A LITTLE GUTTERSNIPE
by
Valentine & T.C. Sterndale–Bennett (1916)

Submitted by Ron Mortlock.

It is quite a simple story of an ordinary type
And the hero of it’s only just a little gutter-snipe
There’s not much about it that’s particularly new
But he told it me exactly as I’m going to tell it to you.
I fancy it is quite a year or more since it took place
But its left behind a memory that nothing can efface
And I know that he’ll remember it when years have passed away
How the Fresh Air Fund once took him to the country for a day.
‘Blimey Guv’nor I remember it, it was a ‘eavenly day
We went down to Eppin’ Forest in the country miles away
The trees they was in ‘undreds, my word they was a sight.
All growin’ thick like coppers dahn our street on Sunday night!
There was birds, they weren’t in cages, they just flew about on wings
And butterflies and bumblebees, sort o’ coloured flies wot stings
There was little sheep wiv woolly coats a’oppin’ round and round
Wot ‘ad got no labels stuck on ‘em at one and four a pound.
But the flowers ‘swelp me guv’nor, they fairly giv me fits
The colours, why they beat me muvver’s Sunday ‘at to bits.
They let me pick ‘em, decent o’ the owner I must say
But p’r’aps he knew I doesn’t get an outin’ ev’ry day.
Would I like to go down there again – why guvnor, if I could
I’d sell papers for a solid week for nuffin’ - that I would
I’d promise to pick no flowers at all, for I eggspect
If we did it sort o’ regular the owner might object.
I’d even walk there all the way, I wouldn’t want no train
If I only thought them fresh air blokes would take me there again!
One little shilling does it – and I think you’d be content
To hand it over gladly if you knew just what it meant,
For if you could see the joy that it can make or it has made,
Well I reckon you would think yourself a thousand times repaid.
It only means a drink or a cigar to you perhaps,
But it means a touch of heaven to these little ragged chaps
Just an hour or two of brightness in their misery and strife,
Just a glimpse of God’s own sunshine in some little East End life.