STREET CRIES. The itinerant vendor has always adopted a distinctive cry to draw attention to his wares, and, as a French writer says, the origin of these cries "se perd dans la nuit des temps." The earliest record that we possess in English is that given in the New English Dictionary of a cry of 1393 : "Kokes and here knaues crieden hote pyes hote"—a cry which with but slight variation was preserved to the close of the 18th century. The earliest collection of street cries is to be found in the 14th century poem, London Lackpenny. The author of this poem is, on John Stow's authority, John Lydgate (1370-1450), a Bene dictine monk of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. Among the many cries here included are those of "Hot peascods," "Straw berries ripe and cherries in the rise." Pammelia: Musicke's Mis cellanie was published in 1600-i8 and contains a number of cries, but the most important collection of the time is P. Tempest's The Cryes of Old London (1668), a work with which Samuel Pepys was familiar. In Smollett's Humphrey Clinker it will be recalled that the author protests against "noisy rustics bellowing `green peas,' " and Herrick long before had introduced stray street cries in his Hesperides. The cries of Paris are of very remote
origin and Le Livre des Mestiers contains examples of the time of Saint Louis ; Guillaume de la Villeneuve compiled a famous collection known as Les Crieries de Paris. As in London and else where the incunabula of the street cries of Paris are rich in pic torial illustration, and the old collections provide a perfect mirror of the times. Every town possesses its distinctive cries, but, save when there are enthusiasts such as Annibale Carracci (156° 1609), who has preserved those of old Bologna, these are hard t o come by.