The bellman’s verses

In seventeenth-century London the bellman was the night watchman, named for the handbell he carried to raise the alarm in case of fire. Once a year, probably at Christmas, he went round the householders of his district handing each a printed sheet of verses and expecting a small tip on top of his wages. Isaac Ragg, bellman of the Holborn division of St Giles in the Fields, issued one in the winter of 1683 to 1684 with verses for St Andrew’s Day, Christmas, New Year’s Day and other days, under a woodcut of himself with pole, bell and lantern. The verses were so poor that bellman’s verses became a byword for bad poetry.