Which music hall singer was famed for her rude songs, including 'I Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas'?
Double entendre About Nothing" is a pun on the Elizabethan use of "no-thing" as slang for vagina. In the UK, starting in the 19th century, Victorian morality disallowed sexual innuendo in the theatre as being unpleasant, particularly for the ladies in the audience. In music hall songs, on the other hand, this kind of innuendo remained very popular. Marie Lloyd's song "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas" is an example of this. (Music hall in this context is to be compared with Variety, the one common, low-class and vulgar; the other demi-monde, worldly and sometimes chic.) In the 20th century there
Marie Lloyd songs in front of a council committee. She sang "Oh! Mr Porter" (composed for her by George Le Brunn), "A Little of What You Fancy" and "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas", which she retitled "I Sits Amongst the Cabbages and Leeks" after some protest. The numbers were sung in such a way that the committee had no reason to find anything amiss. Feeling disgruntled at the council's interference, she then rendered Alfred Tennyson's drawing-room ballad "Come into the Garden, Maud" and displayed leers and nudges, to illustrate each innuendo. The committee were left stunned at the performance, but