France - oyster fables

France is a world leading producer and consumer of oysters, especially at Christmas when traditionally the habit from around Arcachon is widely adopted around the country and they are served on the shell with little crepinette sausages (truffled for Christmas), bread, and the local white wine Entre Deux Mers.


For a nation that prides itself on its gastronomy, it is encircled by oysters and in the language there is a poetic affection, even in the rhyming of the disease “maladies des branchies”, or the study of shellfish “conchyculture”. There is a sense of closeness and linguistic enjoyment.

Two old French fairy stories by La Fontaine have the oyster playing the central role, the one of the rat being caught in the shell of the oyster may have an element of truth to it; the other = above - has two pilgrims arguing over who should eat an oyster they have found. They ask a passer-by who promptly adjudicates by eating it himself: A moral for those wishing to join the French court.

Maupassant - salted sweets

Ostend oysters...

"Small and rich, looking like little ears enfolded in shells, and melting between the palate and the tongue like salted sweets."
- Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) Bel Ami

Saki - sympathetic unselfishness

Another memorable inspiration on oysters came from Saki, the Scottish writer Hector Hugh Munro who lived from 1870 to 1916 when they would have been easily available:

"Oysters are more beautiful than any religion...There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster."

Munro also made this wry quip:

“You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.”

Ballad of the Basket of Oysters

In similar rollicking style is The Oyster Girl of which there are printed copies dating back to 1820 and examples as far apart as Aberdeen , Somerset and North Carolina. There are variations sometimes called The Basket of Oysters, the Basket of Eggs or Eggs in her Basket and others from the chorus. Obviously the oyster girl’s reputation as a saucy trickster was well established:

Now Jack was a sailor who roamed on the town.
And she was a damsel who walked up and down.
Said the damsel to Jack as she passed him by,
'Would ye like for to purchase some quare bungle rye raddy rye?'
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye.

Thought Jack to himself, 'Now what can this be?'
'But the finest old whiskey from High Germany.
'Smuggled up in a basket and sold on the sly,
'And the name that it goes by is quare bungle rye raddy rye.'
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye.

Jack hands her a shilling and he thought nothing strange.
Says she, 'Here hold the basket til I run for your change.'
Jack peeks in the basket and a babe he did spy.
'Why b'damn me,' says Jack, 'this is quare bungle rye raddy rye.'
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye.

Now to get the child christened was Jack's first intent,
So to get the child christened to the parson he went.
Says the parson to Jack, 'What's the name he'll go by?'
'Ah b'damn me,' says Jack, 'call 'im quare bungle rye raddy rye.'
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye.

Says the parson to Jack, 'That's a mighty quare name.'
'Ah b'damn me," says Jack, 'it's a quare way he came;
'Smuggled up in a basket and sold on the sly,
'And the name that he'll go by is Quare Bungle Rye raddy rye.'
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye

Now all you young sailors who roam on the town,
Be wary of damsels that walk up and down.
Take a peek in their baskets as they pass you by,
Or else they may pawn on you Quare Bungle Rye raddy rye
Fol de diddle rye raddy rye raddy rye.

Muisc Hall oyster girls

This lusty song is undated, but may originally have been Irish dating possibly pre 1800 but was a music hall classic for its voluptuous innuendoes and is sometimes credited to London, sometimes Manchester though the geography probably changed according to where it was being sung, usually by a comedian. It seems to have first been printed in 1794 as The Eating of Oysters by M. Randall of Stirling in Scotland.

Basket Of Oysters

As I was walking down a London Street,
A pretty little oyster girl, I chanced for to meet.
I lifted up her basket and boldly I did peek,
Just to see if she's got any oysters.

Chorus
"Oysters, Oysters, Oysters", said she.
"These are the finest oysters that you will ever see.
I'll sell them three-a-penny but I give 'em to you free,
'Cause I see you're a lover of oysters."

"Landlord, Landlord, Landlord", says I.
"Have you got a little room that's empty and nearby.
Where me and the pretty little oyster girl may lie,
When we bargain for her basket of oysters."

We hadn't been upstairs for a quarter hour more,
When that pretty little oyster girl opened up the door,
She picked my pockets and then down the stair she tore,
She left with her basket of oysters.

"Landlord, Landlord, Landlord", I cried.
"Did you see that little oyster girl drinking by my side?
She's gone and picked my pocket", but the landlord just replied,
"You shouldn't be so fond of your oysters."

Now all you young men be advised by me,
If you meet a pretty oyster girl and you would merry be,
Sew the pockets of your trousers and throw away the key,
Or you'll never get a taste of her oysters.

WS Gilbert

The original Billingsgate market

WS Gilbert was amazed by the dynamism and size of Billingsgate Market.

“With regard to the oyster trade, suffice it here to say that the smacks and other vessels, when they arrive, are moored in front of the wharf, to form what is called "Oyster Street." The 4th of August is still "oyster day," as it used to be, and it is still a wonderful day of bustle and excitement at Billingsgate.

Then on following up a market report he conjectured: " These figures nearly take one's breath away. What on earth becomes of the shells of five hundred million oysters, and the hard red coats of the eighteen hundred thousand lobsters and crabs, besides the shells of the mussels, cockles, and winkles, which are not here enumerated? Another learned authority, Mr. Braithwaite Poole, when he was goods manager of the London and North-Western Railway Company, brought the shell-fish as well as the other fish into his calculations, and startled us with such quantities as fifty million mussels, seventy million cockles, three hundred million periwinkles, five hundred million shrimps, and twelve hundred million herrings. In short, putting this and that together, he told us that about four thousand million fish, weighing a quarter of a million tons, and bringing two million sterling, were sold annually at Billingsgate! Generally speaking, Mr. Poole's figures make a tolerably near approach to those of Mr. Mayhew; and therefore it may possibly be that we Londoners---men and women, boys, girls, and babies---after supplying country folks--- eat about two fish each every average day, taking our fair share between turbot, salmon, and cod at one end of the series, and sprats, periwinkles and shrimps at the other.

Henry Mayhew

Henry Mayhew’s chronicles of London street life in the 19th century London Labour and The London poor were probably used for reference by Dickens. He said the oyster trade was one of the oldest in the city. Oysters were bought off the smacks moored at Billingsgate or further west less so at Hungerford, where Charing Cross Station now stands. Or else they were hawked around the streets. He mentions in 1848 the arrival at Borough market of much larger oysters, called Scuttlemouths brought from the Sussex coasts – presumably some new discovery of an ancient bed - which were highly fashionable for a time, largely because they were a cheap street food, known as coarse oysters, having very thick shells and less meat, possibly what the French refer to as a pied de cheval (horse’s hoof), not dissimilar to the ones the Kent oystermen disparaged from Cancale. His descriptions are precise

“The costermongers have nicknamed the long row of oyster boats moored close alongside the wharf “Oyster Street”. On looking down the line of tangled ropes and masts, it seems as though the little boats would sink with the crowds of men and women thronged together on their decks. It is as busy a scene as one can well behold. Each boat has its black signboard and salesman in his white apron walking up and down “his shop”, and on each deck is a bright pewter pot and tin covered plate, the remains of the salesman’s breakfast...the red cap of the man in the hold bobs up and down as he rattles the shells about with his spade. These holds are filled with oysters – a grey mass of shell and sand – on which is a bushel measure well piled up in the centre…”

Mayhew is also capable of daring insights into the people behind his portraits. He quotes a well bred lady who has come on hard times and turned to selling oysters in the street describing her custom:

“It's not a very few times that gentlemen (I call them so because they're mostly so civil) will stop -- just as it's getting darkish, perhaps, -- and look about them, and then come to me and say very quick: `Two penn'orth for a whet.'
“Ah! some of 'em will look, may be, like poor parsons down upon their luck, and swallow their oysters as if they was taking poison in a hurry. They'll not touchthe bread or butter once in twenty times, but they'll be free with the pepper and vinegar, or, mayhap, they'll say quick and short, `A crust off that.'
“I many a time think that two pen-n'orth is a poor gentleman's dinner.”

Mayhew estimated that 3500 costermongers could have been involved in the trade in London, picking up barrel loads from the boats and hawking them around the streets or selling on to “oyster rooms” or to servants who would take them back to larger houses for elegant dinners. In some taverns it is even suggested oysters were offered free on the bar to encourage drinking.

William Makepeace Thackeray - eating babies

William Makepeace Thackeray said famously of the larger imported oysters coming from America that they were so big “it was like eating a baby”

Charles Dickens - secretive, self contained, solitary

Charles Dickens’ often quoted passage from the Pickwick Papers is worth giving in full because it is so evocative of London and Thames life a century and more later

“Not a very nice neighbourhood this, sir” said Sam, with a touch of the hat, which always preceded his entering into conversation with his master.
“It is not indeed,Sam,” replied Mr Pickwick, surveying the crowded and filthy street through which they were passing.
“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, sir,” said Sam,“that poverty and oysters always seems to go together.”
“I don’t understand, Sam,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“What I mean, sir,” said Sam, “is, that the poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s a oyster stall to every half dozen houses. The streets lined vith ‘em. Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation.”

Dickens also in a Christmas Carol characterizes the oyster as:

“Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster”.

He also wrote a short story called Love and Oysters which he later re-titled The Misplaced Attachment of Mr John Dounce who gave up his friends and family for his infatuation for an oyster girl who refused his advances.

Jonathan Swift - A Bold Man

The Irish satirist Jonathan Swift is often credited with thinking up this thought in the 1700s.

“It was a bold man that first ate on oyster”

Swift was not short of clever one liners, but in this case he borrowed it from Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England which was published 40 years earlier in 1662 and attributed to James 1:

“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters"

This in turn was also made a more poetic growl by John Gay:

The man had a sure palate cover’d o’er
With brass or steel, that on the rocky shore
First broke the oozy oyster’s pearly coat
And risqu’d the living morsel down his throat

Swift obviously overcame his own fear of oysters and went on to pen this poem by which time he was an enthusiastic convert.

Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They'll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They'll please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She'll be fruitful, never fear her.

In letters Swift went as far as passing on a recipe:

“Lord Masham made me go home with him to-night to eat boiled oysters. Take oysters, wash them clean; that is, wash their shells clean; then put your oysters into an earthen pot, with their hollow sides down, then put this pot into a great kettle with water, and so let them boil. Your oysters are boiled in their own liquor, and not mixed water.”

And eventually in Gulliver’s Travels he has his hero gathering oysters and limpets on the shore (which he eats raw for fear of lighting a fire that might attract attention) to conserve his provisions

Samuel Pepys - Bardsey oysters

Samuel Pepys mentions oysters frequently in his diaries. He also records twice buying pearl necklaces, one for £4/10/- in 1660 and then six years later another for £80. More frequently the mentions illustrate the way in which oysters were part of a gentleman’s life. In 1660 he was at sea:

“In the afternoon the Captain would by all means have me up to his cabin, and there treated me huge nobly, giving me a barrel of pickled oysters, and opened another for me, and a bottle of wine, which was a very great favour.”

And then a few days later, we discover he was not such a great sailor, but oysters were a catch-all cure all anyway:

“This day, about nine o'clock in the morning, the wind grew high, and we being among the sands lay at anchor; I began to be dizzy and squeamish. Before dinner my Lord sent for me down to eat some oysters, the best my Lord said that ever he ate in his life, though I have ate as good at Bardsey. After dinner, and all the afternoon I walked upon the deck to keep myself from being sick, and at last about five o'clock, went to bed.”

Bardsey might have been the holy island off north Wales, or nearer and perhaps more likely Bawdsey in Suffolk, either way, both would have had copious resources.

Shakespear - rich honesty dwells

Shakespeare was fluent. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, he has Pistol saying:

“Why, then the world's mine oyster.
Which I with sword will open”

In Richard II,

“Off goes his bonnet to an oyster wench”

Then this intriguing line in Much Ado

“Love may transform me to an oyster”

Then there is this curious and haunting image from As You Like It when Touchstone pronounces:

“Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster”

And King Lear’s Fool jests:

“Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?”

Chaucer on oysters

The language of each era offers its own inflections and insights. From the first days of print, the oyster was at hand.

Chaucer had it as a useful rhyme here quite interestingly elastic:

In the Summoners Tale

For many a muscle and many an oystre,
Whan othere men han ben ful wel at eyse,
Hath been oure foode,

And in the Monk’s Tale

“Know that a monk when he is cloister-less
Is likened to a fish that is water-less
This is to seyn, a monk out of his cloister
But thilke text held he not worth an oyster
And I seyde his opinion was good.”