A piece of info posted at the YouTube site of this song by J. Marshall Bevil: A serious tidbit of information from a specialist in British musical history: This was the second of two twentieth-century revivals of a popular costermonger song dating from at least as far back as the middle nineteenth century. The first such revival occurred in 1911 as a music hall song. The costermongers were street-vendors in Londons East End. Hence the dialect in this 1960s rendition is historically accurate - particularly the silent initial H of Henry, which makes the spelling-out near the end, followed by En-e-ry, especially amusing. It also is an exaggeration of a working class dialect of Manchester, where the rock band was from. /// In his monumental, four-volume study, London Labour and the London Poor (ca. 1850), Henry Mayhew cites this and a song titled Duck-Legged Dick as two of the most popular songs among those whom Jack London called the people of the abyss, in his book by the same title.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 09:39:24 +0000
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