Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] by Farmer, John S.

Well, 'e's a little champion, Do me proud well 'e's a knock out, "Drink up," sez 'e, "Three pots, miss, it's my call." I sez "Now Jacky, Jacky;" 'E sez, "And a screw of baccy," And 'e only stands about so 'igh, that's all.

[1: child] [2: shillings; pound] [3: information] [4: Notes] [5: Notes] [6: hands] [7: courting] [8: dressy] [9: round of ginshops] [10: drunk] [11: funny] [12: stare]

THE COSTER'S SERENADE [1894]

[By ALBERT CHEVALIER].

I

You ain't forgotten yet that night in May, Down at the Welsh 'Arp, which is 'Endon way, You fancied winkles and a pot of tea, "Four 'alf" I murmured's "good enough for me." "Give me a word of 'ope that I may win"-- You prods me gently with the winkle pin-- We was as 'appy as could be that day Down at the Welsh 'Arp, which is 'Endon way.

II

You ain't forgotten 'ow we drove that day Down to the Welsh 'Arp, in my donkey shay; Folks with a "chy-ike" shouted, "Ain't they smart?" [1] You looked a queen, me every inch a Bart. Seemed that the moke was saying "Do me proud;" Mine is the nobbiest turn-out in the crowd; [2] Me in my "pearlies" felt a toff that day, [3] Down at the Welsh 'Arp, which is Endon way. Oh, 'Arriet, &c.

III

Eight months ago and things is still the same, You're known about 'ere by your maiden name, I'm getting chivied by my pals 'cos why? [4] Nightly I warbles 'ere for your reply. Summer 'as gone, and it's a freezin' now, Still love's a burnin' in my 'eart, I vow; Just as it did that 'appy night in May Down at the Welsh 'Arp, which is Endon way. Oh, 'Arriet, &c.

[1: shout] [2: finest; trap] [3: swell] [4: chaffed]

NOTES

_Rhymes Of The Canting Crew._ [Footnote: Throughout these notes free use has been made of the _National Dictionary of Biography_; a work which, without question, contains the latest and most accurately sifted array of biographical information, much of which could not be obtained from any other source whatever.]

These lines are of little interest apart from the fact of being the earliest known example of the Canting speech or Pedlar's French in English literature. Sorry in point or meaning, they are sorrier still as verse. Yet, antedating, by half a century or more, the examples cited by Awdeley and Harman, they possess a certain value they carry us back almost to the beginnings of Cant, at all events to the time when the secret language of rogues and vagabonds first began to assume a concrete form.

Usually ascribed to Thomas Dekker (who "conveyed" them bodily, and with errors, to _Lanthorne and Candlelight_, published in 1609) this jingle of popular Canting phrases, strung together almost at haphazard, is the production of Robert Copland (1508-1547), the author of _The Hye Way to the Spyttel House_, a pamphlet printed after 1535, and of which only two or three copies are now known. Copland was a printer-author; in the former capacity a pupil of Caxton in the office of Wynkyn de Worde.