ABSTRACT
Pearlies are often held to symbolise the spirit o f London - good humoured, free-and-easy and enjoying a bit o f a spree. Like the Beefeaters in the Tower, they demonstrate our love o f pageantry and tradition. They link us, if only vicariously, to the London o f Bartholomew Fair and Bankside, to the cockney characters in Dickens, to the costers o f M ayhew and Phil May. Certainly, the 600 or more people w ho fill St Martin-in-the-Fields for the annual Pearly Festival are given every encouragement to believe that they are participating in a great cockney occasion, while the cameraclicking tourists, gazing at the spectacle with incredulity, seem to believe that they are witnesing the performance o f some ancient British rite - a plebeian equivalent to the Trooping o f the Colour or the Changing o f the Guard.
