Smuggling: 'brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk!

Smuggling has always been a way people have used to earn money by cheating Customs and Excise men out of their dues. As an island race, the people of Britain have probably indulged in it more than most.

A population with a strong government intent on extracting every bit of tax levied on things like tobacco and drink, the people of Britain have always had plenty of incentive to ‘import’ items into the country without feeling it necessary to pay duty on them.


Of course, smuggling easily and quickly found its way into folk lore; Rudyard Kipling wrote his well known poem, ‘The Smugglers Song’, and Charles Dickens mentions the activity in the early chapters of A Tale of Two Cities. Here are both – poem and extract.
A Smuggler's Song
Words by Rudyard Kipling, adapted and with music by Michael Longcor.Music Copyright ©1988 by Firebird Arts & Music/BMI.Used by permission
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie,Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
ChorusFive and twenty ponies trotting through the dark-Brandy for the Parson, and 'Baccy for the Clerk;Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,And Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to findLittle barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,Don't you shout to come and look, not use 'em for your play.Put the brushwood back again, and they'll be gone next day.
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;If you see a tired horse lying down inside;If your mother mends a coat that's cut about and tore;If the lining's wet and warm--Don't you ask no more!

Chorus
If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,You be mindful what you say, and mindful what is said.If they call you "pretty maid," and chuck you 'neath the chin,Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!
Knocks and footsteps round the house, whistles after dark-You've no call for running out until the house dogs bark.Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie-They don't fret to follow when the Gentlmen go by!

Chorus
If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance,That you'll be give a dainty doll that's all the way from France,With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood-A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

Final Chorus
Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark-Brandy for the Parson, and 'Baccy for the Clerk;Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie-And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Charles Dickens hints at smuggling in the port of Dover in A Tale of Two Cities
The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.
A Tale of Two Cities

Robert L. Fielding