with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there
were middle-sized youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly
clad; there were blind mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes;
crippled ones, with wooden legs and crutches; diseased ones, with
running sores peeping from ineffectual wrappings; there was a
villain-looking pedlar with his pack; a knife-grinder, a tinker,
and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of their trades; some of
the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at prime, some were
old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen, foul-mouthed;
and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced babies;
there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings about their
necks, whose office was to lead the blind.
The night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy
was beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth.
A general cry broke forth–
“A song! a song from the Bat and Dick and Dot-and-go-One!”
One of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the
patches that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic
placard which recited the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One
disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon
sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they
roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole
crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. By the time
the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen
to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang it clear
through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous sound
that made the rafters quake. These were the inspiring words:–
‘Bien Darkman’s then, Bouse Mort and Ken,
The bien Coves bings awast,
On Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine
For his long lib at last.
Bing’d out bien Morts and toure, and toure,
Bing out of the Rome vile bine,
And toure the Cove that cloy’d your duds,
Upon the Chates to trine.’
(From ‘The English Rogue.’ London,
1665.)
Conversation followed; not in the thieves’ dialect of the song,
for that was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be
listening. In the course of it, it appeared that ‘John Hobbs’ was
not altogether a new recruit, but had trained in the gang at some
former time. His later history was called for, and when he said
he had ‘accidentally’ killed a man, considerable satisfaction was
expressed; when he added that the man was a priest, he was roundly
applauded, and had to take a drink with everybody. Old
acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were proud to
shake him by the hand. He was asked why he had ‘tarried away so
many months.’ He answered–
“London is better than the country, and safer, these late years,
the laws be so bitter and so diligently enforced. An’ I had not
had that accident, I had stayed there. I had resolved to stay,
and never more venture country-wards–but the accident has ended
that.”
He inquired how many persons the gang numbered now. The
‘ruffler,’ or chief, answered–
“Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and
maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. {7} Most
are here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay.
We follow at dawn.”
“I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me. Where may
he be?”
“Poor lad, his diet is brimstone, now, and over hot for a delicate
taste. He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer.”
“I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave.”
“That was he, truly. Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but
absent on the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and
orderly conduct, none ever seeing her drunk above four days in the
seven.”
“She was ever strict–I remember it well–a goodly wench and
worthy all commendation. Her mother was more free and less
particular; a troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished
with a wit above the common.”
“We lost her through it. Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of
fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch’s name and fame.
The law roasted her to death at a slow fire. It did touch me to a