the gentlemen

[marycatelli]

Some children are going to get some advice in a story.  The sort Kipling put in verse:

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,
Don't you shout to come and look, nor use 'em for your play.
Put the brishwood back again - and they'll be gone next day !

If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more !

If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you " pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been !

Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -
You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie
They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by !

'If You do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
A present from the Gentlemen, along 'o being good !

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by !

And I'm thinking how my heroine, born of gentry, is going to see the plot thicken. (The smugglers really shouldn't have made certain alliances. . . .) I wonder if the smugglers go by her house, or what gets bought.

Hmm. Someone's perhaps going to be out of sorts because of a certain -- change in goods means he can't get what he wants.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I'd never known of that poem before.

Update:  Tho' now I think on it, I'm almost certain that I saw a paperback historical romance novel, would have been published in the 1960s, called Watch the Wall, My Darling.  I never read it, but the odd title stayed with me. 

[marycatelli]

And now you know the origin.

Sure you don't want to give 'em this one?

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush, you squalling thing, I say,
Peace this moment, peace, or maybe
Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he's a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple,
And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,
Every day on naughty people.

Baby, baby, if he hears you,
As he gallops past the house,
Limb from limb at once he'll tear you,
Just as pussy tears a mouse.

And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you,
And he'll beat you all to pap,
And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,
Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes

Re: Sure you don't want to give 'em this one?

[marycatelli]

Why, that would be unspeakable! respectable smugglers don't make threats like that