Street life

Even after Christmas, are you perpetually acquisitive? Hungry for gingerbread? Too lazy to actually read signs at the grocery store? Then hurry to a farmer's market where you might still find criers. At Detroit's Eastern Market, sellers of local and imported goods hawk their wares six days a week. Their yelps ricochet off the arcade roofs: "Cucumbers, dollar a box!" "Apple...ci-derrrr." Other criers stand outside old-time delis, nut shops, and barbecue restaurants in the buildings circling the marketplace. On a nearby pedestrian bridge, vendors of African imports shout about "Fresh shea butter!"
(Photos of Detroit: copyright Patricia Haller, from the beautiful Downtown Detroit Partnership photo gallery; and from the Eastern Market site.)

In previous centuries, in urban areas, it was more frequent to hear vendors shout -- or cry -- to communicate their merchandise and prices to anyone in earshot. Imagine your fishmonger singing "New cod, new!" Such repetitive bellows were catchier than today's televised commercial jingles: some cries inspired poems and folk songs. A few criers were immortalized by artists:

The French images are from the book Les rues et les cris de Paris, which includes a poem in Old French about medieval Paris's soundscape:

One nighttime cry from London in the middle of the 17th Century granted safety and warmth:

That cry is immortalized on a large woodcut depicting dozens of criers. It's in a folio in the British Museum and is quoted, but not reproduced, by Andrew White Tuer in Old London Street Cries, and the Cries of to-day: with heaps of quaint cuts including hand-coloured frontispiece. 1885. Text online via University of Wisconsin Digital Collection: History Collection.

A curiosity: playing cards circa 1754 depicting types of criers instead of the usual kings and queens. From "The World of Playing Cards" site: