Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. The custom of hawking led many vendors to create custom melodic phrases to attract attention. At a time when a large proportion of the population were illiterate, the cries of street vendors and town criers provided the public with important messages, whether those messages were commercial in nature or of more general public interest. Street cries were part of the aural fabric of street life from antiquity.