Britain: Lament for a Lost Currency

WHEN Decimal Day dawned last week, the British kept the pound (or quid) and such variations as the 5-, 10-and 20-pound notes. But in dividing the pound into 100 new pence instead of 240 old pennies, they lost all their old coins. The ha'penny, thrup'ny and sixpenny pieces and the shilling in all its variations are being withdrawn from circulation. They lost something more: many colorful examples of cockney slang, which substitutes rhymed phrases for action words--such as "gawd forbids" for bothersome kids and "trouble and strife" for a nagging wife. No rhymes have yet surfaced for the new currency, hence the following lament.

Life's not the same since the decimals

came.

A Lady Godiva is still a fiver,

A lost and found exactly a pound,

A saucepan lid the same as a quid,

And bees and honey, as ever, is

money.

(Tourists take note: a hoot and

holler

Even today is a U.S. dollar.)

But there's no more talk of a rogue

and villain,

The cockney term for the good old

shillin'.

Forget about the lord of the manor,

The term once applied to a sixpence

(or tanner).

And speak nevermore of a cockle

and hen,

For the blighters have gone and

banished the ten.

Now there's five pence, ten pence,

50 pence too,

And all are as dreary as mud on a

shoe.

Or is there rhymed sense in these

damnable pence?

Might one, for example, call two

pence a deuce,

Which then could be rhymed with

sauce for the goose?

The one might become a thimble

and thumb

And the half, of course, a cow and

a calf.

In cockney slang, there may yet be

a laugh.

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