Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
plates of meat (plates)
feet
porkpies (porkies)
lies
rabbit and pork (rabbit)
talk
Scapa Flow (scarper)
go
septic tank (septic, seppo)
Yank (American)
tea leaf
thief
trouble and strife
wife
whistle and flute suit
So the next time you find yourself 'avin' a rabbit with a Cockney, slip the bartender
a deep sea diver to buy him a Britney and ask him about his trouble and strife's new
barnet. Or take a butcher's at his fancy whistle and flute, and try out the local a la
mode. Maybe he'll tap his loaf and say, “Not bad fer a septic.”
• Head straight ahead for the pointy steeple that is past the shopping mall on the right.
This marks...
St. Mary-le-Bow
From London's earliest Christian times, a church has stood here. The steeple of St. Mary-
le-Bow, rebuilt after the Fire, is one of Wren's most impressive. He incorporated the
ribbed-arch design of the former church (a “bow” is an arch) in the steeple's midsection.
In the courtyard is a statue of a smiling Captain John Smith, who in 1607 established an
English colony in Jamestown, Virginia, USA, before retiring here near the church. Inside
the church, see not one but two pulpits, used today for point-counterpoint debates of moral
issues.
This is the very center of old London, where, in medieval times, the church's bells
rang each evening, calling Londoners safely back in to the walled town before the gates
were locked. To be born “within the sound of Bow bells” long defined a true local, or
“Cockney.”
This is also the “Cockney” neighborhood of plucky streetwise urchins, where a dis-
tinctive Eliza Doolittle dialect is sometimes still spoken. Today's Cockney is the hard ac-
cent of rough-and-tumble, working-class Londoners—and the Geico gecko on American
TV ads. There are no Hs. “Are you 'appy, 'arry?” “Where's your 'orse? ...'urry up now.”
(Another fun element of the Cockney dialect—its creative rhyming slang—is described
