Sexual meaning of chimney and chimney sweeps in the 18th century?

[Robin Hamilton]

> Citation: [1720 date given for Masquerade Ballad] 1897, Merry Songs
> and Ballads: Volume 3 edited by John S. Farmer, Privately Printed for
> Subscribers Only.

I'd be very bloody careful about any date that tracks back to an origin in
John Stephen Farmer -- he was well ahead of his time, but he could sometimes
be quite catastrophically wrong.  (As, for instance, dating a version of The
Stalling of the Rogue to 1756 (?) from Bampfield Moore Carew when it's
actually from Harrison Ainsworth in 1848.)

Tracking the actual mechanism of quite why and how Farmer screwed up so
royally is a joke and a half.  Part of it is that he was (as another person
on this list said) pathologically sociopathic.  He virtually never left the
house other than to attend meetings of the Spiritualist Society.

Why there's a hole the size of a mountain in _Musa Pedestris_ around the
years 1725-1800.  When the buggers were hymning Jack Sheppard on the Street,
Farmer had cotton wool resolutely stuffed in his ears.

Just a stray thot.

Robin

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