Ye butcher, ye baker, ye candlestick-maker : Being sundry amusing and instructive verses for both old and young, adorned with numerous woodcuts

This lively collection of illustrated verses tours the trades, characters, and customs of an imagined old-fashioned town. From the hardworking housewife and bustling baker to the country doctor, town crier, schoolmaster, printer, merchant, pirate, and brewer, each poem offers a brisk, playful portrait in mock-archaic language. The accompanying woodcuts add a cheerful visual sense of everyday life.

Alongside its humor, the book gently compares the past with the modern world. Doctors once traveled by horseback, criers announced the news in the street, and printers sold their freshly made chapbooks by hand; now telephones, newspapers, canned goods, commerce, and new fashions have changed their occupations. Short, rhyming, and easy to follow, these verses are suited to listeners young and old, with plenty of quaint details, comic exaggeration, and historical atmosphere.