1 note
[Note 059.3] "Any amount of chaps and gals all their Sunday fal-de-rals" - The Oxford English Dictionary gives "fal-de-rals" as "gewgaw (A gaudy trifle, plaything, or ornament, a pretty thing of little value, a toy or bauble), trifle; a flimsy thing" So here it is probably referring to accessories to dresses etc.
[Note 059.4] "life on the ocean main" is probably "Life on the Ocean Wave" (Roud V3089) by H Sargent written about 1842 [Ref: British Library H.1661.(7.)]. It has over 70 entries in the Roud Index so was presumably very well known.
[Note 059.6] "with its songs and sandwiches" - It was usual for working class folk to take their own food. In her description of her trip to New Brighton, Alice Foley wrote "Having risen at a very early hour on the great day, mother was to be found busily cutting piles of sandwiches and currant cake". [Ref: Horn]
[Note 059.5] "Then there's Bertie with his eye-glass" - "Bertie" is name associated with the upper classes (e.g "I'm Burlington Bertie, I rise at 10:30" BL H.3993.r.(4.)) so Bertie here is the archetypal toff. An eye-glass is a monocle, fashionable at the time. "Beastly-bally-awfully-vulgar" emphasises Bertie's status and lampoons upper class speech mannerisms of the period (See for example, the Jeeves & Wooster novels of P.G. Wodehouse). The Oxford English Dictionary gives "Bally" as a "vague intensive (usually as a euphemism for bloody): confounded, dashed, blasted. Used for emphasis: confoundedly, extremely, very". It was not unknown for upper class passengers to save money by travelling third class thus contributing to the social mixing that was such a feature of the railways.
[Note 059.0] The song gives a description of a working-class excursion that agrees well with those of participants and observers. The song was performed by Lily Langtree. The fact that she was widely known to be a former mistress of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII); who was known to the public as "Bertie" presumably added a frisson to the performance.
[Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_Langtry#Royal_mistress]