_MEDIÆVAL AND OTHER VARIETIES OF ADVERTISING._
In the ages which immediately succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire,
and the western migration of the barbarian hordes, darkness and
ignorance held paramount sway, education was at a terrible discount, and
the arts of reading and writing were confined almost entirely to the
monks and the superior clergy. In fact, it was regarded as evidence of
effeminacy for any knight or noble to be able to make marks on parchment
or vellum, or to be able to decipher them when made. Newspapers were, of
course, things undreamt of, but newsmen--itinerants who collected scraps
of information and retailed them in the towns and market-places--were
now and again to be found. The travelling packman or pedlar was,
however, the chief medium of intercommunication in the Middle Ages, and
it is not hard to imagine how welcome his appearance must have been in
those days, when a hundred miles constituted an immense and almost
interminable journey. We know how bad the roads were, and how difficult
travelling was in comparatively modern days, but we can form very little
idea of the obstacles which beset all attempts at the communication of
one commercial centre with another in the early Middle Ages. Everybody
being alike shrouded in the darkness of ignorance, it is safe to assume,
therefore, that written advertisements were quite unknown, as few beyond
those who had written them would have been able to understand them.
Nearly the whole of the laity, from the king to the villain or thrall,
were equally illiterate, and once more the public crier became the only
medium for obtaining publicity; but from the simple mode in which all
business was conducted his position was probably a sinecure. An
occasional proclamation of peace or war, or a sale of slaves or plunder,
was probably the only topic which gave him the opportunity of exercising
his eloquence. But with the increase of civilisation, and consequent
wealth and competition, the crier’s labours assumed a wider field.
The mediæval crier used to carry a horn, by means of which he attracted
the people’s attention when about to make a proclamation or publication.
Public criers appear to have formed a well-organised body in France as
early as the twelfth century; for by a charter of Louis VII., granted in
the year 1141 to the inhabitants of the province of Berry, the old
custom of the country was confirmed, according to which there were to be
only twelve criers, five of which should go about the taverns crying
with their usual cry, and carrying with them samples of the wine they
cried, in order that the people might taste. For the first time they
blew the horn they were entitled to a penny, and the same for every time
after, according to custom. These criers of wine were a French
peculiarity, of which we find no parallel in the history of England.
They perambulated the streets of Paris in troops, each with a large
wooden measure of wine in his hand, from which to make the passers-by
taste the wine they proclaimed, a mode of advertising which would be
very agreeable in the present day, but which would, we fancy, be rather
too successful for the advertiser. These wine-criers are mentioned by
John de Garlando, a Norman writer, who was probably a contemporary of
William the Conqueror. “Præcones vini,” says he, “clamant hiante gula,
vinum venumdandum in tabernis ad quatuor denarios.”[14] A quaint and
significant story is told in an old chronicle in connection with this
system of advertising. An old woman, named Adelheid, was possessed of a
strong desire to proclaim the Word of God, but not having lungs
sufficiently powerful for the noisy propagation contemplated by her, she
paid a wine-crier to go about the town, and, instead of proclaiming the
prices of the wine, to proclaim these sacred words: “God is righteous!
God is merciful! God is good and excellent!” And as the man went about
shouting these words she followed him, exclaiming, “He speaks well! he
says truly!” The poor old body hardly succeeded according to her pious
desire, for she was arrested and tried, and as it was thought she had
done this out of vanity (_causa laudis humanæ_), she was burned
alive.[15] From this it would seem that there was as much protection for
the monks in their profession as for the criers, who were very proud of
their special prerogatives.
The public criers in France, at an early period, were formed into a
corporation, and in 1258 obtained various statutes from Philip Augustus,
some of which, relating to the criers of wine, are excessively curious.
Thus it was ordained that--
“Whosoever is a crier in Paris may go to any tavern he likes and cry its
wine, provided they sell wine from the wood, and that there is no other
crier employed for that tavern; and the tavern-keeper cannot prohibit
him.
“If a crier finds people drinking in a tavern, he may ask what they pay
for the wine they drink; and he may go out and cry the wine at the
prices they pay, whether the tavern-keeper wishes it or not, provided
always that there be no other crier employed for that tavern.
“If a tavern-keeper sells wine in Paris and employs no crier, and closes
his door against the criers, the crier may proclaim that
tavern-keeper’s wine at the same price as the king’s wine (the current
price), that is to say, if it be a good wine year, at seven denarii, and
if it be a bad wine year, at twelve denarii.
“Each crier to receive daily from the tavern for which he cries at least
four denarii, and he is bound on his oath not to claim more.
“The crier shall go about crying twice a day, except in Lent, on Sundays
and Fridays, the eight days of Christmas, and the Vigils, when they
shall only cry once. On the Friday of the Adoration of the Cross they
shall cry not at all. Neither are they to cry on the day on which the
king, the queen, or any of the children of the royal family happens to
die.”
This crying of wines is frequently alluded to in those French ballads of
street-criers known as “Les crieries de Paris.” One of them has--
Si crie l’on en plusors leus
Li bon vin fort a trente deux,
A seize, a douze, a six, a huict.[16]
And another--
D’autres cris on faict plusieurs,
Qui long seroient à reciter,
L’on crie vin nouveau et vieu,
Duquel on donne à tatter.[17]
Early in the Middle Ages the public crier was still called _Præco_, as
among the Romans; and an edict of the town of Tournay, dated 1368,
describes him as “the sergeant of the rod (_sergent à verge_), who makes
publications (_crie les bans_), and cries whatever else there is to be
made known to the town.” The Assizes of Jerusalem, which contained the
code of civil laws of the whole of civilised Europe during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, and which take us back to the most ancient
forms of our own civil institutions, make mention in the following
manner of the public crier: “Whosoever desires to sell anything by
auction, must have it proclaimed by the crier, who is appointed by the
lord viscount; and nobody else has a right to make any publication by
crying. If anybody causes any such auction to be proclaimed by any other
than the public crier, then the lord has a right by assize and custom to
claim the property so cried as his own, and the crier shall be at the
mercy of the lord. And whoever causes anything to be cried by the
appointed public crier in any other way than it ought to be cried, and
in any other way than is done by the lord or his representative, the
lord may claim the property as his own, and the crier who thus cries it
shall be amenable for falsehood, and is at the mercy of the lord, who
may take from him all he possesses. But if he [the lord] does not do
that, then he shall not suffer any other punishment; and if he be
charged, he must be believed on his oath.”
From these very stringent and protective regulations it appears, then,
that at this early period the public criers, or _præcones_, appointed by
the lord, had the exclusive right of proclaiming all sales by auction,
not only voluntary, but also judicial, of movables, as well as of
fixtures; of “personal,” as well as of “real” property.
In England criers appear to have been also a national institution at an
early period. They were sworn to sell truly and well to the best of
their power and ability. They proclaimed the cause of the condemnation
of all criminals, and made proclamations of every kind, except as
concerned matters ecclesiastical, which were exclusively the province of
the archbishop. They also cried all kinds of goods. In London we find
Edmund le Criour mentioned in the documents relating to the Guildhall as
early as 1299. That criers used horns, as in France, appears from the
will of a citizen of Bristol, dated 1388, who, disposing of some house
property, desires “that the tenements so bequeathed shall be sold
separately by the sound of the trumpet at the high cross of Bristol,
without any fraud or collusion.” In Ipswich it was still customary in
the last century to proclaim the meetings of the town council, the
previous night at twelve o’clock, by the sound of a large horn, which is
still preserved in the town hall of that borough. These horns were
provided by the mayors of the different towns.
[Illustration: O PER SE O, OR A NEW CRYER.
“THE BELMAN OF LONDON.”
_From_ _Thomas Decker’s Lanthorne and Candle Light; or, The Bell-Man’s
Second Night’s Walke._ 1608-9.]
The public crier, then, was the chief organ by which the mediæval
shopkeeper, in the absence of what we now know as “advertising mediums,”
obtained publicity: it was also customary for most traders to have
touters at their doors, who did duty as living advertisements. In low
neighbourhoods this system still obtains, especially in connection with
cheap photographic establishments, whose “doorsmen” select as a rule the
most improbable people for their attentions, but compensate for this by
their pertinacity and glibness. Possibly the triumph is the greater when
the customer has been persuaded quite out of his or her original
intentions. Most trades, in early times, were almost exclusively
confined to certain streets, and as all the shops were alike
unpretending, and open to the gaze--in fact, were stalls or booths--it
behoved the shopkeeper to do something in order to attract customers.
This he effected sometimes by means of a glaring sign, sometimes by
means of a man or youth standing at the door, and vociferating with the
full power of his lungs, “What d’ye lack, sir? what d’ye lack?” Our
country is rather deficient in that kind of mediæval literature known in
France as _dicts_ and _fabliaux_, which teem with allusions to this
custom of touting, which is noticeable, though, in Lydgate’s ballad of
“London Lyckpenny” (Lack-penny), written in the first half of the
fifteenth century. There we see the shopmen standing at the door, trying
to outbawl each other to gain the custom of the passers-by. The spicer
or grocer bids the Kentish countryman to come and buy some spice,
pepper, or saffron. In Cheapside, the mercers bewilder him with their
velvet, silk, and lawn, and lay violent hands on him, in order to show
him their “Paris thread, the finest in the land.” Throughout all Canwick
(now Cannon Street), he is persecuted by drapers, who offer him cloth;
and in other parts, particularly in East Cheap, the keepers of the
eating-houses sorely tempt him with their cries of “Hot sheep’s feet,
fresh maqurel, pies, and ribs of beef.” At last he falls a prey to the
tempting invitation of a taverner, who makes up to him from his door
with a cringing bow, and taking him by the sleeve, pronounces the words,
“Sir, will you try our wine?” with such an insinuating and irresistible
accent, that the Kentish man enters and spends his only penny in that
tempting and hospitable house. Worthy old Stow supposes this interesting
incident to have happened at the Pope’s Head, in Cornhill, and bids us
enjoy the knowledge of the fact, that for his one penny the countryman
had a pint of wine, and “for bread nothing did he pay, for that was
allowed free” in those good old days. Free luncheons, though rare now,
were commonly bestowed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on
regular drinkers; and the practice of giving food to those who pay for
drink is still current in many parts of the United States. The
“Lyckpenny” story is one of the few instances in English literature of
this early period, in which the custom of touting at shop doors is
distinctly mentioned, but, as before remarked, the French _fabliaux_
abound with such allusions. In the story of “Courtois d’Arras”--a
travestie of the Prodigal Son in a thirteenth-century garb--Courtois
finds the host standing at his door shouting, “Bon vin de Soissons, à
six deniers le lot.” And in a mediæval mystery entitled “Li Jus de S.
Nicolas,” the innkeeper, standing on the threshold, roars out, that in
his house excellent dinners are to be had, with warm bread and warm
herrings, and barrelfuls of Auxerre wine: “Céans il fait bon diner,
céans il y a pain chaud et harengs chauds, et vin d’Auxerre à plein
tonneau.” In the “Trois Aveugles de Compiègne,” the thirsty wanderers
hear mine host proclaiming in the street that he has “good, cool, and
new wine, from Auxerre and from Soissons; bread and meat, and wine and
fish: within is a good place to spend your money; within is
accommodation for all kind of people; here is good lodging:”--
Ci a bon vin fres et nouvel
Ça d’Auxerre, ça de Soissons,
Pain, et char, et vin, et poissons,
Céens fet bon despendre argent,
Ostel i a à toute gent
Céens fet moult bon heberger.
And in the “Débats et facétieuses rencontres de Gringald et de Guillot
Gorgen, son maistre,” the servant, who would not pay his reckoning,
excuses himself, saying, “The taverner is more to blame than I, for as I
passed before his door, and he being seated at it as usual, called to
me, saying, ‘Will you be pleased to breakfast here? I have good bread,
good wine, and good meat.’” “Le tavernier a plus de tort que moy; car,
passant devant sa porte, et luy étant assiz (ainsy qu’ils sont
ordinairement) il me cria, me disant: Vous plaist-il de dejeuner céans?
Il y a de bon pain, de bon vin, et de bonne viande.”
Other modes of advertising, of a less obtrusive nature, were, however,
in use at the same time; as in Rome, written handbills were affixed in
public places; and almost as soon as the art of printing was discovered,
it was applied to the purpose of multiplying advertisements of this
kind. We may fairly assume that one of the very first posters ever
printed in England was that by which Caxton announced, circa 1480, the
sale of the “Pyes of Salisbury use,”[18] at the Red Pole, in the
Almonry, Westminster. Of this first of broadsides two copies are still
extant, one in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, the other in Earl
Spencer’s library. Their dimensions are five inches by seven, and their
contents as follows:--
^If it please ony man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or
thre comemoracio’s of Salisburi use, emprynted after the form of this
prese’t letre, whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to
Westmonester, into the almonestrye at the reed pole and he shal haue
them good and chepe:^
^Supplico stet cedula.^
Foreigners appear to have appreciated the boon of this kind of
advertising equally rapidly, although, from the fugitive nature of such
productions, copies of their posters are rarely to be found. Still an
interesting list of books, printed by Coburger at Nuremberg in the
fifteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, to which is
attached the following heading: “Cupientes emere libros infra notatos
venient ad hospitium subnotatum,” &c.--_i.e._, “Those who wish to buy
the books hereunder mentioned, must come to the house now named,” &c.
The Parisian printers soon went a step further. Long before the
invention of the typographic art, the University had compelled the
booksellers to advertise in their shop windows any new manuscripts they
might obtain. But after the invention of printing they soon commenced to
proclaim the wonderful cheapness of the works they produced. It did not
strike them, however, that this might have been done effectually on a
large scale, and they were content to extol the low price of the work in
the book itself. Such notices as the following are common in early
books. Ulric Gering, in his “Corpus Juris Canonici,” 1500, allays the
fear of the public with a distich:--“Don’t run away on account of the
price,” he says. “Come rich and poor; this excellent work is sold for a
very small sum:”--
Ne fugite ob pretium: dives pauperque venite
Hoc opus excellens venditur ære brevi.
Berthold Remboldt subjoins to his edition of “S. Bruno on the Psalms,”
1509, the information that he does not lock away his wares (books) like
a miser, but that anybody can carry them away for very little money.
Istas Bertholdus merces non claudit avarus
Exiguis nummis has studiose geres.
And in his “Corpus Juris Canonici,” he boasts that this splendid volume
is to be had for a trifling sum, after having, with considerable labour,
been weeded of its misprints.
Hoc tibi præclarum modico patet ære volumen
Abstersum mendis non sine Marte suis.
Thielman Kerver, Jean Petit, and various other printers, give similar
intelligence to the purchasers of their works. Sometimes they even
resort to the process of having a book puffed on account of its
cheapness by editors or scholars of known eminence, who address the
public on behalf of the printer. Thus in a work termed by the French
savant Chevillier, “Les Opuscules du Docteur Almain,” printed by
Chevalon and Gourmont, 1518, a certain dignified member of the
University condescends to inform the public that they have to be
grateful to the publishers for the beautiful and cheap book they have
produced:--“Gratias agant Claudio Chevallon et Ægydio Gourmont, qui
pulchris typis et characteribus impressum opus hoc vili dant pretio.”
This, be it observed, is the earliest instance of the puff direct which
has so far been discovered.
Meanwhile, though the art of printing had become established, and was
daily taking more and more work out of the hands of scribes, writing
continued to be almost the only advertising media for wellnigh two
centuries longer. Like the ancient advertisement already noticed, that
of Venus about her runaway son, they commenced almost invariably with
the words “If anybody,” or, if in Latin, _Si quis_; and from these last
two words they obtained their name. They were posted in the most
frequented parts of the towns, preferably near churches; and hence has
survived the practice of attaching to church doors lists of voters and
various other notifications, particularly in villages. In the metropolis
one of the places used for this purpose may probably have been London
Stone. In “Pasquil and Marforius,” 1589, we read, “Set up this bill at
London Stone; let it be done solemnly with drum and trumpet;” and
further on in the same pamphlet, “If it please them, these dark winter
nights, to stick up these papers upon London Stone.” These two allusions
are, however, not particularly conclusive.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the principal place for
affixing a _siquis_ was in the middle aisle of St Paul’s. From the era
of the Reformation to the Restoration, all sorts of disorderly conduct
was practised in the old cathedral. A lengthy catalogue of improper
customs and disgusting practices might be collected from the works of
the period, and bills were stuck up in various parts to restrain the
grossest abuses. “At every door of this church,” says Weever, “was
anciently this vers depicted; and in my time [he died in 1632] it might
be perfectly read at the great south door, _Hic Locus sacer est, hic
nulli mingere fas est_.”
There were also within the sacred edifice tobacco, book, and sempstress’
shops; there was a pillar at which serving-men stood for hire, and
another place where lawyers had their regular stands, like merchants on
’Change. At the period when Decker wrote his curious “Gull’s Horn-Book”
(1609), and for many years after, the cathedral was the lounging place
for all idlers and hunters after news, as well as of men of almost
every profession, cheats, usurers, and knights of the post. The
cathedral was likewise a seat of traffic and negotiation, even pimps and
procuresses had their stations there; and the font itself, if credit may
be given to a black-letter tract on the “Detestable Use of Dice-play,”
printed early in Elizabeth’s reign, was made a place for the advance and
payment of loans, and the sealing of indentures and obligations for the
security of the moneys borrowed. Such a busy haunt was, of course, the
very best place for bills and advertisements to be posted.
No bonâ fide _siquis_ has come down to us, but it appears that among
them the applications for ecclesiastics were very common, as Bishop
Earle in his “Microcosmographia,” published in 1629, describes “Paul’s
Walke” as the “market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at
all rates and sizes;” and this allusion is confirmed by a passage in
Bishop Hall’s “Satires” (B. ii. s. 5), in which also the custom of
affixing advertisements to a particular door is distinctly noticed:--
Saw’st thou ere _siquis_ patch’d on Paul’s church door
To seek some vacant vicarage before?
Who wants a churchman that can service say,
Read fast and fair his monthly homily,
And wed, and bury, and make cristen souls,
Come to the _left side alley_ of St Poule’s.
But the _siquis_ door was not confined to notices of ecclesiastical
matters; it was appropriated generally to the variety of applications
that is now to be found in the columns of a newspaper or the books of a
registry office. Though no authentic specimens of the _siquis_ remain,
we are possessed of several imitations, as the old dramatists delighted
in reproducing the inflated language of these documents. Thus, in
Holiday’s “Technogamia” (1618), Act i. scene 7, Geographus sets up the
following notice:--
If there be any gentleman that, for the accomplishing of his natural
endowment, intertaynes a desire of learning the languages; especially
the nimble French, maiestik Spanish, courtly Italian, masculine Dutch,
happily compounding Greek, mysticall Hebrew, and physicall Arabicke;
or that is otherwise transported with the admirable knowledge of
forraine policies, complimentall behaviour, naturall dispositions, or
whatsoever else belongs to any people or country under heaven; he
shall, to his abundant satisfaction, be made happy in his expectation
and successe if he please to repair to the signe of the Globe.
Again, Ben Jonson’s “Every Man out of his Humour” introduces Shift, “a
threadbare shark,” whose “profession is skeldring and odling, his bank
Paul’s.” Speaking of Shift in the opening scene of the third act, which
the dramatist has laid in “the middle aisle of Paules,” Cordatus says
that Shift is at that moment in Paules “for the advancement of a
_siquis_ or two, wherein he hath so varied himselfe, that if any one of
them take, he may hull up and doune in the humorous world a little
longer.” Shift’s productions deserved to succeed, as they were
masterpieces of their kind, and might even now, though the world is so
much older, and professes to be so much wiser, be studied with advantage
by gentlemen who cultivate the literature of advertisements in the
interest of certain firms. Here are some of his compositions, which
would certainly shine among the examples of the present day:--
If there be any lady or gentlewoman of good carriage that is desirous
to entertain to her private uses a young, straight, and upright
gentleman, of the age of five or six and twenty at the most; who can
serve in the nature of a gentleman usher, and hath little legs of
purpose,[19] and a black satin suit of his own to go before her in;
which suit, for the more sweetening, now lies in lavender;[20] and can
hide his face with her fan if need require, or sit in the cold at the
stair foot for her, as well as another gentleman; let her subscribe
her name and place, and diligent respect shall be given.
The following is even an improvement:--
If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford any young
gentleman of the first, second, or third head, more or less, whose
friends are but lately deceased, and whose lands are but new come into
his hands, that, to be as exactly qualified as the best of our
ordinary gallants are, is affected to entertain the most gentlemanlike
use of tobacco; as first to give it the most exquisite perfume; then
to know all the delicate, sweet forms for the assumption of it; as
also the rare corollary and practice of the Cuban ebolition, euripus
and whiff,[21] which we shall receive or take in here at London, and
evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it please him. If there be any
such generous spirit, that is truly enamour’d of these good faculties;
may it please him but by a note of his hand to specify the place or
ordinary where he uses to eat and lie; and most sweet attendance with
tobacco and pipes of the best sort, shall be ministered. _Stet quæso,
candide lector._
It is noticeable that most of these advertisements commence with the
English equivalent for the Latin _si quis_, and furthermore that Ben
Jonson concludes with the same formula as Caxton, _stet quæso_,
imploring the “candid reader” not to tear off the bill. The word
_siquis_ is of frequent occurrence in the old writers. Green, for
instance, in his “Tu Quoque,” says of certain women that “they stand
like the devil’s _siquis_ at a tavern or alehouse door.” At present the
term has more particular reference to ecclesiastical matters. A
candidate for holy orders who has not been educated at the University,
or has been absent some time from thence, is still obliged to have his
intention proclaimed, by having a notice to that effect hung up in the
church of the place where he has recently resided. If, after a certain
time, no objection is made, a certificate of his _siquis_, signed by the
churchwardens, is given to him to be presented to the bishop when he
seeks ordination.
At the time when the _siquis_ was the most common form of
advertisement, other methods were used in order to give publicity to
certain events. There were the proclamations of the will of the King,
and of the Lord Mayor, whose edicts were proclaimed by the common
trumpeter. There were also two richly carved and gilt posts at the door
of the Sheriff’s office,[22] on which (some annotators of old plays say)
it was customary to stick enactments of the Town Council. The common
crier further made known matters of minor and commercial importance, and
every shopkeeper still kept an apprentice at his door to attract the
attention of the passers-by with a continuous “What do you lack,
master?” or “mistress,” followed by a voluble enumeration of the wares
vended by his master. The bookseller, as in ancient Rome, still
advertised his new works by placards posted against his shop, or fixed
in cleft sticks. This we gather from an epigram of Ben Jonson to his
bookseller, in which he enjoins him rather to sell his works to
Bucklersbury, to be used for wrappers and bags, than to force their sale
by the usual means:--
Nor have my little leaf on post or walls,
Or in cleft sticks advancèd to make calls
For termers or some clerk-like serving-man.
Announcements of shows were given in the manner still followed by the
equestrian circus troops in provincial towns, viz., by means of bills
and processions. Thus notice of bearbaitings was given by the bears
being led about the town, preceded by a flag and some noisy instruments.
In the Duke of Newcastle’s play of “The Humorous Lovers” (1677), the
sham bearward says, “I’ll set up my bills, that the gamesters of London,
Horseleydown, Southwark, and Newmarket, may come in and bait him before
the ladies. But first, boy, go, fetch me a bagpipe; we will walk the
streets in triumph, and give the people notice of our sport.” Such a
procession was, of course, a noisy one, and for that reason it was one
of the plagues the mischievous page sent to torment Morose, “the
gentleman that loves no noise,” in Ben Jonson’s “Silent Woman.” “I
entreated a bearward one day,” says the page, “to come down with the
dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did, and cried
his game under Master Morose’s window.” And in Howard’s “English
Monsieur” (1674), William, a country youth, says, “I saw two
rough-haired things led by the nose with two strings, and a bull like
ours in the country, with a brave garland about his head, and an horse,
and the least gentleman upon him that ever I saw in my life, and brave
bagpipes playing before ’um;” which is explained by Comely as occasioned
by its being “bearbaiting day, and he has met with the bull, and the
bears, and the jack-an-apes on horseback.” Trials of skill in the noble
art of self-defence were announced in a similar manner, by the
combatants promenading the streets divested of their upper garments,
with their sleeves tucked up, sword or cudgel in hand, and preceded by a
drum. Finally, for the use of the community at large, there was the
bellman or town crier, a character which occupies a prominent place in
all the old sets of “Cries of London.” In one of the earliest
collections of that kind,[23] engraved early in the seventeenth century,
we see him represented with a bunch of keys in his hand, which he no
doubt proclaims as “found.” Underneath is the following “notice:”--
O yes. Any man or woman that
Can tell any tidings of a little
Mayden-childe of the age of 24
Yeares. Bring word to the cryar
And you shall be pleased for your labour
And God’s blessing.
This was an old joke, which, more or less varied, occurs always under
the print of the town crier. The prototype of this venerable witticism
may be found in the tragedy of “Soliman and Perseda” (1599), where one
of the characters says that he
------ had but sixpence
For crying a little wench of thirty yeeres old and upwardes,
That had lost herself betwixt a taverne and a b----y house.
Notwithstanding the immense development of advertising since the spread
of newspapers, the services of the bellman are still used in most of the
country towns of the United Kingdom, and even in London there are still
bellmen and parish criers, though their offices would appear to be
sinecures. The provincial crier’s duties are of the most various
description, and relate to objects lost or found, sales by public
auction or private contract, weddings, christenings, and funerals. Not
much more than a century ago the burgh of Lanark was so poor that there
was in it only one butcher, and even he dared never venture on killing a
sheep till every part of the animal was ordered beforehand. When he felt
disposed to engage in such an enterprise, he usually prevailed upon the
minister, the provost, and the members of the town council to take a
joint each; but when shares were not subscribed for readily, the sheep
received a respite. On such occasion the services of the bellman, or
“skelligman,” as he was there named, were called into request, and that
official used to perambulate the streets of Lanark acquainting the
lieges with the butcher’s intentions in the following rhyme:--
Bell-ell-ell!
There’s a fat sheep to kill!
A leg for the provost,
Another for the priest,
The bailies and the deacons
They’ll tak’ the neist;
And if the fourth leg we canna sell,
The sheep it maun leeve, and gae back to the hill!
Sir Walter Scott, in one of his notes, gives a quaint specimen of vocal
advertising. In the old days of Scotland, when persons of property
(unless they happened to be nonjurors) were as regular as their
inferiors in attendance on parochial worship, there was a kind of
etiquette in waiting till the patron, or acknowledged great man of the
parish, should make his appearance. This ceremonial was so sacred in the
eyes of a parish beadle in the Isle of Bute, that the kirk bell being
out of order, he is said to have mounted the steeple every Sunday to
imitate with his voice the successive summonses which its mouth of metal
used to send forth. The first part of this imitative harmony was simply
the repetition of the words, “Bell, bell, bell, bell!” two or three
times, in a manner as much resembling the sound as throat of flesh could
imitate throat of iron. “Bellùm, Bellùm!” was sounded forth in a more
urgent manner; but he never sent forth the third and conclusive peal,
the varied tone of which is called in Scotland the “ringing-in,” until
the two principal heritors of the parish approached, when the chime ran
thus--
Bellùm Bellèllum,
Bernera and Knockdow’s coming!
Bellùm Bellèllum,
Bernera and Knockdow’s coming!
A story is also told of an old Welsh beadle, who, having no bell to his
church, or the bell being out of order, used to mount the tower before
the service on Sundays, and advertise the fact that they were just about
to begin, in imitation of the chimes, and in compliment to the most
conspicuous patronymics in the congregation list, thus--
Shon Morgan, Shon Shones,
Shon Morgan, Shon Shones,
Shon Shenkin, Shon Morgan, Shon Shenkin,
Shon Shones!
Continued _à discretion_. And with this most singular form of vocal
advertising we will conclude the chapter.
[14] Glossary, cap. xxvii. “Wine-criers cry with open mouth the wine
which is for sale in the taverns at four farthings.”
[15] Chronicles of the Monk Alberic des Trois Fontaines, under the
year 1235.
[16] All around here they cry wine at the rate
Of thirty-two, sixteen, twelve, six, and eight.
[17] To name the other cries our time would waste--
They cry old wine and new, and bid you taste.
[18] No savoury meat-pies, as some gastronomic reader might think,
since they came from the county of sausage celebrity, but a collection
of rules, as practised in the diocese of Salisbury, to show the
priests how to deal, under every possible variation in Easter, with
the concurrence of more than one office on the same day. These rules
varied in the different dioceses.
[19] Small calveless legs are mentioned as characteristic of a
gentleman in many of our old plays, and will be observed in most
full-length portraits of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
[20] To “lie in lavender” was a cant term for being in pawn.
[21] Tricks performed with tobacco smoke were fashionable amongst the
gallants of the period, and are recommended in Decker’s “Gull’s
Horn-Book,” and commended in many old plays. Making rings of smoke was
a favourite amusement in those days.
[22] See prints in “Archæologia,” xix. p. 383.
[23] _Vide_ Decker’s “Belman of London: Bringing to Light the most
notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdome.” London,
1608.