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"Wot Cher! Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" was a popular British music hall comedy song written in 1891 by the actor and singer Albert Chevalier. The score was by his brother and manager Charles Ingle. Chevalier developed a stage persona as the archetypal Cockney and was a celebrated variety artist, with the nickname of "The Singing Costermonger". When first performed it was known simply as "Wot Cher!" The song describes the sudden endowment of apparent wealth on a poor family. The song's verse is in a minor key, and then the chorus moves into the relative major . It was sung by Shirley Temple in the 1939 film ''A Little Princess''. == Meaning == The song is full of working class cockney rhyming slang and idiomatic phrasing. The song tells the story of a family who live in an alley, a passageway off the street usually lined with crowded tenements, near the Old Kent Road, one of the poorest districts in London. They are visited by a toff , a well dressed man, who must have been a gentleman because he took his topper (tophat) off in the presence of the narrator's missus (wife). The mans speech however betrays that he is lower class himself when he informs the lady that her uncle Tom has 'popped off' , slang for died. He must have looked odd in his appearance too because he is described as a 'geezer' which is an eccentric old man. He says this is not a 'sell' ie it's the truth not a story but she has been left a little donkey 'shay'. A "shay" might be a contraction of "chaise", a small light horse-drawn carriage. The refrain describes the reaction of the neighbours to the news of the couple's good fortune. "Wot cher!" is a contraction of "watch you" a common Cockney greeting. This was in turn was a contraction of "What cheer" used as a greeting since the Middle ages. To "knock em" is an idiomatic phrase , to knock them on the head ie to stun them. The song goes on to describe the initial unreliability of the moke (slang for donkey) and the way the couple use it to impress the neighbourhood by doing the "grand", behaving in a grandiose way as if they were "carriage folk", a family who could afford to own their own carriage , and who might drive a "four in 'and" , a carriage with four horses, in Rotten Row , one of the most fashionable horse rides in London. A "cove" is a low class fellow . A "Dutch" is a wife, being cockney rhyming slang for "Duchess of Fife" which rhymes with "wife". She says "I 'ates a Bus because it's low!", in order to tease her lodger, meaning she now considers the bus to be low class and beneath her. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wot Cher! Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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