What I have said of the necessity which controls street authorship, may also be said of the art which is sometimes called in to illustrate it.

The paper now published for the streets is classed as quarter sheets, which cost (wholesale) 1s. a gross; half sheets, which cost 2s.; and whole or broad sheets (such as for executions), which cost 3s. 6d. a gross the first day, and 3s. the next day or two, and afterwards, but only if a ream be taken, 5s. 6d.; a ream contains forty dozen. When “illustrated,” the charge is from 3d. to 1s. per ream extra. The books, for such cases as the Sloanes, or the murder of Jael Denny, are given in books—which are best adapted for the suburban and country trade, when London is “worked” sufficiently—are the “whole sheet” printed so as to fold into eight pages, each side of the paper being then, of course, printed upon. A book is charged from 6d. to 1s. extra (to a whole sheet) per gross, and afterwards the same extra per ream.

Of Long Song-sellers.

I have this week given a daguerreotype of a well-known long-song seller, and have preferred to give it as the trade, especially as regards London, has all but disappeared, and it was curious enough. “Long songs” first appeared between nine and ten years ago.

The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter—though some of them pattered a little—to attract customers, but on the veritable cheapness and novel form in which they vended popular songs, printed on paper rather wider than this page, “three songs abreast,” and the paper was about a yard long, which constituted the “three” yards of song. Sometimes three slips were pasted together. The vendors paraded the streets with their “three yards of new and popular songs” for a penny. The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the top of a long pole, and the vendor “cried” the different titles as he went along. This branch of “the profession” is confined solely to the summer; the hands in winter usually taking to the sale of song-books, it being impossible to exhibit “the three yards” in wet or foggy weather. The paper songs, as they fluttered from a pole, looked at a little distance like huge much-soiled white ribbons, used as streamers to celebrate some auspicious news. The cry of one man, in a sort of recitative, or, as I heard it called by street-patterers, “sing-song,” was, “Three yards a penny! Three yards a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! Three yards a penny! Song, song, songs!” Others, however, were generally content to announce merely “Three yards a penny!” One cried “Two under fifty a fardy!” As if two hundred and fifty songs were to be sold for a farthing. The whole number of songs was about 45. They were afterwards sold at a halfpenny, but were shorter and fewer. It is probable that at the best had the songs been subjected to the admeasurement of a jury, the result might have been as little satisfactory as to some tradesmen who, however, after having been detected in attempts to cheat the poor in weights and scales, and to cheat them hourly, are still “good men and true” enough to be jurymen and parliamentary electors. The songs, I am informed, were often about 2½ yards, (not as to paper but as to admeasurement of type); 3 yards, occasionally, at first, and not often less than 2 yards.

The crying of the titles was not done with any other design than that of expressing the great number of songs purchasable for “the small charge of one penny.” Some of the patterers I conversed with would have made it sufficiently droll. One man told me that he had cried the following songs in his three yards, and he believed in something like the following order, but he had cried penny song books, among other things, lately, and might confound his more ancient and recent cries:

“I sometimes began,” he said, “with singing, or trying to sing, for I’m no vocalist, the first few words of any song, and them quite loud. I’d begin

‘Buffalo gals, come out to-night;’ ‘Death of Nelson;’ ‘The gay cavalier;’ ‘Jim along Josey;’ ‘There’s a good time coming;’ ‘Drink to me only;’ ‘Kate Kearney;’ ‘Chuckaroo-choo, choo-choo-choot-lah;’ ‘Chockala-roony-ninkaping-nang;’ ‘Paga-daway-dusty-kanty-key;’ ‘Hottypie-gunnypo-china-coo’ (that’s a Chinese song, sir); ‘I dreamed that I dwelt in marble halls;’ ‘The standard bearer;’ ‘Just like love;’ ‘Whistle o’er the lave o’t;’ ‘Widow Mackree;’ ‘I’ve been roaming;’ ‘Oh! that kiss;’ ‘The old English gentleman,’ &c., &c. &c. I dares say they was all in the three yards, or was once, and if they wasn’t there was others as good.”

The chief purchasers of the “long songs” were boys and girls, but mostly boys, who expended 1d. or ½d. for the curiosity and novelty of the thing, as the songs were not in the most readable form. A few working people bought them for their children, and some women of the town, who often buy anything fantastic, were also customers.

When “the three yards was at their best,” the number selling them was about 170; the wholesale charge is from 3d. to 5d. a dozen, according to size. The profit of the vendors in the first instance was about 8d. a dozen. When the trade had all the attractions of novelty, some men sold ten dozen on fine days, and for three or four of the summer months; so clearing between 6s. and 7s. a day. This, however, was not an average, but an average might be at first 21s. a week profit. I am assured that if twenty persons were selling long songs in the street last summer it was “the outside,” as long songs are now “for fairs and races and country work.” Calculating that each cleared 9s. in a week, and to clear that took 15s., the profit being smaller than it used to be, as many must be sold at ½d. each—we find 120l. expended in long songs in the streets. The character of the vendor is that of a patterer of inferior genius.

The stock-money required is 1s. to 2s.; which with 2d. for a pole, and ½d. for paste, is all the capital needed. Very few were sold in the public-houses, as the vendors scrupled to expose them there, “for drunken fellows would snatch them, and make belts of them for a lark.”

Of Running Patterers.

Few of the residents in London—but chiefly those in the quieter streets—have not been aroused, and most frequently in the evening, by a hurly-burly on each side of the street. An attentive listening will not lead any one to an accurate knowledge of what the clamour is about. It is from a “mob” or “school” of the running patterers (for both those words are used), and consists of two, three, or four men. All these men state that the greater the noise they make, the better is the chance of sale, and better still when the noise is on each side of a street, for it appears as if the vendors were proclaiming such interesting or important intelligence, that they were vieing with one another who should supply the demand which must ensue. It is not possible to ascertain with any certitude what the patterers are so anxious to sell, for only a few leading words are audible. One of the cleverest of running patterers repeated to me, in a subdued tone, his announcements of murders. The words “Murder,” “Horrible,” “Barbarous,” “Love,” “Mysterious,” “Former Crimes,” and the like, could only be caught by the ear, but there was no announcement of anything like “particulars.” If, however, the “paper” relate to any well-known criminal, such as Rush, the name is given distinctly enough, and so is any new or pretended fact. The running patterers describe, or profess to describe, the contents of their papers as they go rapidly along, and they seldom or ever stand still. They usually deal in murders, seductions, crim.-cons., explosions, alarming accidents, “assassinations,” deaths of public characters, duels, and love-letters. But popular, or notorious, murders are the “great goes.” The running patterer cares less than other street-sellers for bad weather, for if he “work” on a wet and gloomy evening, and if the work be “a cock,” which is a fictitious statement or even a pretended fictitious statement, there is the less chance of any one detecting the ruse. But of late years no new “cocks” have been printed, excepting for temporary purposes, such as I have specified as under its appropriate head in my account of “Death and Fire-Hunters.” Among the old stereotyped “cocks” are love-letters. One is well known as “The Husband caught in a Trap,” and being in an epistolary form subserves any purpose: whether it be the patterer’s aim to sell the “Love Letters” of any well-known person, such as Lola Montes, or to fit them for a local (pretended) scandal, as the “Letters from a Lady in this neighbourhood to a Gentleman not 100 miles off.”

Of running patterers there are now in London from 80 to 100. They reside—some in their own rooms, but the majority in lodging-houses—in or near Westminster, St Giles’s, Whitechapel, Stratford, Deptford, Wandsworth, and the Seven Dials. The “Dials,” however, is their chief locality, being the residence of the longest-established printers, and is the “head meet” of the fraternity.

It is not easy to specify with exactitude the number of running or flying patterers at any one time in London. Some of these men become, occasionally, standing patterers, chaunters, or ballad-singers—classes I shall subsequently describe—and all of them resort at intervals to country rounds. I heard, also, many complaints of boys having of late “taken to the running patter” when anything attractive was before the public, and of ignorant fellows—that wouldn’t have thought of it at one time—“trying their hands at it.” Waiving these exceptional augmentations of the number, I will take the body of running patterers, generally employed in their peculiar craft in London, at 90. To ascertain their earnings presents about the same difficulties as to ascertain their number; for as all they earn is spent—no patterer ever saving money—they themselves are hardly able to tell their incomes. If any new and exciting fact be before the public, these men may each clear 20s. a week; when there is no such fact, they may not earn 5s. The profit is contingent, moreover, upon their being able to obtain 1d., or only ½d., for their paper. Some represented their average weekly earnings at 12s. 6d. the year through; some at 10s. 6d.; and others at less than half of 12s. 6d. Reckoning, however, that only 9s. weekly is an average profit per individual, and that 14s. be taken to realise that profit, we find 3,276l. expended yearly on running patterers in London; but in that sum the takings of the chaunters must be included, as they are members of the same fraternity, and work with the patterers.

The capital required to commence as a running patterer is but the price of a few papers—from 2d. to 1s. The men have no distinctive dress: “our togs,” said one of them, “is in the latest fashion of Petticoat-lane;” unless on the very rare occasions, when some character has to be personated, and then coloured papers and glazed calicoes are made available. But this is only a venture of the old hands.

Experience of a Running Patterer.

From a running patterer, who has been familiar with the trade for many years, I received, upwards of a twelvemonth ago, the following statement. He is well known for his humour, and is a leading man in his fraternity. After some conversation about “cocks,” the most popular of which, my informant said, was the murder at Chigwell-row, he continued:

“That’s a trump, to the present day. Why, I’d go out now, sir, with a dozen of Chigwell-rows, and earn my supper in half an hour off of ’em. The murder of Sarah Holmes at Lincoln is good, too—that there has been worked for the last five year successively every winter. Poor Sarah Holmes! Bless her! she has saved me from walking the streets all night many a time. Some of the best of these have been in work twenty years—the Scarborough murder has full twenty years. It’s called ‘The Scarborough Tragedy.’ I’ve worked it myself. It’s about a noble and rich young naval officer seducing a poor clergyman’s daughter. She is confined in a ditch, and destroys the child. She is taken up for it, tried, and executed. This has had a great run. It sells all round the country places, and would sell now if they had it out. Mostly all our customers is females. They are the chief dependence we have. The Scarborough Tragedy is very attractive. It draws tears to the women’s eyes to think that a poor clergyman’s daughter, who is remarkably beautiful, should murder her own child; it’s very touching to every feeling heart. There’s a copy of verses with it, too. Then there’s the Liverpool Tragedy—that’s very attractive. It’s a mother murdering her own son, through gold. He had come from the East Indies, and married a rich planter’s daughter. He came back to England to see his parents after an absence of thirty years. They kept a lodging-house in Liverpool for sailors; the son went there to lodge, and meant to tell his parents who he was in the morning. His mother saw the gold he had got in his boxes, and cut his throat—severed his head from his body; the old man, upwards of seventy years of age, holding the candle. They had put a washing-tub under the bed to catch his blood. The morning after the murder, the old man’s daughter calls and inquires for a young man. The old man denies that they have had any such person in the house. She says he had a mole on his arm, in the shape of a strawberry. The old couple go up-stairs to examine the corpse, and find they have murdered their own son, and then they both put an end to their existence. This is a deeper tragedy than the Scarborough Murder. That suits young people better; they like to hear about the young woman being seduced by the naval officer; but the mothers take more to the Liverpool Tragedy—it suits them better. Some of the ‘cocks’ were in existence long before ever I was born or thought of. The ‘Great and important battle between the two young ladies of fortune,’ is what we calls ‘a ripper.’ I should like to have that there put down correct,” he added, “’cause I’ve taken a tidy lot of money out of it.”

My informant, who had been upwards of 20 years in the running patter line, told me that he commenced his career with the “Last Dying Speech and Full Confession of William Corder.” He was sixteen years of age, and had run away from his parents. “I worked that there,” he said, “down in the very town (at Bury) where he was executed. I got a whole hatful of halfpence at that. Why, I wouldn’t even give ’em seven for sixpence—no, that I wouldn’t. A gentleman’s servant come out and wanted half a dozen for his master and one for himself in, and I wouldn’t let him have no such thing. We often sells more than that at once. Why, I sold six at one go to the railway clerks at Norwich about the Manning affair, only a fortnight back. But Steinburgh’s little job—you know he murdered his wife and family, and committed suicide after—that sold as well as any ‘die.’ Pegsworth was an out-and-out lot. I did tremendous with him, because it happened in London, down Ratcliff-highway—that’s a splendid quarter for working—there’s plenty of feelings—but, bless you, some places you go to you can’t move no how, they’ve hearts like paving-stones. They wouldn’t have ‘the papers’ if you’d give them to ’em—especially when they knows you. Greenacre didn’t sell so well as might have been expected, for such a diabolical out-and-out crime as he committed; but you see he came close after Pegsworth, and that took the beauty off him. Two murderers together is never no good to nobody. Why there was Wilson Gleeson, as great a villain as ever lived—went and murdered a whole family at noon-day—but Rush coopered him—and likewise that girl at Bristol—made it no draw to any one. Daniel Good, though, was a first-rater; and would have been much better if it hadn’t been for that there Madam Toosow. You see, she went down to Roehampton, and guv 2l. for the werry clogs as he used to wash his master’s carriage in; so, in course, when the harristocracy could go and see the real things—the werry identical clogs—in the Chamber of ’Orrors, why the people wouldn’t look at our authentic portraits of the fiend in human form. Hocker wasn’t any particular great shakes. There was a deal expected from him, but he didn’t turn out well. Courvoisier was much better; he sold wery well, but nothing to Blakesley. Why I worked him for six weeks. The wife of the murdered man kept the King’s Head that he was landlord on open on the morning of the execution, and the place was like a fair. I even went and sold papers outside the door myself. I thought if she war’n’t ashamed, why should I be? After that we had a fine ‘fake’—that was the fire of the Tower of London—it sold rattling. Why we had about forty apprehended for that—first we said two soldiers was taken up that couldn’t obtain their discharge, and then we declared it was a well-known sporting nobleman who did it for a spree. The boy Jones in the Palace wasn’t much of an affair for the running patterers; the ballad singers—or street screamers, as we calls ’em—had the pull out of that. The patter wouldn’t take; they had read it all in the newspapers before. Oxford, and Francis, and Bean were a little better, but nothing to crack about. The people doesn’t care about such things as them. There’s nothing beats a stunning good murder, after all. Why there was Rush—I lived on him for a month or more. When I commenced with Rush, I was 14s. in debt for rent, and in less than fourteen days I astonished the wise men in the east by paying my landlord all I owed him. Since Dan’el Good there had been little or nothing doing in the murder line—no one could cap him—till Rush turned up a regular trump for us. Why I went down to Norwich expressly to work the execution. I worked my way down there with ‘a sorrowful lamentation’ of his own composing, which I’d got written by the blind man expressly for the occasion. On the morning of the execution we beat all the regular newspapers out of the field; for we had the full, true, and particular account down, you see, by our own express, and that can beat anything that ever they can publish; for we gets it printed several days afore it comes off, and goes and stands with it right under the drop; and many’s the penny I’ve turned away when I’ve been asked for an account of the whole business before it happened. So you see, for herly and correct hinformation, we can beat the Sun—aye, or the moon either, for the matter of that. Irish Jem, the Ambassador, never goes to bed but he blesses Rush the farmer; and many’s the time he’s told me we should never have such another windfall as that. But I told him not to despair; there’s a good time coming, boys, says I, and, sure enough, up comes the Bermondsey tragedy. We might have done very well, indeed, out of the Mannings, but there was too many examinations for it to be any great account to us. I’ve been away with the Mannings in the country ever since. I’ve been through Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk, along with George Frederick Manning and his wife—travelled from 800 to 1,000 miles with ’em, but I could have done much better if I had stopped in London. Every day I was anxiously looking for a confession from Mrs. Manning. All I wanted was for her to clear her conscience afore she left this here whale of tears (that’s what I always calls it in the patter), and when I read in the papers (mind they was none of my own) that her last words on the brink of heternity was, ‘I’ve nothing to say to you, Mr. Rowe, but to thank you for your kindness,’ I guv her up entirely—had completely done with her. In course the public looks to us for the last words of all monsters in human form, and as for Mrs. Manning’s, they were not worth the printing.”

Of the Recent Experience of a Running Patterer.

From the same man I had the following account of his vocation up to the present time:

“Well, sir,” he said, “I think, take them altogether, things hasn’t been so good this last year as the year before. But the Pope, God bless him! he’s been the best friend I’ve had since Rush, but Rush licked his Holiness. You see, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman is a one-sided affair; of course the Catholics won’t buy anything against the Pope, but all religions could go for Rush. Our mob once thought of starting a cardinal’s dress, and I thought of wearing a red hat myself. I did wear a shovel hat when the Bishop of London was our racket; but I thought the hat began to feel too hot, so I shovelled it off. There was plenty of paper that would have suited to work with a cardinal’s hat. There was one,—‘Cardinal Wiseman’s Lament,’—and it was giving his own words like, and a red hat would have capped it. It used to make the people roar when it came to snivelling, and grumbling at little Jack Russell—by Wiseman, in course; and when it comes to this part—which alludes to that ’ere thundering letter to the Bishop of Durham—the people was stunned:

“They shod me, sir. Who’s they? Why, the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman. I call my clothes after them I earn money by to buy them with. My shoes I call Pope Pius; my trowsers and braces, Calcraft; my waistcoat and shirt, Jael Denny; and my coat, Love Letters. A man must show a sense of gratitude in the best way he can. But I didn’t start the cardinal’s hat; I thought it might prove disagreeable to Sir Robert Peel’s dress lodgers.” [What my informant said further of the Pope, I give under the head of the Chaunter.] “There was very little doing,” he continued, “for some time after I gave you an account before; hardly a slum worth a crust and a pipe of tobacco to us. A slum’s a paper fake,—make a foot-note of that, sir. I think Adelaide was the first thing I worked after I told you of my tomfooleries. Yes it was,—her helegy. She weren’t of no account whatsomever, and Cambridge was no better nor Adelaide. But there was poor Sir Robert Peel,—he was some good; indeed, I think he was as good as 5s. a day to me for the four or five days when he was freshest. Browns were thrown out of the windows to us, and one copper cartridge was sent flying at us with 13½d. in it, all copper, as if it had been collected. I worked Sir Robert at the West End, and in the quiet streets and squares. Certainly we had a most beautiful helegy. Well, poor gentleman, what we earned on him was some set-off to us for his starting his new regiment of the Blues—the Cook’s Own. Not that they’ve troubled me much. I was once before Alderman Kelly, when he was Lord Mayor, charged with obstructing, or some humbug of that sort. ‘What are you, my man?’ says he quietly, and like a gentleman. ‘In the same line as yourself, my lord,’ says I. ‘How’s that?’ says he. ‘I’m a paper-worker for my living, my lord,’ says I. I was soon discharged; and there was such fun and laughing, that if I’d had a few slums in my pocket, I believe I could have sold them all in the justice-room.

“Haynau was a stunner, and the drayman came their caper just in the critical time for us, as things was growing very taper. But I did best with him in chaunting; and so, as you want to hear about chaunting, I’ll tell you after. We’re forced to change our patter—first running, then chaunting, and then standing—oftener than we used to.

“Then Calcraft was pretty tidy browns. He was up for starving his mother,—and what better can you expect of a hangman? Me and my mate worked him down at Hatfield, in Essex, where his mother lives. It’s his native, I believe. We sold her one. She’s a limping old body. I saw the people look at her, and they told me arterards who she was. ‘How much?’ says she. ‘A penny, marm,’ say I. ‘Sarve him right,’ says she. We worked it, too, in the street in Hoxton where he lives, and he sent out for two, which shows he’s a sensible sort of character in some points, after all. Then we had a ‘Woice from the Gaol! or the Horrors of the Condemned Cell! Being the Life of William Calcraft, the present Hangman.’ It’s written in the high style, and parts of it will have astonished the hangman’s nerves before this. Here’s a bit of the patter, now:

“Isn’t that stunning, sir? Here it is in print for you. ‘Mark him for her own!’ Then, poor dear, he’s so sorry to hang anybody. Here’s another bit:

“You may believe me, sir, and I can prove the fact—the author of that beautiful writing ain’t in parliament! Think of the mental flame, sir! O, dear.

“Sirrell was no good either. Not salt to a herring. Though we worked him in his own neighbourhood, and pattered about gold and silver all in a row. ‘Ah!’ says one old woman, ‘he was a ’spectable man.’ ‘Werry, marm,’ says I.

“Hollest weren’t no good either, ’cause the wictim was a parson. If it had happened a little later, we’d have had it to rights; the newspapers didn’t make much of it. We’d have shown it was the ‘Commencement of a Most Horrid and Barbarious Plot got up by the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman for-r the Mas-ser-cree-ing of all good Protestant Ministers.’ That would have been the dodge, sir! A beautiful idear, now, isn’t it? But the murder came off badly, and you can’t expect fellows like them murderers to have any regard for the interest of art and literature. Then there’s so long to wait between the murder and the trial, that unless the fiend in human form keeps writing beautiful love-letters, the excitement can’t be kept up. We can write the love-letters for the fiend in human? That’s quite true, and we once had a great pull that way over the newspapers. But Lord love you, there’s plenty of ’em gets more and more into our line. They treads in our footsteps, sir; they follows our bright example. O! isn’t there a nice rubbing and polishing up. This here copy won’t do. This must be left out, and that put in; ’cause it suits the walk of the paper. Why, you must know, sir. I know. Don’t tell me. You can’t have been on the Morning Chronicle for nothing.

“Then there was the ‘Horrid and Inhuman Murder, Committed by T. Drory, on the Body of Jael Denny, at Donninghurst, a Village in Essex.’ We worked it in every way. Drory had every chance given to him. We had half-sheets, and copies of werses, and books. A very tidy book it was, setting off with showing how ‘The secluded village of Donninghurst has been the scene of a most determined and diabolical murder, the discovery of which early on Sunday, the 12th, in the morning has thrown the whole of this part of the country into a painful state of excitement.’ Well, sir, well—very well; that bit was taken from a newspaper. Oh, we’re not above acknowledging when we condescends to borrow from any of ’em. If you remember, when I saw you about the time, I told you I thought Jael Denny would turn out as good as Maria Martin. And without any joke or nonsense, sir, it really is a most shocking thing. But she didn’t. The weather coopered her, poor lass! There was money in sight, and we couldn’t touch it; it seemed washed away from us, for you may remember how wet it was. I made a little by her, though. For all that, I haven’t done with Master Drory yet. If God spares my life, he shall make it up to me. Why, now, sir, is it reasonable, that a poor man like me should take so much pains to make Drory’s name known all over the country, and walk miles and miles in the rain to do it, and get only a few bob for my labour? It can’t be thought on. When the Wile and Inhuman Seducer takes his trial, he must pay up my just claims. I’m not going to take all that trouble on his account, and let him off so easy.”

My informant then gave me an account of his sale of papers relating to the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman, but as he was then a chaunter, rather than a patterer (the distinction is shown under another head), I give his characteristic account, as the statement of a chaunter. He proceeded after having finished his recital of the street business relating to the Pope, &c.:

“My last paying caper was the Sloanes. They beat Haynau. I declare to you, sir, the knowingest among us couldn’t have invented a cock to equal the conduct of them Sloanes. Why, it’s disgusting to come near the plain truth about them. I think, take it altogether, Sloane was as good as the Pope, but he had a stopper like Pius the Ninth, for that was a one-sided affair, and the Catholics wouldn’t buy; and Sloane was too disgusting for the gentry, or better sort, to buy him. But I’ve been in little streets where some of the windows was without sashes, and some that had sashes had stockings thrust between the frames, and I’ve taken half a bob in ha’pennies. Oh! you should have heard what poor women said about him, for it was women that bought him most. They was more savage against him than against her. Why, they had fifty deaths for him. Rolling in a barrel, with lots of sharp nails inside, down Primrose-hill, and turned out to the women on Kennington-common, and boiled alive in oil or stuff that can’t be mentioned, or hung over a slow fire. ‘O, the poor dear girl,’ says they, ‘what she’s suffered.’ We had accounts of Mistress Sloane’s apprehension before the papers. We had it at Jersey, and they had it at Boulogne, but we were first. Then we discovered, because we must be in advance of the papers, that Miss Devaux was Sloane’s daughter by a former wife, and Jane Wilbred was Mrs. Sloane’s daughter by a former husband, and was entitled to 1,000l. by rights. Haynau was a fool to Sloane.

“I don’t know of anything fresh that’s in hand, sir. One of our authors is coming out with something spicy, against Lord John, for doing nothing about Wiseman; ’cause he says as no one thing that he’s written for Lord John ever sold well, something against him may.”

Of the Chaunters.

“As the minstrel’s art,” writes Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes,” “consisted of several branches, the professors were distinguished by different denominations, as ‘rimours, chanterres, conteours, jougleours or jongleurs, jestours, lecours, and troubadours or trouvers:’ in modern language, rhymers, singers, story-tellers, jugglers, relaters of heroic actions, buffoons, and poets; but all of them were included under the general name of minstrel. An eminent French antiquary says of the minstrels, that some of them themselves composed the subjects they sang or related, as the trouvers and the conteurs; and some of them used the compositions of others, as the jougleours and the chanteurs. He further remarks, that the trouvers may be said to have embellished their productions with rhyme, while the conteurs related their histories in prose; the jougleours, who in the middle ages were famous for playing upon the vielle” [a kind of hurdy-gurdy], “accompanied the songs of the trouvers. These jougleours were also assisted by the chanteurs; and this union of talents rendered the compositions more harmonious and more pleasing to the auditory, and increased their rewards, so that they readily joined each other, and travelled together in large parties. It is, however, very certain that the poet, the songster, and the musician were frequently united in the same person.” My account of the authors, &c., of street literature shows that the analogy still holds.

The French antiquary quoted was Fauchet, in his “Origine de la Langue et Poësie Françoise” (1581); and though he wrote concerning his own country, his descriptions apply equally to the English minstrels, who were principally Normans, for many reigns after the Conquest, and were of the same race, and habits, and manners as on the French side of the Channel.

Of the minstrels, I shall have more to say when I treat of the ballad-singers and the bands of street and public-house musicians of to-day, between whom and the minstrels of old there is, in many respects, a somewhat close resemblance. Minstrelsy fell gradually from its high estate, and fell so low that, in the 39th year of Elizabeth’s reign—a period when the noblest poetry of any language was beginning to command the ear of the educated in England—the minstrels were classed in a penal statute with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars! Putenham, in his “Arte of English Poesie” (1589), speaks of “taverne minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat.” One of the statutes enacted in Cromwell’s Protectorate was directed against all persons “commonly called fidlers or minstrells.”

In the old times, then, the jougeleurs and jestours were assisted by the chanteurs. In the present day the running patterer—who, as I have shown, is the sufficiently legitimate descendant of the jestour, and in some respects of the mountebank—is accompanied generally by a chaunter, so presenting a further point of resemblance between ancient and modern street-folk. The chaunter now not only sings, but fiddles, for within these few years the running patterers, to render their performances more attractive, are sometimes accompanied by musicians. The running performer then, instead of hurrying along with the members of his mob, making sufficient noise to arouse a whole street, takes his stand with the chaunter in any promising place, and as the songs which are the most popular are—as is the case at many of the concert-rooms—sometimes “spoken” as well as sung, the performers are in their proper capacity, for the patterer not only “speaks,” but speaks more than is set down for him, while the chaunter fiddles and sings. Sometimes the one patters while the other sings, and their themes are the same.

I am told, however, that there are only fifty running patterers who are regularly their own chaunters, fiddling to their songs, while the mob work as usual, or one man sings, or speaks and sings, with the chaunter. Two of these men are known as Brummagem Jack, and the Country Paganini. From twenty to thirty patterers, however, are chaunters also, when they think the occasion requires it.

Further to elucidate chaunting, and to show the quality of the canticles, and the way of proceeding, I cite a statement of his experience as a chaunter, from the running patterer, whose details of his more especial business I have already given, but who also occasionally chaunts:—

Of the Experience of a Chaunter.

“The Pope, sir,” he began, “was as one-sided to chaunt as to patter, in course. We had the Greeks (the lately-arrived Irish) down upon us more than once. In Liverpool-street, on the night of the meeting at Guildhall about the Papal Aggression, we had a regular skrimmage. One gentleman said: ‘Really, you shouldn’t sing such improper songs, my men.’ Then up comes another, and he was a little crusted with port wine, and he says: ‘What, against that cove the Pope! Here, give me half a dozen of the papers.’ The city was tidy for the patter, sir, or the chaunt; there was sixpences; but there was shillings at the West End. And for the first time in their innocent lives, the parsons came out as stunning patrons of the patter. One of ’em as we was at work in the street give a bit of a signal and was attended to without any parade to the next street, and was good for half-a-crown! Other two stopped, that wery same day, and sent a boy to us with a Joey. Then me and my mate went to the Rev. W.’s, him as came it so strong for the fire-works on the Fifth of November. And we pattered and we pattered, and we chaunted and we chaunted, but no go for a goodish bit. His servant said he weren’t at home. In course that wouldn’t do for us, so down he came his-self at last, and says, werry soft: ‘Come to-morrow morning, my men, and there’ll be two gentlemen to hear you.’ We stuck to him for something in hand, but he said the business had cost him so much already, he really couldn’t. Well, we bounced a bob out of him, and didn’t go near him again. After all we did for his party, a shilling was black ingratitude. Of course we has no feeling either for or agin the Pope. We goes to it as at an election; and let me tell you, sir, we got very poorly paid, it couldn’t be called paid, for working for Lord John at the City Election; and I was the original of the live rats, which took well. But there’s a good time coming to pay Lord Johnny off.

“Some of the tunes—there’s no act of parliament about tunes, you know, sir—was stunners on the fiddle; as if a thousand bricks was falling out of a cart at once. I think ‘The Pope and Cardinal Wiseman,’ one of the first of the songs, did as well as any. This werse was greatly admired:—

“This finishing werse, too, was effective, and out came a few browns:—

“Then there was another, sir. ‘The Pope he is coming; oh, crikey, oh dear!’ to the tune of the ‘Camels are coming.’ There was one bit that used to tickle them. I mayn’t exactly remember it, for I didn’t do anything beyond a spurt in it, and haven’t a copy for you, but it tickled ’em with others. This was the bit:—

“Bless you, sir, if I see a smart dressed servant girl looking shyly out of the street-door at us, or through the area railings, and I can get a respectful word in and say, ‘My good young lady, do buy of a poor fellow, we haven’t said a word to your servants, we hasn’t seen any on ’em,’ then she’s had, sir, for 1d. at least, and twice out of thrice; that ‘good young lady’ chloroforms her.

“Then this one, now, is stunning. It’s part of what the Queen was a going to sing at the opening of the parliament, but she changed her mind, and more’s the pity, for it would have had a grand effect. It’s called ‘The Queen, the Pope, and the Parliament,’ and these is the best of the stanzas; I calls them werses in common, but stanzas for Wick:

“Then there wasn’t no risk with Haynau—I told you of the Pope first, ’cause he was most chaunted—no fear of a ferricadouzer for the butcher. How is it spelled, sir? Well, if you can’t find it in the dictionary, you must use your own judgment. What does it mean? It means a dewskitch (a good thrashing). I’ve been threatened with dark nights about the Pope, after the Greeks has said: ‘Fat have you to say agin the holy gintleman? To the divil wid all the likes o’ ye.’ Haynau was a fair stage and no favour. This werse was best liked:—