Onions (allium cepa)

            In Ancient Egypt, the onion was revered as a symbol for eternity, due to its circle-within-a-circle shape just inside its skin [1].  Given the onion’s presence in almost all ancient cultures that left behind evidence of their existence, the vegetable seems to have existed eternally [2].  The onion, classified as allim cepa[3] and prized for its ability to help with thirst as well as ease with which it is preserved, has become ubiquitous in the world.  Historians’ best guess for the onion’s origin is Iran and Pakistan.  From these areas, trade routes allowed the vegetable to travel to Egypt, where it was quickly planted and became a payment for labor as well as food [4].  The onion was not universally liked; the ancient Indians regarded the onion as a forbidden vegetable due to its strong odor [5].  Alexander the Great allowed the widespread consumption of onions, since he spread the vegetable as his conquests extended across the Meditarranean, Asian, and Northern African areas [6].  New trade routes of the Middle Ages brought the onions to the rest of Europe, where they became one of three main vegetables consumed by the medieval populations, particularly after being pickled [7]. In the Americas, some reports say that the onion was the first vegetable planted by the colonists [8].

            For the sake of analyzing “Buy my 4 ropes of hard onyons,” attention is given to the history of onion local to England.  In Alexandre Dumas’ 1873 publication Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, he wrote about the onion’s position in English and French relations [9].  Since the French province of Brittany was known for growing onions, farmers and merchants would set off with groups of ships filled with their onions.  These ships would land in England, where the merchants would try to sell the French-grown vegetables.  However, the English people would more often buy from English sellers due to familiarity.  Dumas detailed how a French seller asked a translator to write a sign in English that read “THE ENGLISH ONION IS NOT GOOD.”  The French seller got into a fight with an insulted English peddler, but was eventually allowed to sell his onions.  Londoners, that very day, bought every one of his French-grown vegetables and since that fight were said to be prized above the English onions.

            The onion-seller depicted in Buy My 4 ropes of Hard Onyons was a personage very well-known to the English people.  Charles Hindley detailed the peddlers, called criers, in London in his History of the Cries of London in the later 19^th century, about the same time of Dumas’ publication.  These publications shed light on the function of the crier depicted in the work.  Hindley draws attention to the volume and constant nature of the town criers’, merchants who peddled their wares in the streets [10].  In 1694, laws were put into place that kept the peddlers from shouting what they had to sell and banned them from selling in popular shop-towns, so that shopkeepers could keep the business that had been going to the distracting criers [11].  The criers of London were so famous and so apart of London culture that they were sung about in folk songs, one of which included the line “Come buy my ropes of onions, ho!”[12].  The onion seller, therefore, in Marcellus Laroon’s engraving, was an integral part of London’s society.

            Laroon sought out to do what no one else had done before: bring individualism to the London’s peddlers, no matter what careers they had or classes they belonged to.  Laroon made his living painting portraits for wealthy patrons [13], much different subjects than the peddlers, given their lower class.  Previous works that had included drawings or engravings of the criers always portrayed them in a grid, numbering many to a page.  Laroon chose to give each crier or other personage their own page, what class they belonged to, showing his tendency towards portraiture since he gave each individual attention [14].  

            The full title of the work that included the engraving analyzed was “Cryes of the City of London Drawne After the Life,” drawing attention to the idea that Laroon had modeled his engravings after actual inhabitants of London’s streets, [15] and the subject is shown as he would be seen by Londoners.  With his mouth open, the crier is in the middle of that for which he was known: shouting, presumably shouting the title of the work.  His gaze is directed not to the artist, but to someone to his left and even behind him.  He is active: he does not stop for potential buyers, though he is shouting to them.  The onions he is carrying are his entire profession, and with evidence that he not only has to compete with shopkeepers, but French sellers, the onions take on additional significance.  As he carries four ropes of such, rather obviously heavy in the way his shoulders hunch with the effort of carrying them, the weight of the onions is twofold: physical and mental.

            Beyond the physical weight of so many dense, bulbous vegetables, the mental weight may have also taken a toll on the crier.  He relied on the fickle needs and wants of those he was peddling to.  If the French were selling better varieties of onions than he had access to, or if there was a more popular onion seller, then this particular seller depicted has very little hope for his means that day.  His frayed hat would then only become more frayed.  The hold he has under his apron, presumably to protect the money he may have made, gets tighter as he becomes guarded over his little means of living.  His cries may get more desperate, needing the buyers to hear him over all the others.  The shouted “buy my 4 ropes of hard onyons” becomes a plea, rather than a selling tactic.  The onion, having traveled throughout time from the Middle East to the criers of London, becomes a symbol not of eternity, but of life itself.  As concentric circles surround themselves within the onion’s bulb, so the cycle of buying and selling consumes the crier, becoming his only hope for making a living.

--By Amy Endres