Ben Jonson makes his _Morose_, who hated all noises, and sought for a silent wife, enter “upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women,” to moderate their clamour; but _Morose_, above all other noisy people, “cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.”
In Ford’s “Sun’s Darling” I find the following: “Upon my life he means to turn costermonger, and is projecting how to forestall the market. I shall cry pippins rarely.”
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Scornful Lady” is the following:
“Pray, sister, do not laugh; you’ll anger him, And then he’ll rail like a rude costermonger.”
Dr. Johnson, gives the derivation of costard-monger (the orthography he uses), as derived from the sale of apples or costards, “round and bulky like the head;” and he cites Burton as an authority: “Many country vicars,” writes Burton, “are driven to shifts, and if our great patrons hold us to such conditions, they will make us _costard-mongers_, graziers, or sell ale.”
“The costard-monger,” says Mr. Charles Knight, in his “London,” “was originally an apple-seller, whence his name, and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman.”
In Ireland the word “costermonger” is almost unknown.
OF THE OBSOLETE CRIES OF THE COSTERMONGERS.
A brief account of the cries once prevalent among the street-sellers will show somewhat significantly the change in the diet or regalements of those who purchase their food in the street. Some of the articles are not vended in the public thoroughfares now, while others are still sold, but in different forms.
“Hot sheep’s feet,” for instance, were cried in the streets in the time of Henry V.; they are now sold _cold_, at the doors of the lower-priced theatres, and at the larger public-houses. Among the street cries, the following were common prior to the wars of the Roses: “Ribs of beef,”--“Hot peascod,”--and “Pepper and saffron.” These certainly indicate a different street diet from that of the present time.
The following are more modern, running from Elizabeth’s days down to our own. “Pippins,” and, in the times of Charles II., and subsequently, oranges were sometimes cried as “Orange pips,”--“Fair lemons and oranges; oranges and citrons,”--“New Wall-fleet oysters,” [“_fresh_” fish was formerly cried as “new,”]--“New-river water,” [I may here mention that water-carriers still ply their trade in parts of Hampstead,]--“Rosemary and lavender,”--“Small coals,” [a cry rendered almost poetical by the character, career, and pitiful end, through a practical joke, of Tom Britton, the “small-coal man,”]--“Pretty pins, pretty women,”--“Lilly-white vinegar,”--“Hot wardens” (pears)--“Hot codlings,”--and lastly the greasy-looking beverage which Charles Lamb’s experience of London at early morning satisfied him was of all preparations the most grateful to the stomach of the then existing climbing-boys--viz., “Sa-loop.” I may state, for the information of my younger readers, that saloop (spelt also “salep” and “salop”) was prepared, as a powder, from the root of the _Orchis mascula_, or Red-handed Orchis, a plant which grows luxuriantly in our meadows and pastures, flowering in the spring, though never cultivated to any extent in this country; that required for the purposes of commerce was imported from India. The saloop-stalls were superseded by the modern coffee-stalls.