Costermonger

“ Costermonger times are as old as any trading times of which our history tells; indeed, the stationary costermonger of our own day is a legitimate descendant of the tradesmen of the olden time, who stood by their shops with their open casements, loudly inviting buyers by praises of their wares, and by direct questions of “What d’ye buy? ”

“ RICHARD COSTER.
In the long list of remarkable swindlers this man, who was perhaps the most accomplished, and long the most successful of all, seldom finds place. He first attracted notice in Bristol as a general agent and bill discounter on a large scale, but nothing very positive is known as to his antecedents except that at one time he drove a carrier’s cart between Oxford and London. He appears to have been industrious and saving, so that he secured sufficient funds to start as a costermonger with a horse and cart of his own. ”

“ Nor is the name Coster to be referred to costermonger, originally a dealer in costards, i.e. apples. It is sometimes for Mid. Eng. costard (cf. such names as Cherry and Plumb) , but may also represent Port. da Costa and Ger. Köster, both of which are found in early lists of Protestant refugees.
Jagger was a north-country name for a man who worked draught-horses for hire. Mr. Hardy's novel Under the Greenwood Tree opens with "the Tranter's party." A carrier is still a "tranter" in Wessex. In Medieval Latin he was called travetarius, a word apparently connected with Lat. ”

“ Most costermongers are thieves, smashers, and the like. We might have said all of them; but choose to leave a hole for some one to creep out at.
Hay and straw salesmen are done out of a load or two occasionally, by a clumsy fellow, whom it is a disgrace not to have detected for a villain at his very first appearance, in this manner. He orders the hay to be sent to a respectable name, at a respectable mews, or a livery suible; where the driver is of course to be paid on delivery, but he retires into a neighbouring house to get the money, while the men unload, but never appears again. ”

“ The costermongers’ boys will, I am informed, cheat their employers, but they do not steal from them. ”

“ The word “monger” is common, in various forms, in Teutonic languages in the sense of trader or dealer, and appears in “iron-monger” and “fish-monger,” and with a derogatory significance of petty or underhand dealing in such words as “scandal-monger.” A “coster-monger,” or “coster,” originally, therefore, one who sold apples and fruit in the street, is now an itinerant dealer in fruit, vegetables or fish, but more particularly, as distinguished from a “hawker” on the one hand, and “general dealer” on the other, is a street trader in the above commodities who uses a barrow. ”

“ Long live the Beggar! Drums and fifes sound the signal for boarding; the merchants have guns, pikes, hatchets, arquebuses.
Musket balls and cannon balls rain from the ships of the Beggars. Their musketeers, entrenched round about the main mast in their wooden forts, fire with deadly aim, without any danger. The merchants fall like flies.
“To the rescue!” said Ulenspiegel to Lamme and to Nele, “to the rescue! Here be spices, knicknacks, precious dainties, sugar, nutmegs, cloves, ginger, reals, ducats, moutons d’or all bright and shining. There are more than five hundred thousand pieces in coin. ”

“ Here are hams, marrow-bones, pasties, ortolans, fatted poulets, castrelins, all just as you might find them in the houses of the rich! Bread indeed! Here are casks of beer and kegs of wine! Mad must be the baker who will refuse to give us bread. Verily we will deal at his shop no more!”
“But, my good man!” said Soetkin amazed.
“Nay, listen,” said Claes, “and make the most of your good fortune. For these are the facts. Katheline, it seems, has lately been to Meyborg in Germany, and Nele with her, on a visit to my eldest brother Josse, who dwells there as a hermit. ”

“ I see sparks of fire gleaming upon the matches of arquebuses. Are our guardians asleep, or are they blind? Dost thou hear that clap of thunder? Seest thou the Spaniards fall pierced with bullets? Hearest thou ‘Long live the Beggar!’? They climb the path running, musket in hand; they come down with axes all along the slope. Long live the Beggar!”
“Long live the Beggar!” cry Lamme and Ulenspiegel.
“Lo,” said Nele, “here are soldiers that give us arms. Take, Lamme, take, my beloved. Long live the Beggar!” ”

“ Here be hams, marrow bones, pies of herons, ortolans, fat hens, as for great lords! Here is beer in hogsheads and wine by the cask! Mad and mad will be the baker that will deny us bread, we shall buy no more in his shop.”
“But, my man...!” said Soetkin all a-daze.
“Now, then, hearken,” said Claes, “and be light of heart. Katheline, instead of wearing out her term of banishment in the marquisate of Antwerp, went on foot, under Nele’s guidance, as far as Meyborg. There Nele told my brother Josse that often we live in black want, in spite of my sore toil. ”

“ The labourer is at home, eating his dinner of soup. Shall we not also feed upon our love? Oh why, oh why have I not yet a thousand years wherein to tell at your knees my rosary of Indian pearls!”
“Golden Tongue!” she said.
But my Lord the Sun blazed down upon the white hood of the cart, and a lark sang high over the clover, and Nele leant her head upon the shoulder of Ulenspiegel.
[Contents]
III
After a while Lamme came back to the cart, great drops of sweat pouring off him, and he, puffing and blowing like a dolphin. [163]
“Alas!” he cried, “I was born under an evil star. ”

“ Exactly 300 years ago the ancient City of Chester was represented in its Mayoralty chair by an ironmonger, whose son upset the good people of the City by retailing ironmongers’ wares, to the prejudice of the Citizens, who, by a grant from Queen Elizabeth in 1561, had been exempted from a duty of 2s. ”

“ The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane, “Why,” he pursued, “why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer’s shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the other short?”
The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail’s; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger. ”

“ Costigan’s roving eye was arrested by the foreman of the “XXX,” who stood drinking with two or three men of his outfit. He was pale and ill-looking. He drank several times in succession, as if he needed the stimulant, and without the formality of drinking to any one. The two or three “XXX” men who were with him seemed to be equally in need of restoratives.
They talked of the cattle stampede in which several of the outfits had been heavy losers. Some nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered, and members of the different outfits were still scouring the Red Desert for strays. ”

“ A bird could break them with its beak. Do not tighten them, sirs—master executioner, I do not speak to you, for you must needs be obedient [209] to these gentlemen’s orders. O do not bid him tighten them; have pity!”
“The fishmonger,” said Soetkin.
And Ulenspiegel held his peace.
However, seeing that the executioner was locking the baguettes tighter still, he cried out again:
“Pity, sirs!” he said. “Ye are breaking the widow’s fingers that she needeth to work withal. Alas! her feet! Will she never walk again now? Pity, sirs!”
“Thou shalt come to an ill end, fishmonger,” cried Soetkin. ”

“ But in spite of this agreement, Captain Marin, acting under an order from Messire de Lumey, detained nineteen monks as his prisoners, while the rest of the citizens were allowed to go free as had been promised.
And Ulenspiegel said:
“Word of a soldier, word of gold. Why has the captain been false to his promise?”
An old Beggarman answered Ulenspiegel:
“The monks are the sons of Satan, the canker of our nation, the shame of our country. Dogs are chained up— [280] let the monks be also chained, for they are the bloodhounds of the Duke. Long live the Beggarmen!” ”

“ At the end of a week Chester woke up among his lumber to a realization that he was at the end of his resources. He had just five cents left out of the four dollars that were to have been the key to his fortune. He sat gloomily on the wall of his sleeping apartment and munched the one solitary cracker he had left. It must carry him through the day unless he got work. The five cents must be kept for some dire emergency. ”

“ Every well-regulated visitor at Coster’s is pleased to pay the complimentary fee expected of him, when he knows that it goes to the benefit of the workmen; for, if his eyes have been open to anything besides diamonds, he must have noticed intelligence, sobriety, and honesty written in their faces. Then he understands that at Coster’s there is a better guarantee for the security of diamonds against theft and loss than if an overseer stood watching each squad of men with pistol in hand. ”

“ As soon as it turned the corner of the Costrells' lane, he went into his own house, said a word to his wife, and sat himself down at his own back door to await events—to ponder, also, a few conversations he had held that morning, with Mrs. Moulsey at "the shop," with Dawson, with Hall the butcher. Poor old John—poor old fellow!
When Bolderfield reached the paling in front of the Costrells' cottage, he paused a moment, holding for support to the half-open gate and struggling for breath. "I must keep my 'edd, I must," he was saying to himself piteously ”

“ Costigan replied grimly, eyes fast upon the flashing plate, whose point of projection was now deep in the bowels of the vessel. "The penalty for using it or having it is death on sight. Gangsters and pirates use it, since they have nothing to lose, being on the death list already. As for your life, I haven't saved it yet--you may wish I'd let it ride before we get done. The others are too far gone for oxygen--couldn't have brought even you around a few seconds later, quick as I got to you. ”

“ Where are your passes?”
“Here they are,” answered Ulenspiegel.
“Signed by the duke,” said the host. “I drink to the duke.”
“To the duke we drink,” replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel. The host, continuing:
“How do we catch rats, mice, and field mice? In rat-traps, snares, and mouse-traps. Who is the field mouse? ’Tis the great heretic Orange as hellfire. God is with us. They are coming. Hé! hé! Something to drink! Pour out, I am roasting, burning. To drink! Most goodly little reforming preachers.... I say little ... goodly little gallants, stout troopers, oak trees.... Drink! ”

“ Costigan was an Irish gentleman who, some years before the period of Lieutenant Lynch's expedition, had undertaken to make a voyage on the Dead Sea, in a boat, with a single companion—a sailor whom he employed to accompany him, to row the boat, and to perform such other services as might be required. Costigan laid in a store of provisions and water, sufficient, as he judged, for the time that would be consumed in the excursion, and then taking his departure from a point on the shore near the mouth of the Jordan, he pushed out with his single oarsman over the waters of the sea. ”

“ But Lamme, sighing:
“I have nothing but one skin, and a soft one; the least stroke of a dagger would make a hole in it immediately. We should do better to settle in some useful trade than to gad about in this way over hill and valley, to serve all these great princes who, with their feet in velvet hose, eat ortolans on gilded tables. To us the blows, perils, battle, rain, hail, snow, the thin soups that fall to vagabonds. To them the fine sausages, fat capons, savoury thrushes, succulent fowls.”
“The water is coming into your mouth, my gentle friend,” said Ulenspiegel. ”

“ While the peasants go to the market to sell the vegetables [86] at a price too dear for any to buy, he will tell you what you are to do with your weapons. I think, too, that he will direct you to pass, not without danger, by the Wahal, the Meuse, or the Rhine, exchanging vegetables for nets for sale, so that you may wander with the Harlingen fishing boats, where there are many sailors that know the lark’s song; skirt the coast by the Waden, and get to the Lauwer-Zee; exchange the nets for iron and lead; give costumes of Marken, Vlieland, and Ameland to your peasants ”

“ In this way, they would get their fruit back without the corsairs knowing any thing about it. The Captain considered this an excellent plan, and ordered the chief mate to take a boat and a flag of truce, and go over to the "Horn o Plenty," and make the proposition. The eldest boy and two of the others insisted on going also, in order that there might be no mistake about the boxes. But when the flag-of-truce party reached the "Horn o' Plenty" they found not a corsair there! Every man of them had gone. ”

“ It was getting late now—so late that Costigan accepted an invitation to share the evening meal and a blanket for the night by the camp fire. And, as he talked on, Crosfield, opposite him, grew more and more quiet and thoughtful, as if he were debating some heavy problem in his mind. He sat there gazing into the fire, until presently Norton, who knew his every mood and fancy, saw a sudden gleam in his eyes and the faint whimsical smile that trembled on his lips.
"Costigan," he said suddenly, "you were always a good sportsman. Did you ever shoot an elephant?" ”

“ Even copper coin is not refused. Buy then, buy! This is the Holy Mart! And we have indulgences adapted to the poor man’s purse as well as to the rich man’s. Only, I am sorry to say, my brothers, no credit is allowed. For to buy without paying cash is a crime most grievous in the eyes of Our Lord.”
Hereupon the monk who had kept silent shook his platter, and the florins, crusats, patards, sols, and deniers fell into it as thick as hail.
Claes, feeling himself rich, paid a florin for an indulgence of ten thousand years; and the monks delivered to him a piece of parchment in exchange. ”