University of Virginia Library

OF LONG SONG-SELLERS.

I have this week given a daguerreotype of a
well-known long-song seller, and have preferred
to give it as the trade, especially as regards
London, has all but disappeared, and it was
curious enough. "Long songs" first appeared
between nine and ten years ago.

The long-song sellers did not depend upon
patter — though some of them pattered a little —
to attract customers, but on the veritable cheap-
ness and novel form in which they vended
popular songs, printed on paper rather wider
than this page, "three songs abreast," and the
paper was about a yard long, which con-
stituted the "three" yards of song. Some-
times three slips were pasted together. The
vendors paraded the streets with their "three
yards of new and popular songs" for a penny.
The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the
top of a long pole, and the vendor "cried"
the different titles as he went along. This
branch of "the profession" is confined solely
to the summer; the hands in winter usually
taking to the sale of song-books, it being im-
possible to exhibit "the three yards" in wet or
foggy weather. The paper songs, as they flut-
tered from a pole, looked at a little distance
like huge much-soiled white ribbons, used as
streamers to celebrate some auspicious news.
The cry of one man, in a sort of recitative, or,
as I heard it called by street-patterers, "sing-
song," was, "Three yards a penny! Three yards
a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs!
Popular Songs! Three yards a penny! Song,
song, songs!" Others, however, were gene-
rally content to announce merely "Three yards
a penny!" One cried "Two under fifty a fardy!"
As if two hundred and fifty songs were to be sold
for a farthing. The whole number of songs was
about 45. They were afterwards sold at a
halfpenny, but were shorter and fewer. It is
probable that at the best had the songs been
subjected to the admeasurement of a jury, the
result might have been as little satisfactory as
to some tradesmen who, however, after having
been detected in attempts to cheat the poor in
weights and scales, and to cheat them hourly,
are still "good men and true" enough to
be jurymen and parliamentary electors. The
songs, I am informed, were often about 2½ yards,
(not as to paper but as to admeasurement of
type); 3 yards, occasionally, at first, and not
often less than 2 yards.

The crying of the titles was not done with
any other design than that of expressing the
great number of songs purchasable for "the
small charge of one penny." Some of the
patterers I conversed with would have made it
sufficiently droll. One man told me that he
had cried the following songs in his three yards,
and he believed in something like the following
order, but he had cried penny song books,
among other things, lately, and might confound
his more ancient and recent cries:

"I sometimes began," he said, "with sing-
ing, or trying to sing, for I'm no vocalist, the
first few words of any song, and them quite
loud. I'd begin

`Buffalo gals, come out to-night;' `Death of
Nelson;' The gay cavalier;' `Jim along
Josey;' `There's a good time coming;'
`Drink to me only;' `Kate Kearney;'
`Chuckaroo-choo, choo-choo-choot-lah;'
`Chockala-roony-ninkaping-nang;' `Paga-
daway-dusty-kanty-key;' `Hottypie-gunnypo-
china-coo' (that's a Chinese song, sir); `I
dreamed that I dwelt in marble halls;' `The
standard bearer;' `Just like love;' `Whistle
o'er the lave o't;' `Widow Mackree;' `I've
been roaming;' `Oh! that kiss;' `The old
English gentleman,' &c., &c. &c. I dares say
they was all in the three yards, or was once, and
if they wasn't there was others as good."

The chief purchasers of the "long songs"
were boys and girls, but mostly boys, who ex-
pended 1d. or ½d. for the curiosity and novelty
of the thing, as the songs were not in the most
readable form. A few working people bought
them for their children, and some women of the
town, who often buy anything fantastic, were
also customers.

When "the three yards was at their best,"
the number selling them was about 170; the
wholesale charge is from 3d. to 5d. a dozen,
according to size. The profit of the vendors in
the first instance was about 8d. a dozen. When
the trade had all the attractions of novelty,
some men sold ten dozen on fine days, and for
three or four of the summer months; so clear-
ing between 6s. and 7s. a day. This, however,
was not an average, but an average might be
at first 21s. a week profit. I am assured that
if twenty persons were selling long songs in the
street last summer it was "the outside," as
long songs are now "for fairs and races and
country work." Calculating that each cleared
9s. in a week, and to clear that took 15s., the
profit being smaller than it used to be, as
many must be sold at ½d. each — we find 120l. expended in long songs in the streets. The
character of the vendor is that of a patterer of
inferior genius.

The stock-money required is 1s. to 2s.; which
with 2d. for a pole, and ½d. for paste, is all
the capital needed. Very few were sold in
the public-houses, as the vendors scrupled to
expose them there, "for drunken fellows would
snatch them, and make belts of them for a
lark."