-Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Since we are come hither, let's spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway." [Illustration] Drunken Barnaby, at the "Mother Red Cap," at Holloway, found very bad company:-- _Veni_ Holloway, pileum rubrum, _In cohortem muliebrem_, _Me_ adonidem _vocant omnes_ _Meretricis_ Babylonis; _Tangunt_, _tingunt_, _molliunt_, _mulcent_, _At egentem_, _foris pulsant_. Addison, the essayist and poet, 1672-1719, contributed a capital paper to the _Spectator_, on the subject of London Cries, which we deem so much to the purpose, that it is here reproduced _in extenso_. THE SPECTATOR. No. 251. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18. ----_Linguæ centum sunt, oraque centum, ----Ferrea vox_---- VIRG., En. 6., v. 625. ----A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, And throats of brass, inspir'd with iron lungs. DRYDEN. There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frightens a country 'squire, than the _cries of London_. My good friend Sir _Roger_ often declares that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, _Will Honeycombe_ calls them the _Ramage de la ville_, and prefers them to the sound of larks, and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it. SIR,