called 'Honey-juice.' Flaxman, the sculptor, and Mrs. Mathews, of
blue-stocking memory, equipped him as a hardware man, and as such I made
two etchings of him."
THE MUFFIN MAN.
(_T. Dibden._)
While you opera-squallers fine verses are singing,
Of heroes, and poets, and such like humguffins;
While the world's running round, like a mill in a sail,
I'll ne'er bother my head with what other folks ail,
But careless and frisky, my bell I keep ringing,
And walk about merrily crying my muffins.
CHORUS.
Lily-white muffins, O, rare crumpets smoking,
Hot Yorkshire cakes, hot loaves and charming cakes,
_One-a-penny, two-a-penny, Yorkshire cakes_.
What matters to me if great folks run a gadding,
For politics, fashions, or such botheration;
Let them drink as they brew, while I merrily bake;
For though I sell muffins, I'm not such a cake--
To let other fools' fancies e'er set me a gadding,
Or burthen my thoughts with the cares of the nation.
SPOKEN.--What have I to do with politicians? And for your _Parliament
cakes_. Why! everybody knows they are _bought_ and _sold_, and often _done
brown_, and made _crusty_ all over the nation. No, no, its enough for me
to cry--
Lily-white muffins, &c.
Let soldiers and sailors, contending for glory,
Delight in the rattle of drums and of trumpets;
Undertakers get living by other folks dying,
While actors make money by laughing or crying;
Let lawyers with quizzels and quiddities bore ye,
It's nothing to me, while I'm crying my crumpets.
SPOKEN.--What do I care for lawyers? A'nt I a baker, and consequently,
Master of the Rolls:--Droll enough, too, for a Master of the Rolls to be
crying--
Lily-white muffins, &c.
[Illustration: THE MUFFIN MAN.
"Muffins, oh! crumpets, oh!
Come buy, come buy of me.
Muffins and crumpets, muffins,
For breakfast or for tea."]
The ringing of the muffin-man's bell--attached to which the pleasant
associations are not a few--is prohibited by a ponderous Act of
Parliament, but the prohibition has been all but inoperative, for the
muffin bell still tinkles along the streets, and is rung vigorously in the
suburbs, and just at the time when City gents, at winter's eve, are
comfortably enveloped in fancy-patterned dressing gowns, prettily-worked
smoking-caps, and easy-going and highly-coloured slippers, and saying
within themselves or aloud:--
"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."
"Hot Cross Buns!" Perhaps no "cry"--though it is only for one day in the
year, is more familiar to the ears of a Londoner, than that of
"_One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross-buns_." We lie awake early upon Good
Friday morning and listen to the London bells:--
"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's
Pancakes and fritters, say the bells of St. Peter's,
Two sticks and an apple, say the bells of Whitechapel.
Kettles and pans, say the bells of St. Ann's.
Pokers and tongs, say the bells of St. John's
Brickbats and tiles, say the bells of St. Giles'
Halfpence and farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's.
Bull's eyes and targets, say the bells of St. Marg'rets."
And all the other London bells having rung--or, rather _toll'd_ out their
own tale of joy or trouble: then comes--rattling over the stones--W. H.
SMITH'S well-known red EXPRESS-CARTS laden with the early printed
newspapers of the coming day, while all night long the carts and waggons
come rumbling in from the country to Covent-garden, and not the least
pleasant sound--pleasant for its old recollections--is the time-honoured
old cry of "Hot Cross-Buns." Century after century passes by, and those
who busily drove their carts day after day from Isleworth, Romford,
Enfield, Battersea, Blackheath, or Richmond, one hundred years ago, are as
still and silent as if they had never been; yet still, Passion week after
Passion week, comes that old cry, nobody knows how old, "Hot Cross Buns,
Hot Cross Buns." And as we lie in a half dreamy state we hear and think of
the chimes of St. Clement Danes, which may still be heard, as Fallstaff
describes, having heard them with Justice Shallow; also, how Pope, as he
lay in Holywell-street--now Bookseller's-row; and Addison and Johnson;
and, before their time, Waller, at the house of his old friend the
merchant of St. Giles's; and the goodly company of poets that lived at
the cost of the king, near Whitehall; then of the quaint old gossiping
diarist, Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty; John Taylor, the
_Water-Poet_; even Shakespeare himself, having each in their turn been
awakened on the Good Friday morning by the same sound ringing in their
ears. For this is a custom which can hardly be traced to a beginning: and
all we know about it is, that as far as we can go back, the Good Friday
was ushered in by the old Good Friday bun; and that the baker in the
towns, and the old good wife in the country, would have thought the day
but badly kept, and augured badly for the coming summer's luck, without
it.
But between the cakes of Cecrops and the modern Hot Cross Bun there is a
wide gulf of 3,400 years; and yet the one may be traced up to the other.
There are some, indeed, who would wish to give to the Good Friday Hot
Cross Bun a still longer pedigree, and to take it back to the time of the
Patriarchs and their consecrated bread; and there are others who would go
yet further, and trace it to the earliest age of the world, in a portion
of Cain's sacrifice. We may, however, content ourselves with stopping
short at the era of the Egyptian Cecrops, founder of Athens, who made his
sweet cakes of flour and honey. Such cakes as these, as we learn from the
prophet Jeremiah, were offered by the idolatrous Hebrew women to "the
Queen of Heaven,"
"Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with cresent horns."
Some can even discern Astarte in our "Easter." The Jews of old had the
shew-bread and the wafer of unleavened bread; and the Egyptians, under the
Pharaohs, had also their cakes, round, oval, and triangular. The Persians
had their sacred cakes of flour and honey; and Herodotus speaks of similar
cakes being offered by the Athenians to a sacred serpent in the temple of
their citadel. And, not to mention other nations, the circumstance that
accompanied the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, 1857, will make memorable
the "chupatties" or sacred cakes of Khrishna.
The cakes that were offered to Luna by the Greeks and Romans were either
crescent-shaped, or were marked with the crescent moon; and this stamp
must have been very similar to that impressed on the cakes offered by the
Hebrew women to the Queen of Heaven. This mark also resembles that
representing the horns of the sacred ox which was stamped on the Grecian
cakes; and the ox was _bous_, and, in one of its oblique cases, _boun_, so
we derive from that word _boun_ our familiar "bun." There were not only
horn-marked cakes, but horn-marked pieces of money; so that it is very
difficult to ascertain the true meaning of that passage in the opening of
the "Agamemnon" of AEschylus, where the watchman says that a great _bous_
has come, or set foot, upon his tongue. Although it might mean that
something as weighty as an ox's hoof had weighed down his tongue, yet it
more probably signifies either that he was bribed to silence with a piece
of money marked with the ox's horns, or that the partaking of a sacred
horn-marked cake had initiated him into a certain secret. Curiously
enough, in the _argot_ of thieves, at the present day, a crown piece is
termed "a bull;" and it may also be noted that _pecunia_, "money," is
derived from _pecus_, "cattle;" and "bull" is derived from _bous_, and
also "cow" from the same word, through the Sanscrit _gou_, the _b_ and _g_
being convertible.
Thus, originally, the _boun_ or bun was the cake marked with the horns of
the sacred ox. The cross mark was first adopted by the Greeks and Romans
to facilitate the division of the cake into four equal parts; and two such
cross-marked cakes were found in the ruins of Herculaneum. These cakes
were adopted by the early Christians in a spirit of symbolism; but,
although the cross was marked on the cake in token of the badge of their
faith, yet it was also used by the priest for the breaking of the cake, or
Eucharistic wafer, into four pieces; and this was so ordered in the
Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The cross-marked buns are now, for popular use,
reserved for Good Friday, and, as Lenten cakes, are peculiar to this
country. Among the Syrian Christians of Travancore and Cochin, who trace
their descent from those who were converted by St. Thomas on his
(supposed) visit to India, a peculiar cake is made for "Sorrowful
Friday"--as they term Good Friday. The cake is stuffed with sweetmeats in
the form of an eye, to represent the evil eye of Judas, coveting the
thirty pieces of silver; and the cake is flung at with sticks by the
members of the family until the eye is quite put out; they then share the
remains of the cake among them.
In the days before the Reformation, _eulogiae_, or cross-marked consecrated
cakes, were made from the dough of the mass-bread, and distributed by the
priests to be eaten at home by those who had been prevented by sickness or
infirmity from attending the mass. After the Reformation, Protestants
would readily retain the custom of eating in their houses a cross marked
cake, although no longer connecting it with a sacred rite, but restricting
its use to that one day of the year known as "Holy Friday," or "Long
Friday"--from the length of the service on that day--but which gradually
came to be called, by the Anglican Church, "Good Friday," in remembrance
of the good things secured to mankind on that day. The presence upon the
breakfast-table of the cross marked bun, flavoured with allspice, in token
of the spices that were prepared by the pious women of Galilee, was,
therefore, regarded in the light of a remembrancer of the solemnities of
the day. The buns were made on the previous evening, Maundy Thursday so
called, either from the "maunds," or baskets, in which Easter gifts were
distributed, or, more probably, because it was the _Dies mandati_, the day
of the command, "That thou doest, do quickly!" as also, "Do this in
remembrance of Me!" and that the disciples should love one another and
should show humility in the washing of feet.
As Chelsea was long famous for its buns--which are mentioned by Swift to
Stella, in 1712--it was not to be wondered at that it should be celebrated
for its production of hot cross buns on Good Friday. Early in the present
century there were two bun-houses at Chelsea, both claiming to be "Royal"
as well as "Original," until, at last, one of the two proclaimed itself to
be "The Real Old Original Bun House." These two houses did a roaring trade
during the whole of Good Friday, their piazzas being crowded, from six in
the morning to six in the evening, by crowds of purchasers, loungers, and
gossipers. Good King George the Third would come there with his children;
and, of course, the nobility and gentry followed his example. These two
bun-houses were swallowed up, in the march of improvement, some forty
years ago; but on Good Friday, 1830, 240,000 hot cross buns were sold
there.
The cross bun is not without its folk-lore. Country folks attach much
virtue to the Good Friday buns; and many are kept for "luck's sake" in
cottages from one Good Friday to another. They are not only considered to
be preservatives from sickness and disease, but also as safeguards from
fire and lightning. They are supposed never to get mouldy, as was noted by
"Poor Robin," in his Almanack for 1733, under the head of March:--
"Good Friday comes this month: the old woman runs
With one a penny, two a penny hot cross-buns;
Whose virtue is, if you'll believe what's said,
They'll not grow mouldy like the common bread."
Furthermore, be it known, then, in the interests of suffering humanity,
that if a piece of a Good Friday bun is grated and eaten, it will cure as
many diseases as were ever cured by a patent pill; moreover, the animal
world is not shut out from sharing in its benefits, for it will cure a
calf from "scouring," and mixed in a warm mash, it is the very best remedy
for your cow. Thus the bun is good for the _boun_; in fact, it is good
both for man and beast.
The sellers of the Good Friday buns are composed of old men and young men,
old women and young women, big children and little children, but
principally boys, and they are of mixed classes, as, costers' boys, boys
habitually and boys occasionally street-sellers, and boys--"some cry now
who never cried before," and for that occasion only. One great inducement
to embark in the trade is the hope of raising a little money for the
Easter holidays following.
The "cry" of the Hot Cross Bun vendor varies at times and in places--as
thus:--
"One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross-buns!
One-a-penny, two for _tup'ence_, hot cross buns!"
While some of a humorous turn of mind like to introduce a little bit of
their own, or the borrowed wit of those who have gone before them, and
effect the _one_ step which is said to exist from the sublime to the
ridiculous, and cry--
"One-a-penny, poker; two-a-penny, tongs!
One-a-penny; two-a-penny, hot cross buns.
One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross-buns!
If your daughters will not eat them, give them to your sons.
But if you haven't any of those pretty little elves,
You cannot then do better than eat them up yourselves;
One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross buns:
All, hot, hot, hot, all hot.
One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross buns!
Burning hot! smoking hot, r-r-r-roking hot--
One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross buns."
But the street hot-cross-bun trade is languishing--and languishing, will
ultimately die a natural death, as the master bakers and pastrycooks have
entered into it more freely, and now send round to their regular customers
for orders some few days before each succeeding Good Friday.
A capital writer of NOTES, COMMENT and GOSSIP, who contributes every week
to the _City Press_, under the _nom de plume_ of "Dogberry," gave--_inter
alia_--a few "_Good Words_," the result of his "_Leisure Hours_" in that
journal, on the subject of "Good Friday Customs." March 24, 1883, thus:--
"That the buns themselves are as popular as ever they were when the
Real Original Bun Houses existed in Chelsea, was manifest on Thursday
evening, though the scene is now changed from the west to the east.
Bishopsgate-street was indeed all alive with people of high and low
degree crowding in and out of Messrs. Hill & Sons, who, I am told,
turned no less than 47 sacks of flour, representing over 13,000 lbs.,
into the favourite Good Friday cakes. This mass was sweetened by 2,800
lbs. of sugar, moistened with 1,500 quarts of milk, and 'lightened'
with 2,200 lbs. of butter. Something like 25,000 paper bags were used
in packing the buns, and upwards of 150 pairs of hands were engaged in
the making and distribution of the tasty morsels at Bishopsgate and at
the West-end branch of Messrs. Hill, at Victoria. The customary
business of the firm must have been interrupted considerably by Good
Friday, and the forty-seven sacks of flour made into buns represented,
I presume, a considerable deduction from the hundred and ninety to two
hundred which the firm work up in one form or another every week. But
then you can't eat your (Good Friday) cake and have it. There were
other bakers and confectioners in the City, too, who appeared to do a
thriving trade in buns--notably Messrs. Robertson & Co., in
Aldersgate-street. Long live the Good Friday bun!"
DOGBERRY.
HOT CROSS BUNS.
BY MISS ELIZA COOK.
"The clear spring dawn is breaking, and there cometh with the ray,
The stripling boy with 'shining face,' and dame in 'hodden grey:'
Rude melody is breathed by all--young--old--the strong, and weak;
From manhood with its burly tone, and age with treble squeak.
Forth come the little busy 'Jacks' and forth come little 'Jills,'
As thick and quick as working ants about their summer hills;
With baskets of all shapes and makes, of every size and sort;
Away they trudge with eager step, through alley, street, and court.
A spicy freight they bear along, and earnest is their care,
To guard it like a tender thing from morning's nipping air;
And though our rest be broken by their voices shrill and clear,
There's something in the well-known 'cry' we dearly love to hear.
'Tis old, familiar music, when 'the old woman runs'
With 'One-a-penny, two-a-penny, Hot Cross Buns!'
Full many a cake of dainty make has gained a great renown,
We all have lauded 'Gingerbread' and 'Parliament' done brown;
But when did luscious 'Banburies,' or dainty 'Sally Lunns,'
E'er yield such merry chorus theme as 'One-a-penny buns!'
The pomp of palate that may be like old Vitellius fed,
Can never feast as mine did on the sweet and fragrant bread;
When quick impatience could not wait to share the early meal,
But eyed the pile of 'Hot Cross Buns,' and dared to snatch and steal.
Oh, the soul must be uncouth as a Vandal's Goth's, or Hun's,
That loveth not the melody of 'One-a-penny Buns!'"
And so, awaking in the early morning, we hear the streets ringing with the
cry, "Hot Cross Buns." And perhaps when all that we have wrought shall be
forgotten, when our name shall be as though it had been written on water,
and many institutions great and noble shall have perished, this little bun
will live on unharmed. Others, as well as ourselves, will, it may be, lie
awake upon their beds, and listen to the murmurs going to and fro within
the great heart of London, and, thinking on the half-forgotten days of the
nineteenth century, wonder perhaps whether, in these olden times, we too
heard the sound of "Hot Cross Buns."
The street Pieman with his "cry," of "Pies all hot! hot!! hot!!!--Penny
pies, all hot! hot!!--fruit, eel, beef, veal or kidney pies! pies, all
hot-hot-hot," is one of the most ancient of street callings, and to London
boys of every degree, "Familiar in their mouths as household words." Nor
is the itinerant trade in pies--"Eel, beef, veal, kidney or fruit,"
confined to the great metropolis. All large provincial towns have, from a
time going back much farther than even the proverbial "oldest inhabitant"
can recollect, had their old and favourite "Penny Pieman," or,
"_Old-all-Hot!_" as folks were ever wont to call him. He was generally a
merry dog, and mostly to be found where merriment was going on, he
scrupled not to force his way through the thickest of the crowd, knowing
that the very centre of action was the best market for his wares.
[Illustration: THE PIEMAN; OR, O LORD! WHAT A PLACE IS A CAMP.
"O Lord! what a place is a camp,
What wonderful doings are there;
The people are all on the tramp,
To me it looks devilish queer:
Here's ladies a swigging of gin,
A crop of macaronies likewise:
And I, with my 'Who'll up and win?
Come, here is your hot mutton pies.'
Here's gallopping this way and that,
With, 'Madam, stand out of the way;'
Here's, 'O fie! sir, what would you be at?--
Come, none of your impudence pray:'
Here's 'Halt--to the right-about-face,'
Here's laughing, and screaming, and cries:
Here's milliners'-men out of place,
And I with my hot mutton pies.
Here's the heath all round like a fair,
Here's butlers, and sutlers, and cooks;
Here's popping away in the air,
And captains with terrible looks:
Here's 'How do you do?'--'Pretty well;
The dust has got into my eyes,'
There's--'Fellow what have you to sell?'
'Why, only some hot mutton pies.'"]
History informs us, through the medium of the halfpenny plain and penny
coloured chap book, editions issued by the "Catnach Press," that, one:--
"Simple Simon met a Pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says simple Simon to the Pieman,
'Let me taste your ware.'
Says the Pieman unto Simon,
'First give me a penny;'
Says Simple Simon to the Pieman,
'I have not got any.'"
But history is silent as to the birth, parentage, or, even place and date
of the death of the said Simple Simon, or of this very particular pieman.
Halliwell informs us, through one of the "Nursery Rhymes of England," that
on one occasion:--
"Punch and Judy
Fought for a pie;
Punch gave Judy
A sad blow on the eye."
James Lackington--1746-1816--one of the most celebrated of our early cheap
booksellers, lived at the "Temple of Muses," Finsbury-place--the shop,
into which a coach and six could be driven. This curious mixture of
cobbler's wax, piety, vanity, and love of business, has left us in his
autobiography, which he published under the title of his "_Memoirs and
Confessions_," his experience as a pie-boy! or seller of pies, thus:--
"At ten years old I cried apple pies in the street. I had noticed a
famous pieman, and thought I could do it better myself. My mode of
crying pies soon made me a street favourite, and the old pie merchant
left off trade. You see, friend, I soon began to make a noise in the
world. But one day I threw my master's child out of a wheelbarrow, so
I went home again, and was set by my father to learn his trade,
continuing with him for several years. My fame as a pieman led to my
selling almanacks on the market days at Christmas. This was to my
mind, and I sorely vexed the [regular] vendors of 'Moore,' 'Wing,' and
'Poor Robin.' My next move was to be bound apprentice for seven
years."
We frequently meet with the pieman in old prints; and in Hogarth's "March
to Finchley," there he stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning
with delight at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the
victim of another. We learn from this admirable figure by the greatest
painter of English life, that the pieman of the last century perambulated
the streets in professional costume; and we gather further, from the burly
dimensions of his wares that he kept his trade alive by the laudable
practice of giving "a good pennyworth for a penny." Justice compels us to
observe that his successors of a later generation have not been very
conscientious observers of this maxim.
[Illustration: HOGARTH'S PIEMAN.]
[Illustration: NICE NEW! NICE NEW!
All hot! All Hot Hot! All Hot!
_Here they are, two sizes bigger than last week._]
At this date there was James Sharpe England, a noted flying pieman, who
attended all the metropolitan festive gatherings; he walked about hatless,
to sell his savoury wares, with his hair powdered and tied _en queue_, his
dress neat, apron spotless, jesting wherever he went, with a mighty voice
in recommendation of the puddings and pies, which, for the sake of greater
oddity he sometimes carried on a wooden platter.
[Illustration: JAMES SHARPE ENGLAND, _The Flying Pieman_.]
The London pieman, as he takes his walks abroad, makes a practice of
"looking in" at all the taverns on his way. Here his customers are found
principally in the tap-room. "Here they are, all 'ot!" the pieman cries,
as he walks in; "toss or buy! up and win 'em!" For be it known to all whom
it may concern, the pieman is a gambler, both from inclination and
principle, and will toss with his customers, either by the dallying
shilly-shally process of "best five in nine," or "best two in three," or
the desperate dash of "sudden death!" in which latter case the first toss
decides the matter, _viz_:--a pie for a penny, or your penny gone for
nothing, but he invariably declines the mysterious process of "odd man,"
not being altogether free from suspicion on the subject of collusion
between a couple of hungry, and not over honestly inclined customers.
Of the "stuff" which pie-dealers usually make their wares, much has been
sung and said, and in some neighbourhoods the sight of an approaching
pieman seems to get about an immediate desire for imitating the harmless
cat and its "Mee-yow," or the "Bow-wow-wow!" of the dog. And opprobrious
epithets are hurled at the piemen as they parade the streets and alleys,
and even kidnapping has been slyly hinted at, for the mother of Tom
Cladpole, finding her son so determined to make a "Jurney to
Lunnun"--least he should die a fool, tries to frighten the boy out of his
fixed intention by informing him in pure Sussex dialect that:--