/ · John S. Farmer’s Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
Tottie
Tottie
1887
By “DAGONET” (G. R. SIMS) in Referee, 7 Nov..
I
As she walked along the street
With her little ‘plates of meat,’
1 feet
And the summer sunshine falling
On her golden ‘Barnet Fair,’
2 hair
Bright as angels from the skies
Were her dark blue ‘mutton pies.’
3 eyes
In my ‘East and West’ Dan Cupid
4 breast
Shot a shaft and left it there.
II
She’d a Grecian ‘I suppose,’
5 nose
And of ‘Hampstead Heath’ two rows,
6 teeth
In her ‘Sunny South’ that glistened
7 mouth
Like two pretty strings of pearls;
Down upon my ‘bread and cheese’
8 knees
Did I drop and murmur, ‘Please
Be my “storm and strife,” dear Tottie,
9 wife
O, you darlingest of girls!’
III
Then a bow-wow by her side,
10 dog
Who till then had stood and tried
A ‘Jenny Lee’ to banish,
11 flee
Which was on his ‘Jonah’s whale,’
12 tail
Gave a hydrophobia bark,
(She cried, ‘What a Noah’s Ark!’)
13 lark
And right through my ‘rank and riches’
14 breeches
Did my ‘cribbage pegs’ assail.
15 legs
IV
Ere her bull-dog I could stop
She had called a ‘ginger pop,’
16 slop = policeman
Who said, ‘What the “Henry Meville”
17 devil
Do you think you’re doing there?’
And I heard as off I slunk,
‘Why, the fellow’s “Jumbo’s trunk!”
18 drunk
And the ‘Walter Joyce’ was Tottie’s
19 voice
With the golden ‘Barnet Fair.’
20 hair
Notes
G. R. Sims (“Dagonet”) needs little introduction to present-day
readers. Born in London in 1847, he was educated at Harwell College,
and afterwards at Bonn. He joined the staff of Fun on the death
of Tom Hood the younger in 1874, and The Weekly Despatch the
same year. Since 1877 he has been a contributor to The Referee
under the pseudonym of “Dagonet”. A voluminous miscellaneous writer,
dramatist, poet, and novelist, M. Sims shows yet no diminution of his
versatility and power.
Taken from
Musa Pedestris,
Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
[1536―1896], collected and annotated by John S. Farmer.
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