Appendix

THERE are still one or two “waifs and strays” to be mentioned:— I. In Don Juan, canto XI, stanzas xvii—xix, Byron thus describes one of his dramatis personæ.

 Poor Tom was once a kiddy upon town,

   A thorough varmint and a real swell...

 Full flash, all fancy, until fairly diddled,

 His pockets first, and then his body riddled.

        * * * * *

 He from the world had cut off a great man

   Who in his time had made heroic bustle.

   Who in a row like Tom could lead the van,

 Booze in the ken, or in the spellken hustle?

   Who queer a flat? Who (spite of Bow Street’s ban)

   On the high-toby-splice so flash the muzzle?

 Who on a lark, with Black-eyed Sal (his blowing)

 So prime, so swell, so nutty, and so knowing?

In a note Byron says, “The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is the stanza of a song which was very popular, at least in my early days:—” (“If there be any German so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism.”)

 On the high toby splice flash the muzzle

   In spite of each gallows old scout;

 If you at the spellken can’t hustle

   You’ll be hobbled in making a clout.

 Then your blowing will wax gallows haughty,

   When she hears of your scaly mistake

 She’ll surely turn snitch for the forty—

   That her Jack may be regular weight.

John Jackson, to whom is attributed the slang song of which the foregoing stanza is a fragment was the son of a London builder. He was born in London on 28 Sept. 1769, and though he fought but thrice, was champion of England from 1795 to 1803, when he retired, and was succeeded by Belcher. After leaving the prize-ring, Jackson established a school at No. 13 Bond Street, where he gave instructions in the art of self-defence, and was largely patronised by the nobility of the day. At the coronation of George IV he was employed, with eighteen other prize-fighters dressed as pages, to guard the entrance to Westminster Abbey and Hall. He seems, according to the inscription on a mezzotint engraving by C. Turner, to have subsequently been landlord of the Sun and Punchbowl, Holborn, and of the Cock at Button. He died on 7 Oct. 1845 at No. 4 Lower Grosvenor Street West, London, in his seventy-seventh year, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, where a colossal monument was erected by subscription to his memory. Byron, who was one of his pupils, had a great regard for him, and often walked and drove with him in public. It is related that, while the poet was at Cambridge, his tutor remonstrated with him on being seen in company so much beneath his rank, and that he replied that “Jackson’s manners were infinitely superior to those of the fellows of the college whom I meet at ‘the high table’” (J. W. Clark, Cambridge, 1890, p. 140). He twice alludes to his ’old friend and corporeal pastor and master’ in his notes to his poems (Byron, Poetical Works, 1885-6, ii. 144, vi. 427), as well as in his ’Hints from Horace’ (ib. i. 503): And men unpractised in exchanging knocks Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box. Moore, who accompanied Jackson to a prize-fight in December 1818, notes in his diary that Jackson’s house was ’a very neat establishment for a boxer’, and that the respect paid to him everywhere was ’highly comical’ (Memoirs, ii. 233). A portrait of Jackson, from an original painting then in the possession of Sir Henry Smythe, bart., will be found in the first volume of Miles’s ‘Pugilistica’ (opp. p. 89). There are two mezzotint engravings by C. Turner. II. In Boucicault’s Janet Pride (revival by Charles Warner at the Adelphi Theatre, London in the early eighties) was sung the following (here given from memory): The Convict’s Song. THE FAREWELL.

 Farewell to old England the beautiful!

   Farewell to my old pals as well!

 Farewell to the famous Old Ba-i-ly

     (Whistle).

   Where I used for to cut sich a swell,

     Ri-chooral, ri-chooral, Oh!!!

THE [WERDHICK?]

 These seving long years I’ve been serving,

   And seving I’ve got for to stay,

 All for bashin’ a bloke down our a-alley,

     (Whistle).

   And a’ takin’ his huxters away!

THE COMPLAINT.

 There’s the Captain, wot is our Commanduer,

   There’s the Bosun and all the ship’s crew,

 There’s the married as well as the single ’uns,

     (Whistle).

   Knows wot we pore convicks goes through.

THE [SUFFERING?]

 It ain’t’ cos they don’t give us grub enough,

   It ain’t’ cos they don’t give us clo’es:

 It’s a-cos all we light-fingred gentery

     (Whistle).

   Goes about with a log on our toes.

THE PRAYER.

 Oh, had I the wings of a turtle-dove,

   Across the broad ocean I’d fly,

 Right into the arms of my Policy love

     (Whistle).

   And on her soft bosum I’d lie!

THE MORRELL.

 Now, all you young wi-counts and duchesses,

   Take warning by wot I’ve to say,

 And mind all your own wot you touches is,

     (Whistle).

   Or you’ll jine us in Botinny Bay!

     Oh!!!

     Ri-chooral, ri-chooral, ri-addiday,

       Ri-chooral, ri-chooral, iday.

Contents

Overview
Forewords
Rhymes Of The Canting Crew.
The Beggar’s Curse
Towre Out Ben Morts
The Maunder’s Wooing
A Gage Of Ben Rom-Bouse
Bing Out, Bien Morts
The Song Of The Beggar
The Maunder’s Initiation
The High Pad’s Boast
The Merry Beggars
A Mort’s Drinking Song
A Beggar I’ll Be
A Budg And Snudg Song
The Maunder’s Praise Of His Strowling Mort
The Rum-Mort’s Praise Of Her Faithless Maunder
The Black Procession
Frisky Moll’s Song
The Canter’s Serenade
Retoure My Dear Dell
The Vain Dreamer
When My Dimber Dell I Courted
The Oath Of The Canting Crew
Come All You Buffers Gay
The Potato Man
A Slang Pastoral
Ye Scamps, Ye Pads, Ye Divers
The Sandman’s Wedding
The Happy Pair
The Bunter’s Christening
The Masqueraders
The Flash Man of St. Giles
A Leary Mot
The Night Before Larry was Stretched
The Song of the Young Prig
The Milling Match
Ya-Hip, My Hearties!
Sonnets For The Fancy: After The Manner Of Petrarch
The True Bottom’d Boxer
Bobby And His Mary
Flashey Joe
My Mugging Maid
Poor Luddy
The Pickpocket’s Chaunt
On the Prigging Lay
The Lag’s Lament
Nix My Doll, Pals, Fake Away
The Game Of High Toby
The Double Cross
The Thieves’ Chaunt
The House Breaker’s Song
The Faking Boy To The Crap Is Gone
The Nutty Blowen
The Faker’s New Toast
My Mother
The High-Pad’s Frolic
The Dashy, Splashy.... Little Stringer
The Bould Yeoman
The Bridle-Cull and his little Pop-Gun
Jack Flashman
Miss Dolly Trull
The By-Blow Of The Jug
The Cadger’s Ball
Dear Bill, This Stone-Jug
The Leary Man
A Hundred Stretches Hence
The Chickaleary Cove
Blooming Æsthetic
’Arry at a Political Picnic
Rum Coves that Relieve us
Villon’s Good-Night
Villon’s Straight Tip To All Cross Coves
Culture in the Slums
Tottie
A Plank-Bed Ballad
The Rondeau of the Knock
The Rhyme of the Rusher
Wot Cher!
Our Little Nipper
The Coster’s Serenade
Appendix