Broadsides; Chapbooks; Street literature -- Great Britain
We have recently met, near the Strand, the street ballad singer of our
youth, and, from whom we procured, “Wait for the Turn of the Tide,” and
“Call her back and Kiss Her,” and the following information--“Oh, yes,
I remember you, remember you well; particularly when I see you down at
Brighton; when you treated me to that hot rum and water; when I was
so wet and cold, at a little snug public-house in one of the streets
that leads off the main street. I don’t remember the name on it now,
but I remembers the rum and water well enough; it was good. You said
it would be, and so it was, and no mistake. How old am I now? Why,
59. How long have I been at it? Why, hard on fifty years. I was about
nine or ten year old--no, perhaps I might have been 12 year old, when
I come to think on it. Yes, about 12 year old; my mother was a widow
with five children, and there was a boy in our street as used to go
out singing ballads, and his mother said to my mother, ‘Why don’t you
let your boy (that’s me) go out and sing ballads like my boy.’ And I
said I didn’t mind, and I did go out, and I’ve been at it ever since,
so you see it ’aint far short of 50 year. How many do I sell in a day?
Well, not so many as I used to do, by a long way. I’ve sold me four and
five quires a-day, but I don’t sell above two and three dozen a-day
now. That’s all the difference you see, sir--dozens against quires.
How do I live then? Why, you see I am now so well-known in different
parts of London, that lots and lots of people comes up to me--like you
always do--and says--‘How do you do, old fellow? I remember you when I
was a boy, if its a man, and when I was a girl, if its a woman.’ And
says, ‘So you are still selling songs, eh?’ Then they give me a few
coppers; some more and some less than others, and says they don’t want
the songs. Some days--very often--I’ve had more money giving me than
I’ve took for the ballads. Yes, I have travelled all over England--all
over it I think--but the North’s the best--Manchester, Liverpool, and
them towns; but down Bath and Cheltenham way I was nearly starved. I
was coming back from that way, I now remember, when I met you, sir,
at Brighton that time. I buy my ballads at various places--but now
mostly over the water, because I live there now and it’s handiest.
Mr. Such, the printer, in Union-street in the Borough. Oh! yes, some
at Catnach’s--leastways, it ain’t Catnach’s now, it’s Fortey’s. Yes,
I remember ‘old Jemmy Catnach’ very well; he wa’n’t a bad sort, as
you say; leastways, I’ve heard so, but I never had anything of him.
I always paid for what I had, and did not say much to him, or he to
me--writing his life of him, are you indeed? No, I can’t give you no
more information about him than that, because, as I said before, I
bought my goods as I wanted them, and paid for them, then away on my
own account and business. Well, he was a man something like you--a
little wider across the shoulders, perhaps, but about such a man as
you are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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