Read by Peter Noble & Lisa Rose
“Come ye! Come all ye! A fair ballad for this fair day, madam? I’ve love, war, scandal… news from the Colonies? No?
Stop for a song, sir? All sorts to suit all moods; tragical, comical, historical, hummable. Newest airs, raciest rhymes … You know this tune young master? Come now, you must! ‘Tis as popular as was your sweet mother once, with the sailors down at Tobacco Wharf!
Religious verses! Hymns of grace! Morning Father, what a surprise! Hear a holy broadside to the air of the Sussex Carol? Done wonders on the continent it has, made hardened sinners fall down in worship, as full as piety as a piety pie! No? A saint’s Life then, maybe: I’ve Saint Thomas, Saint Peter, all the Annes, Saint Valentine (ah, perhaps not that version…) or would you prefer a nice miracle? There’s the Weeping Virgin of Pisa and the man cured of death at Hamburg: that only happened last month, he’s fresh as today’s haddock, on my oath! Very well, Father, God bless!”
“Because he was charming
And loved with his eyes
I found him disarming
And swallowed his lies
He said he would wed me
Once May turned to June
But the rogue only bed me
And left me in ruin!”
And if you want to hear the rest, ladies and gentlemen, buy the Ballad of Jilted Jane, just a penny-halfpence: a tale of hearts lost and maidenheads spoiled what makes Romping Rachel look like a Scottish nun!"
“There’s a nice song to be singing near priests and infants! For shame, woman, trilling your filth all over my patch! How’s a man to feed his children with harridans snatching the bread from their very mouths?”
“Children is it? That reminds me, ladies, of John Tinker of York and his bastard brood. Fourteen children he sired, on six different women, and one day they all up and beat him to death for his wicked ways and lived happily ever after. Stops a man straying, that story, believe me!
Morrow young lady, hear the tale of Mary Tofts, a Godalming girl? She was so frightened by a rabbit one day she fell down pregnant, and when the babes were born all nine was rabbits! True story Miss, the King’s Surgeon examined her! One of ‘em grew up to be a parson! A love-ballad, then: will you have comic, tragic, or bawdy? I’ve a virgin ravished by a pirate, a serving-man maddened by love, what thinks he’s a tree… Here’s one about a clever maid marries her master: ah, I thought you’d like that. Penny-halfpence for that, dear: my prices are honest, see. Thank you, I’m sure. You in service yourself? Aye, me too, till I was brung down in the world by a man’s treachery. A ballad in itself, that is!
There, my sweet, it’s called Soft Words and Hot Rum, with plenty good advice for poor girls meant for better things. And good luck to you dear, better luck than mine. Good day!”
“For Tom he was handsome
And Tom he was smart
He sought love and found some
In Jane Mitchell’s heart
And though he was daring
The gold for to win
His wench was uncaring
And turned poor Tom in.
And if you’d hear the real story of Tom, the potboy-turned-highwayman, and Jane his faithless harlot, buy the Tale of Tom Robber, wrongly hanged at Horsemonger Lane. They say when Jane wept her tears were of flint; and when they opened Tom on the anatomy-table his heart was gold so pure you could bite it, and his spirit jumped to heaven like a jack-in-a-box! Tuppence only for this stirring story!”
“That your latest ballad, raggedy news of a blundering cutpurse? Tom Robbins hanged twenty years back! Besides, that Tom’s robbed his tune off my Jilted Jane. Now there’s a story never grows old, ladies! A poor simple lass deceived by the promises of a greedy upstart …
Much obliged madam, that’s penny-halfpence, or tuppence for Jane and The Pirate’s Mistress together. My prices are fair and my tunes true, my print is clear and my news is new, not like some folk would sell you ancient history as London’s latest. Got to watch that sort, ain’t we, girls? Skin you soon as look at you, like one of Mary Tofts’ rabbit babies!
Well, I can’t divulge the ending, but Jane Mitchell was a serving-wench at the Hog’s Back Inn nearby. True story, as I’m standing here: I had it from her very lips. That’s why my version’s the God’s-honest gospel. It’s a sad tale, Miss–”
“Ballad of Romping Rachel! Penny-halfpence, and the twenty-first verse free! Too scandalous to print so I’ll whisper it in your ear!”
“– a very sad tale. Now it happened twelve year ago, when young Jane was just seventeen, and a more innocent creature the world never knew. She had a face like a daisy, and a daisy like never mind what: I mean she was fresh, miss, like you, with petal-soft skin what’d never known the rough touch of a man –”
“Song of Steven the Strangler! A penny for his first and worst crime, tuppence for the other four! Throttled five women before they caught him, including his scolding mother, what never shut up! And who can blame the poor fellow?”
“One day, a lad called Tom Robbins came to the inn. He was an orphan whose family died in the last plague; ah, you’re too young to remember, but he’d survived with nary a pockmark: his hair was golden and his eyes blue as Heaven’s wallpaper. First, he was hired as groom’s boy, but soon the landlord saw his shining smile and winning ways’d serve better inside than out, clearing tables and taking up pots to wash. Well, serving the vittles was Jane, of course: she brung out the plates hot what he took back cold, and now-and-then they’d pass on the floor: his britches might brush her petticoats, his eye might catch hers, and so on. At last, his hand touched her hand as they reached for the same salt-cellar, and then burn me for a witch if the poor girl wasn’t head-over-ears in love by nightfall!”
“Tale of the Exeter Witch! She cursed honest men with her poisonous tongue and when they opened her grave it was still wagging away! Penny for the verses and halfpence for the refrain!”
“The Exeter Witch? Don’t make me laugh. Ain’t you got any new songs to sing, or has your brain gone soft as your old pizzle?
Excuse the interruption, miss, where was I? What happened next? What always happens to headstrong girls who meet handsome boys, without a mother’s care to protect them. She was lost!
So there the two are, young hearts struck with love as old men are struck with ague or madness. A Hampshire Romeo and Juliet they was, on fire to marry but without money to live. So Tom, who can ride like the wind on any horse born, forms a daring plan…”
“O harken thou to my grisly tale
Though Saint Chad’s long dead it has not grown stale
’Twas a pious man and he earnt God’s boon
Living seven years with a seeping wound –“
“Christ! Here’s tuppence-hapenny, you old varlet. Buy a pie to stop your nasty mouth, or better, a pint of gin to wash it out!”
“Awful good of you, mistress, thought you’d never ask. Don’t mind if I harken to your interesting story, do you?”
“Tom decides that the next rich-looking traveller stopping at the inn, soon as he rides off again Tom’ll give chase and rob him. Then Jane sneaks out with clothes and food in the valley beyond, and off they run together. Now, the robbery went off perfect, but when Jane goes to gather Tom’s things before meeting him, imagine what she finds?”
“A handsome reward for turning King’s Evidence, was it?”
“Love-tokens! And not just one, neither. A love-note from the cook, thirty and warty too; a ribbon from the parlourmaid’s cap; even a shining lock of blonde hair, curled in a bit of paper, what could only belong to the landlord’s daughter. He’d been playing her for a fool all along! He wasn’t going to marry her any more than the other girls: he was just using her for sport. So Jane took Tom’s clothes-bundle and food-parcel to the constable, and told him where Tom was hiding. And when wicked Tom expected Jane’s soft lips in the dark, he found instead a pair of cuffs and a noose at the end of ‘em.”
“Poor bloody bastard.”
“I warned you it was a sad tale! Did I lie? And what’s saddest is from that day to this, Jane never found another man she could love, and she weeps every night for the boy she sent to the gallows at Horsemonger Lane.”
“What a steaming pile of poppycock! You don’t credit that do you, gentlemen? Never was there a bitterer creature than a woman scorned! That Jane shopped him to the law for the gold, nothing more; she knew the price of a highwayman’s head, and trapped him into riding out so she could claim reward!”
“She was heartbroken by his betrayal! The money was nothing to her, she never spent a penny of it!”
“What’d she do with it, then? Eat it?”
“She kept it to buy poor Tom a headstone, but she never found his grave.”
“That’s because he never hanged, you silly mare! Tom Robber escaped from Horsemonger Lane the night before his execution and they never found him: he’s been looking for Jane ever since. And now you’ve made me tell the end of my ballad, you witch: here, have ‘em. Have the cursed lot! The Ballad of Tom Robber, no-pence no-penny: never liked that tune, anyway.
“Give me that ... He never hanged? How can that be?”
“Oh, they hanged some poor fellow, called him Tom to spare the gaoler’s blushes, but it wasn’t him. Been laying low all these years, they say, wandering the country, trying to find a girl he can’t forget. Maybe he’s a ballad-seller? That’d be a good disguise.”
“Maybe she is too. Maybe she’s sung her story in every market square from here to Portsmouth and still her heart won’t mend. Maybe she carries the reward money against her breast like a penance… like one of your saints with a hair-shirt. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so jealous all those years ago.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t have been so free with his smiles, and she would’ve believed it was her he loved, and her alone?"
“That’d make a good ballad, you know; if they met again, by some miracle, years later–”
“If they looked in one another’s eyes–”
“Blue as Heaven’s wallpaper–”
“And sighed, and kissed …”
“You could charge thruppence at least for a love-story like that! Set it to a catchy tune, throw in a good chase scene by moonlight, call it … The Highwayman Unhanged!”
“I’ll write the chase verses, on two conditions: first, we charge fourpence –"
“Tuppence each: a fair share.”
“And second, we call it The Ballad of Tom -"
"- and Jane!"
(c) Amy Eddings, 2014
Amy Eddings is serving a four-year stretch as a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, specialising in Georgian poetry. She writes prose and short plays for a bit of light relief.
Peter Noble trained at LAMDA and the Royal Academy of Music. He is a narrator for RNIB Talking Books, and is now doing an MA in Creative Non-Fiction at UEA. He attended 18 different schools in seven different countries, on four continents, so there’s a lot of material.
Lisa Rose is the voice of the Cheapside Hoard Exhibition at the Museum of London, and last year of Nivea Suncream on the Disney Junior channel. She was invited to be an actor for the Table Read at the London Screenwriters Festival in October 2013 and is always looking for work!
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