* Mr. Jobson added the following* verses to his bill:
"Prithee come, my lads and lasses, Jobson's oddities let's see; Where there's mirth and smiling faces, And good store of fun and glee! Pleasant lads and pretty lasses, All to Jobson s haste away; Point your toes, and brim your glasses! And enjoy a cheerful day."
** "Mr. O'Brien measures eight feet four inches in height, but lives in hopes of attaining nine feet," the family altitude!
Three turkeys danced cotillons and minuets. The military ox went through his manual exercise; and the monkey taught the cow her horn-book. Ive's company of comedians played "The Wife well managed," to twenty-eight different audiences in one day! The automaton Lady; the infant musical phenomenon without arms, and another phenomenon, equally infantine and musical, without legs; a three-legged heifer, with four nostrils; a hen webfooted, and a duck with a cock's head, put forth their several attractions. Messrs. White, at the Lock and Key, sold capital punch; savoury sausages (out-frying every other fry in the fair,) fizzed at "the Grunter's Ordinary or Relish-Warehouse, in Hosier Lane; and Pie-Corner" rang with the screeching drollery of Mr. Mountebank Merry Andrew Macphinondraughanarmonbolinbrough!
The "wonderful antipodean," Sieur Sanches, who walked against the ceiling with his head downwards, and a flag in his hand; Louis Porte
** Louis Porte was an inoffensive giant. Not so our English monsters. On the 10th of Sept. 1787, a Bartlemy Fair
Giant was brought before Sir William Plomer at Guildhall, for knocking out two of his manager's fore-teeth, for which the magistrate fined him two guineas per tooth! In March 1841, a giantess, six feet nine inches high, from Modern Athens and Bartholomew Fair, killed her husband in a booth at Glasgow; and in the same year, at Barnard-Castle Easter Fair, a giant stole a change of linen from a hedge, for which he was sent to prison for three months.
On the 26th May, 1555, (see Strype's Memorials,) there was a May-game at St. Martin's in the Fields, with giants and hobby-horses, drums, guns, morris-dancers, and minstrels.
("_Hercule du Roi!_") a French equilibrist; Pietro Bologna, a dancer on the slack-wire; Signor Placida ("the Little Devil!"); "La Belle Espagnole" (on the tight-rope); the "real wild man of the woods;" * the dancing-dogs of Sieur Scaglioni; ** General Jacko, *** and Pidcock's **** menagerie, (to which succeeded those of Polito and Wombwell,) one and all drove a roaring trade at Bartholomew Fair.