The call, chant, or song of an itinerant merchant, tradesperson, market seller or street
vendor. Also referred to as a “street cry.” Unlike the lengthy and complex oral prose
discourse or “spiel” of the pitchman, auctioneer, or medicine-show performer, the
peddler’s cry is generally short, metrical, and frequently rhymed. The crier may employ
musical pitch, melody, ornamentation, and other forms of vocal embellishment.
Street criers draw upon a stock of traditional verbal and musical formulas diat are
often specific to their particular trade or mercantile occupation while developing
individualistic repertoires and styles that they employ as a means of identification for
themselves and their products and services. The primary function of the cry is to
announce the appearance of a merchant or tradesperson and attract an audience of
potential customers for the goods or services being offered. The advertisement and
description of merchandise and proclamation of a selling price may constitute secondary
functions. The following examples are from Texas:
Hot tamales floatin’ in gravy,
Suit ya taste and don’t mean maybe
Watermelons, watermelons,
Fresh off the vine,
Get your watermelons,
A nickel or a dime (Hurley 1953:118, 122).
The peddler’s cry constitutes the most overtly expressive component of an entire complex
of traditional work techniques. As such its effects may be enhanced by die performer’s
manipulation of work implements and items of merchandise, gesture, and other
traditional semiology, and the use of horns, bells, whistles, musical instruments, and
other devices, as performance markers. Street criers may also be recognized by distinct
costumes or the lavishly decorated wagons, barrows and stalls from which they ply their
trade.
While the cries most commonly heard in the late 20th century are those employed by
the vendors of hot dogs, beer, and peanuts in baseball stadiums and similar venues, they
belong to a widespread and long-standing tradition of occupational folklife. The flrst
peddlers in America were generally European immigrants who used their success in the
trade to finance the later establishment of more permanent and stable business
enterprises. Their street cries, derived initially from Old World models, may occasionally
be found, with illustrations, among early American broadsides and chapbooks. (Bronner
1976:3; Wright 1927:232–233)
The cries of peddlers and street merchants are immortalized in the literary creations of
William Langland and Shakespeare and have inspired the composers of folk, popular, and classical music, from the anonymous creator of the famous Irish “Cockles and Mussels,”
through the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, to George Gershwin, whose
Porgy and Bess features a variety of African American street cries.
John Ashton
References
Bronner, Simon J. 1976. Street Cries and Peddler Traditions in Contemporary Perspective. New
York Folklore Quarterly 32:2–15.
Dargan, Amanda, and Steven Zeitlin. 1983. American Talkers: Expressive Styles and Occupational
Choice. Journal of American Folklore 96:3–33.
Hurley, Elizabeth. 1953. Come Buy, Come Buy. In Folk Travellers: Ballads, Tales, and Talk, ed.
Mody C. Boatright, Wilson M.Hudson, and Allen Maxwell. Austin: Texas Folklore Society, pp.
115–138.
McGill, Laurilynn. 1971. The Street Cry as an Artistic Verbal Performance. Folklore Annual of the
University Folklore Association (University ofTexas) 3:17–25.
Wright, Richardson. 1927. Hawkers and Walkers in Early America. Philadelphia: Lippincot.