Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

Cries of Richmond

Just as Charles Lamb was fond of the cries of London, so we in old times delighted in the cries of Richmond.

There was the cry of the charcoal burner, who drove a light draft mule hitched to a cart. His face and hands were blackened from his ware, and he was a denizen of Darbytown. His cry would come trailing up the street: "O-o-o-o-o-o-h!" (A long drawn out note with a constantly rising inflection.) "Ah Oh!" (Shorter and with a falling accent.) It was beautiful.    

In the winter, old Vally Mann (his first name was Valentine) would come wandering around selling oysters. He had a pair of tin buckets of four gallons each, which he carried swung from a large leather strap, or rather band, that went over his shoulders. As he came along he would call: "Awstyers! Awstyers!" For oysters he sold and he gave the word the old-times Tidewater pronunciation.    

Then, in the springtime, in rainy April, little barelegged colored boys would come running through  the streets, crying: "Fresh feesh!  Fresh feesh!  But they would give the words, oh! so musical a sound.    

The negro newsboys, too, had a melodious call as they would sing out: "Evenin' Journal!"  The syllables were on the same note, except the third, which was on a lower note, the voice coming back to the higher level on the fourth. (This was the Evening Journal, published by Thos. H. Wynne in the seventies.)    

At a later time, when the State was published by Richard F. Bierne, as an afternoon paper, they would sing out: State 'er! State 'er" with a beautifully musical phrase.

Of course, the most melodious and attractive cry of all was that of the negro cart drivers from Hanover county as they wandered the streets, in their canvas-colored carts, ornamented, mayhap, with branches of green leaves, crying: "Water-millions!  I go um green rind an' red meat an' full o' juice an' so sweet!"  Oh! how delightful the sound would be as the notes came trailing up the long street from afar, drawing ever nearer, and making the mouth water in anticipation of what we were going to do with the fruit delicious!  "All dat got money, come up an' buy, dose dat got none, stan' back an cry, kase I'se got watermillions!"  Still nearer the sound would come, "I got um fresh, I got um fine, just come from de livin' vine-watermillions!"

Then, some weeks later, would come one, vending cabbages: "Ladies, I am a-goin' by!  Aw, it is a pity date you will let me go!  Aw, it is a pity-pity-pity, a pity-pity-pity-pity-pittee-ee-ee, dat you won' buy none o' dese hard-head cabbage!"  The watermelons came in August.  But, in September, would come other carters, bearing sweet potatoes.  "'Weet potatoes! 'Weet potatoes!  'Weet potatoes!"  That had a beautiful sound, too, especially to the little people, who thought sweet potatoes were the bestest thing of any dogbite grub that you can roast in the ashes!

The only unmusical cry in the old days was that of the soap-grease man.  Cooks and thrifty housewives would save the waste grease from the kitchen and sell it to him, when he would come to the back gate.  He paid for it with soap-laundry soap, unscented, unpressed, cut with a fine wire into cubical bars and chunks.  "Soap-grease!  Soap-grease!"

There was the ragman, too.  He bore a bag on his back and had a little bell, like a dinner bell, in his hand.  "Ding-a-ling-a-ling, and a ding-a-ling-a-ling, and a ding-a-ling-a-lingle, and a ding-a-ling-a-ling! "  Then, mayhap, he would call out: "Ole i'on!  Rags an 'bones!"

And then there was the boatman's horn.  The canal boats of those remote days carried each a long horn, or trumpet, of tin, ten or twelve feet long, with which to signal when they were drawing near to the lock gates.  And sometimes in fine weather, on a lovely moonlight night, the player would continue to sound his horn all the way from the three-mile locks to the basin, which was his port.  Along the foot of the hills, by Hollywood, by Belvidere Hill and Oregon Hill, by the Tredegar Iron Works and around the foot of Gamble's Hill the canal flowed, with a sluggish stream; and along this way would come the sound of the boatman's horn, first faint in the distance, then growing stronger, sweet, quaintly melodious, like the "horns of Elfland, faintly blowing."

Beautiful days, beautiful nights, beautiful memories!  For in my early, happy childhood, in the old Gamble house (long since pulled down), in which I was born and where I spent my time in the blissful dawn of life, every night I would go to sleep to the music of the boatman's horn.

Of course, the humorous ones made up a song about it:

When you hear de boatman's horn,
Look out, ole man, yo' sheep is gone!
Steal yo' hog, steal yo' shoat,
Put him in de bag an' ca' him to de boat --

CHORUS:

Oh, dance, boatman, dance!
Dance, boatman, dance!
Dance all night till broad daylight,
Go home wid de gals in de mornin'.