IV. SIGNS OF ANIMALS AND MONSTERS…

IV. SIGNS OF ANIMALS AND MONSTERS

It is in many cases impossible to draw a line of demarcation between signs borrowed from the animal kingdom and those taken from heraldry: we cannot now determine, for instance, whether by the White Horse is meant simply an equus caballus, or the White Horse of the Saxons, and that of the House of Hanover; nor, whether the White Greyhound represented originally the supporter of the arms of Henry VII., or simply the greyhound that courses “poor puss” on our meadows in the hunting-season. For this reason this chapter has been placed as a sequel to the heraldic signs.

As a rule, fantastically coloured animals are unquestionably of heraldic origin: their number is limited to the Lion, the Boar, the Hart, the Dog, the Cat, the Bear, and in a few instances the Bull; all other animals were generally represented in what was meant for their natural colours. The heraldic lions have already been treated of in the last chapter; but sometimes we meet with the lion as a fera naturæ, recognisable by such names as the BROWN LION, the YELLOW LION, or simply the Lion. There is a public-house in Philadelphia with the sign of the Lion, having underneath the following lines:

“The lion roars, but do not fear, Cakes and beer sold here.”

Which inscription is certainly as unnecessary as that over the nonformidable-looking lions under the celebrated fountain in the Spanish Alhambra, “O thou who beholdest these lions crouching, fear not, life is wanting to enable them to exhibit their fury.”

Lions occur in numerous combinations with other animals and objects, which in many cases seem simply the union of two signs, as the LION AND DOLPHIN, Market Place, Leicester; the LION AND TUN, at Congleton: the LION AND SWAN in the same locality may owe its joint title to the name of the street in which the public-house is situated, viz., Swanbank. The combination of the LION AND PHEASANT, Wylecop, Shrewsbury, seems rather mysterious, unless the Pheasant has been substituted for the Cock, just as in the THREE PHEASANTS AND SCEPTRE, they were substituted for the THREE PIGEONS AND SCEPTRE. As for the COCK AND LION, a very common sign, their meeting, if we may believe ancient naturalists, is anything but agreeable to the lion.

“The lyon dreadeth the white cocke, because he breedeth a precious stone called allectricium, like to the stone that hight Calcedonius. And for that the Cocke beareth such a stone, the Lyon specially abhorreth him.”[196]

Some more information about this stone may be gathered from a mediæval treatise on natural history:

“Allectorius est lapis obscuro cristallo sĩlis e vẽtriculo galli castrati trahitur post quartũ añũ. Ultima eius quãtitas ẽ ad magnitudinẽ fabe--quẽ gladiator. hñs in ore penanct̃. ĩvictus ac sine siti.”[197]

The LION AND BALL owes its origin to another mediæval notion:

“Some report that those who rob the tiger of her young use a policy to detaine their damme from following them, by casting sundry looking-glasses in the way, whereat she useth to long to gaze, whether it be to beholde her owne beauty or because when she seeth her shape in the glasse she thinketh she seeth one of her young ones, and so they escape the swiftness of her pursuit.”[198]

The looking-glass thrown to the tiger was spherical, so that she could see her own image reduced as it rolled under her paw, and would therefore be more likely to mistake it for her cub. Lions and tigers being almost synonymous in mediæval zoology, the spherical glass was generally represented with both. In sculpture it could only be represented by a ball, which afterwards became a terrestrial globe, and the lion resting his paw upon it, passed into an emblem of royalty.

In the last century an innkeeper at Goodwood put up as his sign the CENTURION’S LION, the figure-head of the frigate Centurion, in which Admiral Anson made a voyage round the world. Under it was the following inscription:--

“Stay, Traveller, a while and view One that has travelled more than you, Quite round the Globe in each Degree, Anson and I have plow’d the Sea; Torrid and Frigid Zones have pass’d, And safe ashore arriv’d at last. In Ease and Dignity appear He--in the House of Lords, I--here.”

When Anson was in general disfavour about the Minorca affair, the following biting reply to this inscription went the round of the newspapers:--

“The Traveller’s reply to the Centurion’s Lion.

“O King of Beasts, what pity ’twas to sever A pair whose Union had been just for ever! So diff’rently advanced! ’twas surely wrong, When you’d been fellow-travellers so long. Had you continued with him, had he born To see the English Lion dragg’d and torn? Brittannia made at every vein to bleed, A ravenous Crew of worthless Men to feed? No; Anson once had sought the Land’s Relief; Now--Ease and Dignity have banish’d Grief. Go, rouse him then, to save a sinking nation, Or call him up, the partner of your station. We often see two Monsters for a sign, Inviting to good Brandy, Ale, or Wine.”

The TIGER is of rare occurrence on signboards; there is a GOLDEN TIGER in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and a bird-fancier on Tower Dock, not far from the then famous menagerie which attracted crowds to the Tower, chose the LEOPARD AND TIGER for his sign. In 1665 there was a LEOPARD Tavern in Chancery Lane; the same animal is still occasionally seen on public-house signs. Generally speaking, the carnivorous animals are not great favourites, and those named above are almost the only examples that occur. As for the popularity of the BEAR, it is entirely to be attributed to the old vulgar pleasure of seeing him ill-treated, a relic of the once common amusements of bear-baiting and whipping. The colours in which he is represented are the BLACK BEAR, the BROWN BEAR, the WHITE BEAR, and in a very few instances (as at Leeds) the RED BEAR.

Besides bear-whipping and bear-baiting, another barbarous fancy led sometimes to the choice of this animal for a sign,--viz., the lamentable pun which the publican made upon the article he sold, and the name of the animal. Will. Rose of Coleraine, in Ireland, for instance, issued trades tokens with a bear passant, on the reverse EXCHANGE.FOR.A.CAN (i.e., of Bear!), and as if the pun was not ridiculous enough, there was a rose as a rebus for his name. Thomas Dawson of Leeds perpetrated a similar pun on his token, dated 1670; it says,--BEWARE.OF.Y^{E}.BEARE, evidently alluding to the strength of his beer.[199]

Bears used often to be represented with chains round their neck, (as on the stone sign in Addle Street, with the date 1610.) This led to the following amusing rejoinder:--It happened that a pedestrian artist had run up a bill at a road-side inn which he was unable to pay, whereupon the landlord, in order to settle the account, commissioned him to paint a bear for his sign. The painter, wanting to make a little besides, suggested that, if the bear was painted with a chain round his neck, which he strongly advised him to have, it would cost him half-a-guinea more, on account of the gold, &c. But the host was not agreeable to this extra expense; accordingly, the sign was painted, (but in distemper,) and the painter went his way. Not many days after it began to rain, and the bear was completely washed from the board. The first time the landlord met the painter, he accused him in great dudgeon of having imposed upon him, for that, in less than a month, the bear had gone from his signboard. “Now, look here,” replied the painter; “did not I advise you to have a chain put about the bear’s neck? but you would not hear of it; had that been done he could not have run away, and would still be at your door.”

Among the most famous Bear inns and taverns were,--the Bear “at Bridgefoot,” i.e., at the foot of London Bridge, on the Southwark side, for many centuries one of the most popular London taverns; as early as the reign of Richard III. we find it the resort of the aristocratic pleasure-seeker. Thus, in March 1463/4, it was repeatedly visited by Jocky of Norfolk, the then Sir John Howard, who went there to drink wine and shoot at the target, at which he lost 20 pence.[200] It is also frequently named by the writers of the seventeenth century.[201] Pepys mentions it April 3, 1667. “I hear how the king is not so well pleased of this marriage between the Duke of Richmond and Mrs Stuart, as is talked; and that he by a wile did fetch her to the Bear at the Bridgefoot, where a coach was ready, and they are stole away into Kent without the king’s leave.” The wine of this establishment did not meet with the approbation of the fastidious searchers after claret in 1691.

“Through stinks of all sorts, both the simple and compound, Which through narrow alleys, our senses do confound, We came to the Bear, which we now understood Was the first house in Southwark built after the flood; And has such a succession of vintners known, Not more names were e’er in Welsh pedigrees shown; But claret with them was so much out of fashion, That it has not been known there a whole generation.”

Last Search after Claret in Southwark, 1691.

This old tavern was pulled down in 1761, at the removal of the houses from London Bridge. “Thursday last the workmen employed in pulling down the Bear Tavern, at the foot of London Bridge, found several pieces of gold and silver coin of Queen Elizabeth, and other money, to a considerable value.”--Public Advertiser, Dec. 26, 1761. Coins, no doubt, dropped between the boards by the revellers of bygone generations.

There was another famous Bear Tavern at the foot of Strandbridge; the vicinity of the “Bear” and “Paris Gardens” had evidently suggested the choice of those signs. At the Bear Tavern in the Strand, the earliest meetings of the Society of Antiquaries took place, when there were as yet only three members, Mr Talman, Mr Bagford, and Mr Wanley. Their first meeting was on Friday, Nov. 5, 1707; subsequently they met at the Young Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, and then at the Fountain, opposite Chancery Lane. Mr Talman was the first president; Mr Wanley was a savant of considerable acquirements. It was he who purchased Bagford’s MS. collection for the Harleian Library.

The WHITE BEAR at Soper’s Lane End, (now Queen Street,) Cheapside, was the shop in which Baptist Hicks, as a silk mercer, by selling silks, velvets, lace, and plumes to the courtiers of James I., amassed that fortune which led to the Peerage, and the title of Viscount Campden. There was another White Bear Tavern in Thames Street, of which the sign is still extant, a stone bas-relief with the date 1670, and the initials M. E. In 1252, Henry III. received a white bear as a present from the king of Norway; and in King Edward VI.’s time, May 29, 1549, the French ambassadors, after they had supped with the Duke of Somerset, went to the Thames and saw the bear hunted in the river.[202] Such an occurrence might easily lead to the adoption of this animal as a sign in that locality. The following little fact connected with another White Bear Inn forcibly calls up the dark ages before gas was invented. In 1656, John Wardall gave by will to the Grocers’ Company a tenement called “The White Bear in Walbrook,” upon condition that they should yearly pay to the church-wardens of St Botolph’s, Billingsgate, £4 to provide a lanthorn with a candle, so that passengers might go with more security to and from the waterside during the night. This lamp was to be fixed at the north-east corner of the parish church of St Botolph, from St Bartholomew’s-day to Lady-day; out of this sum £1 was to be paid to the sexton for taking care of the lanthorn. The annuity is now applied to a lamp lighted with gas in the place prescribed by the will.[203]

The White Bear Inn, at the east end of Piccadilly, was for more than a century one of the busiest coaching houses. In this house died Luke Sullivan, engraver of some of Hogarth’s works; also Chatelain, another engraver, the last in such penurious circumstances, that he was buried at the expense of some friends in the poor ground of St James’s workhouse. It was in this inn that West passed the first night in London on his arrival from America. The sign of the White Bear is still common; at Springbank, Hull, there is one called, with zoological precision, the POLAR BEAR. This may, however, refer to the constellation.

The BEAR’S HEAD occurs in Congleton, Cheshire; probably it is a family crest, the same as the BEAR’S PAW,--both of which, it is believed, occur only in that county and in Lancashire. The Bear is also met in frequent combinations; one of the most common is the BEAR AND BACCHUS, which looks like a hieroglyphic rendering of the words Beer and Wine, having the additional attraction of alliteration. Since mythology does not mention a Beer-God, the animal was probably chosen as a rebus for the drink. In the BEAR AND RUMMER, Mortimer Street, the rummer implies the sale of liquors, in the same manner as the Punchbowl is often used. The BEAR AND HARROW seems to be a union of two signs. In the seventeenth century it formed the house-decoration of an ordinary at the entrance of Butcher Row, (now Picket Street, Strand.) One night in 1692, Nat Lee, the mad poet, in going home drunk from this house, fell down in the snow and was stifled.

The Elephant, in the middle ages, was nearly always represented with the castle on his back. For instance, in the Latin MS., Bestiarium Harl., 4751, a tower is strapped to him, in which are seen five knights in chain-armour, with swords, battle-axes, and cross-bows, their emblazoned shields hanging round the battlements; and, in the description of the animal, it is said, “In eorum dorsis, P[er] si et Indi ligneis turribus collocati tamquam de muro jaculis dimicant.” The rook, in Chinese chess-boards, still represents an elephant thus armed.

Cutlers in the last century frequently used the ELEPHANT AND CASTLE as their sign, on account of it being the crest of the Cutlers’ Company, who had adopted it in reference to the ivory used in the trade. Hence the stone bas-relief in Belle Sauvage Yard, which was the sign of some now forgotten shopkeeper, who had chosen it out of regard to his landlords. The houses in the yard are the property of the Cutlers’ Company. The ELEPHANT AND CASTLE public-house, Newington Butts, was formerly a famous coaching inn, but, by the introduction of railways, it has dwindled down to a starting-point for omnibuses. The occasion of this sign being put up was the following:--Some time about 1714, a Mr Conyers, an apothecary in Fleet Street, and a great collector of antiquities, was digging in a gravel-pit in a field near the Fleet, not far from Battle Bridge, when he discovered the skeleton of an elephant. A spear with a flint head, fixed to a shaft of goodly length, was found near it, whence it was conjectured to have been killed by the British in a fight with the Romans,[204] though now, since the late discoveries concerning the flint implements, very different conclusions would be drawn from this fact. But be this as it may, that elephant, whether post-tertiary or Roman, gave its name to the public-house soon after erected in that locality; and, regardless of the venerable antiquity of this origin, it is often now-a-days jocularly degraded into the PIG AND TINDER-BOX.

What is meant by the whimsical combination of the ELEPHANT AND FISH, at Sandhill, Newcastle, is hard to say, unless we assume the fish originally to have been a dragon. Between elephants and dragons there was supposed to be a deadly strife, and their battles are recorded by Strabo, Pliny, Ælianus, and their mediæval followers. The fight always ended in the death of both, the dragon strangling the elephant in the windings of his tail, when the elephant, falling down dead, crushed the dragon by his weight.

The ELEPHANT AND FRIAR, in Bristol, may possibly have originated from the representation of an elephant accompanied by a man in Eastern costume, whose flowing garment might be mistaken for the gown of a friar. That sign would have admirably suited the fancy of the landlord of the Elephant and Castle, formerly in Leeds; his name happening to be Priest, he had the following inscription above his door:

“He is a priest who lives within, Gives advice gratis, and administers gin.”

In the seventeenth century, the REINDEER began to make its appearance on the signboard, where it has kept its place to the present day. At first it was called Rained Deer, as we see from the newspapers of that period:--“Mr John Chapman, York carrier in Hull, at the sign of the Rained Deer.” This led to the answer of a sailor who had made a voyage to Lapland, and on his return, being asked if he had seen any rained deer? “No,” answered Jack, “I have seen it rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks, but I never saw it rain deer.” The first instance we find of this animal on the signboards of London, is in 1682, when there was

“Right Irish Usquebaugh to be sold at the Reindeer in Tuttle Street, Westminster, in greater or smaller quantities, by one from Ireland.”--London Gazette, Nov. 23-27, 1682.

Pepys mentions it as early as October 7, 1667, at Bishop Stortford, as the sign of a tavern kept by a Mrs Elizabeth Aynsworth. Of this woman a good story is told:--Mrs A. had been a noted procuress at Cambridge, for which reason she was expelled the town by the University authorities. Subsequently keeping the Reindeer at Bishop Stortford, the Vice-chancellor and some of the heads of colleges, on their way to London, had occasion to sleep at her house, little thinking under whose roof they were. She received them nobly, served the supper up in plate, and brought forth the best wine; but, when the hour of reckoning came, would receive no money, “for,” said she, “I am too much indebted to the Vice-chancellor for expelling me from Cambridge, which has been the means of making my fortune.” For all this, however, she does not seem to have mended her evil courses, for, shortly after, she was implicated in the murder of a Captain Wood in Essex, for which one man was executed, whilst Mrs Aynsworth was only acquitted by some flaw in the evidence.

DRAGONS, when apothecaries’ signs, were not derived from heraldry, but were used to typify certain chemical actions. In an old German work on Alchemy,[205] one of the plates represents a dragon eating his own tail; underneath are the words,--

“Das ist gros Wunder und seltsam List, Die höchst Artzney im Drachen ist.”[206]

In mediæval alchemy, the dragon seems to have been the emblem of Mercury, which appears from these words on the same print: “Mercurius recte et chymice præcipitatus vel sublimatus in sua propria aqua resolutus et rursum coagulatus.”[207] To which are added the following rhymes:--

“Ein Drach im Walde wohnend ist, An Gifft demselben nichts gebrisst; Wenn er die Sonne sieht und das Fewr So speusst er Gifft fleugt ungehewr, Kein Lebend Thier für ihm mag gnesn Der Basilisc mag ihm nit gleich wesn. Wer diesen Wurmb wol weiss zu tödtn Der kömpt auss allen seinen Nöthen. Sein Farber in seinem Todt sich vermehrn; Auss seiner Gifft Artzney thut werden. Sein Gifft verzehrt er gar und gans Und frisst sein eign vergiften Schwantz. Da mus er in sich selbst volbringen Der edelst Balsam auss ihm thut tringen, Solch grosse Tugend wird man schawen Welches alle Weysn sich hoch erfrawen.”[208]

Hence the dragon became one of the “properties” of the chemist and apothecary, was painted on his drug-pots, hung up as his sign, and some dusty, stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling in the laboratory had to do service for the monster, and inspire the vulgar with a profound awe for the mighty man who had conquered the vicious reptile.

The SALAMANDER was another animal of the same class, and also represented certain chemical actions, owing to its fabled powers of resisting the fire. The notions of early naturalists concerning this creature were very extraordinary. A Bestiarium in the Royal Library of Brussels, No. 10074, says that it lives on pure fire, and produces a substance which is neither silk nor linen, nor yet wool, of which garments are made that can only be cleaned by fire; and that if the animal itself falls into a burning fire, it would at once extinguish the flames. Bossewell, besides incombustibility, attributes to the salamander some other qualities fully as extravagant.

“Among all venomenous beastes he is the mightiest of poyson and venyme. For if he creepe upon a tree, he infecteth all the apples or other fruit that groweth thereon with his poyson, and killeth them which eate thereof. Which apples, also, if they happen to falle into any pitte of water, the strength of the poyson killeth them that drinke thereof.”[209]

This incombustibility made it a very proper sign for alchemists and apothecaries, and with the last it still continues as such, at least on the Continent. Why the early Venetian printers adopted it as a sign is less evident. In France it was certainly a favourite sign with this class of workmen; but this was from the fact of its having been the badge of Francis I., a liberal patron of the arts and sciences.

The qualities attributed to the UNICORN caused this animal to be used as a sign both by chemists and goldsmiths. It was believed that the only way to capture it was to leave a handsome young virgin in one of the places where it resorted. As soon as the animal had perceived her, he would come and lie quietly down beside her, resting his head in her lap, and fall asleep, in which state he might be surprised by the hunters who watched for him. This laying his head in the lap of a virgin made the first Christians choose the unicorn as the type of Christ born from the Virgin Mary.[210] The horn, as an antidote to all poison, was also believed to be emblematic of the conquering or destruction of sin by the Messiah. Religious emblems being in great favour with the early printers, some of them for this reason adopted the unicorn as their sign; thus John Harrison lived at the UNICORN AND BIBLE in Paternoster Row 1603. Again, the reputed power of the horn caused the animal to be taken as a supporter for the apothecaries’ arms, and as a constant signboard by chemists. Albertus Magnus says:--“Cornu cerastis sunt qui dicunt præsenti veneno sudare et ideo ferri ad mensas nobilium, et fieri inde manubria cultellorum quæ infixa mensis prodant presens venenum. Sed hoc non satis probatum est.”[211] Whatever it was that passed for unicorn’s horn, (probably the horn of the narwal,) it was sold at an immense price. “The unicorn whose horn is worth a city,” says Decker in his Gull’s Hornbook; and Andrea Racci, a Florentine physician, relates that it had been sold by the apothecaries at £24 per ounce, when the current value of the same quantity of gold was only £2, 3s. 6d. In a MS. table of customs entitled, “The Book of Rates in y^{e} first yeare of Queen Mary 1531,”[212] we find the duty paid upon “cornu unicorn y^{e} ounce 20s.” An Italian author who visited England in the reign of Henry VII.,[213] speaking of the immense wealth of the religious houses in this country says:--“And I have been informed that, amongst other things, many of these monasteries possess unicorns’ horns of an extraordinary size.” Hence such a horn was fit to be placed among the royal jewels, and there it appears at the head of an inventory taken in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, and preserved in Pepys’s library.[214] “Imprimis, a piece of unicorn’s horn,” which, as the most valuable object, is named first.

This was no doubt the piece seen by the German traveller Hentzner, at Windsor: “We were shown here, among other things, the horn of a unicorn of above eight spans and a half in length, valued at above £10,000.”[215] Peacham places “that horne of Windsor (of an unicorne very likely)”[216] amongst the sights worth seeing. Fuller also speaks of a unicorn’s horn--“in my memory shewn to people in the Tower”[217]--and enters on a long dissertation about its virtues; but it seems to have been lost, or at least, no longer exhibited in his time.

The belief in the efficacy and value of this horn continued to the close of the seventeenth century; for the Rev. John Ward in his diary, p. 172, says:--

“Mr Hartman had a piece of unicorn’s horn, which one Mr Godeski gave him; hee had itt att some foraine prince’s court. I had the piece in my hand. Hee desired Dr Willis to make use of itt in curing his ague; but the Dr refusd because hee had never seen itt used. Mr Hartman told me the forementioned gentleman has as much of itt as would make a cup, and he intended to make one of itt. It approved ittself as a true one, as he said by this: if one drew a circle with itt about a spider, she would not move out off itt.”[218]

The great value set upon unicorns’ horn caused the goldsmiths to adopt this animal as their sign. There is one recorded in Machyn’s Diary: the first of May 1561, “at afternone dyd Mastyr Godderyke’s sune the goldsmyth go hup into hys father’s gyldyng house, toke a bowe-strynge, and hanged ymseylff at the syne of the Unycorne in Chepesyd.” In 1711 the UNICORN AND DIAL was the sign of a watchmaker near the Strand Bridge.[219]

Another fabulous animal that formerly (though rarely) occurred on signboards was the COCKATRICE, which was the sign of a place of amusement in Highbury circa 1611. The “Bestiaria,” or ancient natural histories, give most extraordinary particulars about the birth of this creature:--

“When the cock is past seven years old an egg grows in his belly, and when he feels this egg, he wonders very much, and sustains the greatest anxiety any animal can suffer. He seeks, privately, a warm place on a dunghill or in a stable, and scratches with his feet, until he has formed a hole to lay his egg in. And when the cock has dug his hole he goes ten times a day to it, for all day he thinks that he is going to be delivered. And the nature of the toad is such that it smells the venom which the cock carries in his belly, consequently it watches him, so that the cock cannot go to the hole without being seen by it. And as soon as the cock leaves the place where he has to lay his egg, the toad is immediately there to see if the egg has been laid; for his nature is such, that he hatches the egg if he can obtain it. And when he has hatched it, until it is time to open, it produces an animal that has the head, and neck, and breast of a cock, and from thence downwards, the body of a serpent.”--Translation from the MS. Bestiarium, Bib. Roy. Brussels, No. 10074.

That cocks, sometimes in the middle ages, forgot themselves so far as to lay eggs, appears from a lawsuit which poor chanticleer had at Basle in 1474, when he was convicted, condemned, and, with his egg, burned at the stake for a sorcerer, with as much pomp and ceremony as if he had been a Protestant or other heretic.

The APE was, in bygone times, the sign of an inn in Philip Lane, near London wall; all that now remains of this ancient hostelry is a stone carving of a monkey squatted on its haunches, and eating an apple; under it the date 1670, and the initial B. The courtyard, where the lumbering coaches used to arrive and depart, is now an open space, round which houses are built. The RACOON is a painted sign at Dalston, but a hyæna seems to have sat for the portrait; the HIPPOPOTAMUS occurs in New-England Street, Brighton; the IBEX at Chadelworth, Wantage; the CROCODILE in Higham Street, Norwich; the CAMEL may be met with in a few instances, and at Weston Peverell, Plymouth, there is the sign of the CAMEL’S HEAD. Finally, there is the KANGAROO, of which, occasionally, an example may be seen, set up probably by some landlord who had tried his luck in Australia. The CIVET is common all over Europe as a perfumer’s sign, as it was said to produce musk. A Dutch perfumer in the seventeenth century wrote under his sign:--

“Dit ’s in de Civet kat, gelyk gy kunt aanschouwen, Maar komt hier binnen, hier zyn parfuimen voor mannen en vrouwen.”[220]

The HEDGEHOG was never very common. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was the sign of William Seeres, bookseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard, who put it up, according to Bagford, on account of its being the badge of his former master Sir Henry Sydney.[221] Apparently this same house was concerned in the following strange affair:--

“By a lettere dated London, 11 May 1555, it appears that in Powles Churchyearde at the sign of the Hedgehog, the goodwife of the house was brought to bed of a manchild, being of the age of 6 dayes and dienge the 7^{th} daye followinge; and half an hour before it departed spake these words followinge: (rise and pray) and so continued half an houre in thes words and then cryinge departed the worlde. Hereupon the Bishope of London examined the goodman of the house and other credible persones who affirmed it to be true and will dye uppon the same.”[222]

The Hedgehog is now very scarce on signboards; at Dadlington, near Market Bosworth, there is a DOG AND HEDGEHOG, doubtless borrowed from the well-known engraving of “A Rough Customer.”

Signs relating to sport or the chase are comparatively common; thus we have the RAT AND FERRET at Wilson, near Ashby de la Zouch; the THREE CONIES, or rabbits, figure on an old trades token of Blackman Street; the HARE, on the token of John Perris in the Strand, 1666; and Nicholas Warren, in Aldersgate.[223] Warren evidently made a cockney mistake, thinking that hares, instead of rabbits, lived in warrens. Another Hare was the sign of Philip Hause in Walbrook in 1682.[224] The HARE AND SQUIRREL occur together on a sign at Nuneaton; what the combination means it is difficult to surmise.

“Cages with climbing SQUIRRELS and bells to them were formerly the indispensable appendages of the outside of a Tinman’s shop, and were, in fact, the only live sign. One, we believe, still (1826) hangs out on Holborn; but they are fast vanishing with the good old modes of our ancestors.”[225]

The THREE SQUIRRELS was the sign of an inn at Lambeth, mentioned by Taylor the Water poet in 1636; and from a trades token it appears that in the seventeenth century there was a similar sign in Fleet Street. Probably it was the same house which, in 1673/4, was occupied by Gosling the banker, “over against St Dunstan’s Church,” where the triad of squirrels may still be seen in the iron-work of the windows. Gosling’s was one of the leading banking establishments in the reign of Charles II. Among the curiosities of this old firm is a bill for £640, 8s., paid out of the secret service money for gold lace and silver lace, bought by the Duchess of Cleveland for the wedding clothes of the Lady Sussex and Litchfield.

The HARE AND HOUNDS are very common; some fifty years ago it was the sign of a notorious establishment in St Giles’s, one of those places associated with “the good old customs of our ancestors.” As the few houses of this character that remain are difficult of access, a description of this place may not be uninteresting.

“The Hare and Hounds was to be reached by those going from the west end towards the city, by going up a turning on the left hand, nearly opposite St Giles’s churchyard. The entrance to this turning or lane was obstructed or defended by posts with cross bars, which being passed, the lane itself was entered. It extended some twenty or thirty yards towards the north, through two rows of the most filthy, dilapidated, and execrable buildings that could be imagined; and at the top or end of it stood the citadel, of which ’Stunning Joe’ was the corpulent castellan;--I need not say that it required some determination and some address to gain this strange place of rendezvous. Those who had the honour of an introduction to the great man were considered safe, wherever his authority extended, and in this locality it was certainly very extensive. He occasionally condescended to act as a pilot through the navigation of the alley to persons of aristocratic or wealthy pretensions, whom curiosity, or some other motive best known to themselves, led to his abode. Those who were not under his safe conduct frequently found it very unsafe to wander in the intricacies of this region. In the salon of this temple of low debauchery were assembled groups of all ‘unutterable things,’ all that class distinguished in those days, and, I believe, in these, by the generic term ‘cadgers.’

Hail cadgers, who in rags array’d, Disport and play fantastic pranks; Each Wednesday night in full parade, Within the domicile of Bank’s.

A ‘lady’ presided over the revels, collected largess in a platter, and, at intervals, amused the company with specimens of her vocal talent. Dancing was ‘kept up till a late hour,’ with more vigour than elegance, and many terpsichorean passages, which partook rather of the animation of the ‘Nautch’ than the dignity of the minuet, increased the interest of the performance. It may be supposed that those who assembled were not the sort of people who would have patronised Father Matthew had he visited St Giles’s in those times. There was indeed an almost incessant complaint of drought, which seemed to be increased by the very remedies applied for its cure; and had it not been for the despotic authority with which the dispenser of the good things of the establishment exercised his rule, his liberality in the dispensation would certainly have led to very vigorous developments of the reprobation of man and of woman also. In the lower tier, or cellars, or crypt of the edifice, beds or berths were provided for the company, who, packed in bins after the ‘fitful fever’ of the evening, slept well.”[226]

In 1750 there was a sign of the HARE AND CATS at Norwich,[227] which was clearly a travesty of the Hare and Hounds.

The STAG may in early times have been put up as a religious type. As such it is of constant occurrence in the catacombs and in early Christian sculptures, in allusion to Psalm xlii., “Like as the hart desireth the water brook, so longeth my soul after thee, O God!”[228] The Stag is still a very common sign. A publican on the Fulham Road has put up the sign of the Stag, and added to this on the tympanum: “Rex in regno suo non habet parem,” the application of which is best known to mine host himself.

The BALDFACED STAG is seen in many places: baldfaced is a term applied to horses who have a white strip down the forehead to the nose. At Chigwell in Essex there is a BALD HIND, and in the High Street, Reading, a BALD FACE, both evidently derived from the last-named stag.

Various combinations also occur, as the STAG AND CASTLE, at Thornton, near Hinckly; the STAG AND PHEASANT, rather common; both these, doubtless, allude to the game seen in parks, or in the neighbourhood of noblemen’s seats; the STAG AND OAK, the Cape, Warwickshire, points towards a similar origin, but the STAG AND THORN at Traffick Street, Derby, seems to be a union of two signs, for the THORN appears in the same street on another public-house. There is, however, a sort of tree called the Buck-Thorn, which possibly may have been corrupted into the Buck and Thorn, and hence the Stag and Thorn. The RISING DEER (Brampton-en-le-Morthen, Yorkshire) and the RISING BUCK (Sheinton, Shropshire) have a decided deer-stalking smack about them, affording us a glimpse of the cautious stag rising from the heather, pricking his ears and sniffing the wind.

The RANGED DEER was the sign of the King’s gunsmith in the Minories, 1673.[229] At that period this street was full of smiths:

“The Mulcibers who in the Minories sweat And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat, Deform’d themselves, yet forge those stays of steel Which arm Aurelia with a shape to kill.”--Congreve.

This ranged deer was simply intended for the Reindeer, which animal had then just newly come under the notice of the public; their knowledge of it was still confused, and its name was spelled in various ways, such as: rain-deer, rained-deer, range-deer, and ranged-deer.

THE ROEBUCK is equally common with the Stag; the GOLDEN BUCK, near St Dunstan, was the shop of P. Overton, publisher of “The Cries of the City of London, consisting of 74 copper-prints, each figure drawn after the life, by the famous Mr Laron.” The BUCK AND BELL is a sign at Long Itchington: the bell was frequently added to the signs of public-houses in honour of the bell-ringers, who were in the habit of refreshing themselves there. Hence we have the BULL AND BELL, Briggate, Leeds; the RAVEN AND BELL, at Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, and Newport; the BELL AND TALBOT, at Bridgenorth; the DOLPHIN AND BELL on the token of John Warner, Aldersgate, 1668; the FISH AND BELL, (evidently the same sign,) Charles Street, Soho; the THREE SWANS AND PEAL at Walsall; the NELSON AND PEAL, and many others.

Among the taverns with the sign of the ROEBUCK that have become famous, the house in Cheapside may be mentioned as a notorious place during the Whig riots in 1715.

Not only the Deer tribe themselves, but their HORNS also make a considerable figure on the signboard. It is probably to the sign of the Horns that allusion is made in the roll of the Pardoner, “Cocke Lorells Bote:”--

“Here is Maryone Marchauntes at Allgate Her Husbõde dwells at ye siggne of ye Cokeldes Pate.”

The HORNS was a tavern of note in Fleet Street in the reign of Queen Elizabeth:

“The xvj day of September (1557), cam owt of Spayn to the Quens Cowrt in post Monser Regamus, gorgysly apparelled, with divers Spaneardes, and with grett cheynes, and their hats sett with stones and perlles, and sopyd [supped], and by vij of the cloke were again on horsẽbake, and so thrugh Flet Strett, and at the HORNES they dronke, and at the GRAYHONDE, and so thrugh Chepesyde, and so over the bryge, and so rod all nyght toward Dover.”--Machyn’s Diary.

Sometimes the Horns are specified as the HART’S HORNS Inn, Smithfield, near Pie Corner, one of the houses in the yard of which Joe Miller used to play during Bartholomew Fair time, when he was associated with Pinkethman at the head of a troop of actors. The London Daily Post for August 24, &c., 1721, contains several advertisements of his troop, and the parts played by himself.

What most contributed to the popularity of this sign in the environs of London was the custom alluded to by Byron:

“And many to the steep of Highgate hie, Ask ye, Bœotian shades! the reason why, ’Tis to the worship of the solemn horn, Grasp’d in the holy hand of mystery, In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn, And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.”[230]

Highgate was the headquarters for this swearing on the horn. Hone gives the oath in the following form:--

“An old and respectable inhabitant of the village says, that 60 years ago, upwards of 80 stages stopped every day at the Red Lion, and that out of every 5 passengers 3 were sworn. The oath was delivered standing, and ran thus: ‘Take notice what I now say unto you, for that is the first word of your oath--mind that! You must acknowledge me to be your adopted father, I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son (or daughter). If you do not call me father, you forfeit a bottle of wine. If I do not call you son, I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate, and you have no money in your pocket, go call for a bottle of wine at any house you think proper to go into, and book it to your father’s score. If you have any friends with you you may treat them as well, but if you have money of your own you must pay for it yourself. For you must not say you have no money when you have, neither must you convey the money out of your own pockets into your friends’ pockets, for I shall search you as well as them; and if it is found that you or they have money, you forfeit a bottle of wine for trying to cozen and cheat your poor old ancient father. You must not eat brown bread while you can get white, except you like the brown the best; you must not drink small beer while you can get strong, except you like the small the best. You must not kiss the maid while you can kiss the mistress, except you like the maid the best, but sooner than lose a good chance you may kiss them both. And now, my good son, for a word or two of advice: keep from all houses of ill repute, and every place of public resort for bad company. Beware of false friends, for they will turn to be your foes, and inveigle you into houses where you may lose your money and get no redress. Keep from thieves of every denomination. And now, my good son, I wish you a safe journey through Highgate and this life. I charge you, my good son, that if you know any in this company who have not taken the oath you must cause them to take it, or make each of them forfeit a bottle of wine, for if you fail to do so you will forfeit a bottle of wine yourself. So now my good son, God bless you. Kiss the horns or a pretty girl, if you see one here which you like best, and so be free of Highgate.’”

After that, the new-made member became fully acquainted with the privileges of a freeman, which consisted in:

“If at any time you are going through Highgate, and want to rest yourself, and you see a pig lying in the ditch, you have liberty to kick her out and take her place; but if you see three lying together, you must only kick out the middle one and lie between the other two.”

These last liberties, however, are a later addition to the oath introduced by a blacksmith, who kept the COACH AND HORSES. Nearly every inn in Highgate used to keep a pair of horns for this custom. In Hone’s time the principal inn, the Gatehouse, had stag-horns:--

The Mitre, stags’-horns. The Green Dragon, do. The Red Lion and Sun, bullocks’-horns. The Bell, stags’-horns. The Coach and Horses, rams’-horns. The Castle, do. The Red-Lion, rams’-horns. The Coopers’ Arms, do. The Fox and Hounds, rams’-horns. The Flask, do. The Rose and Crown, stags’-horns. The Angel, rams’-horns. The Bull, stags’-horns. The Wrestlers, do. The Lord Nelson, do. The Duke of Wellington, stags’-horns. The Crowne, do. The Duke’s Head, do.

Hone supposes the custom to have originated in a sort of graziers’ club.[231] Highgate being the place nearest London where cattle rested on their way from the north, certain graziers were accustomed to put up at the Gatehouse for the night. But as they could not wholly exclude strangers who, like themselves, were travelling on business, they brought an ox to the door, and those who did not choose to kiss its horns, after going through the ceremony described, were not deemed fit members of their society. Similar customs prevailed in other places, as at Ware, at the Griffin in Hoddesdon, &c.

On the Continent the sign of the Horns was formerly equally common, often accompanied with some sly allusion to what Othello calls “the forked plague.” Thus in the Rue Bourg Chavin, in Lyons, there is now a pair of horns with the inscription “SUNT SIMILIA TUIS;” and a Dutch shopkeeper of the seventeenth century wrote under his sign of the Horns--

“Ik draag Hoornen dat ider ziet, Maar menig draagt Hoornen en weet het niet.”[232]

The Fox, as might be expected, is to be seen in a great many places; there is one at Frandley, Cheshire, with the following rhymes:--

“Behold the Fox, near Frandley stocks, Pray catch him when you can, For they sell here, good ale and beer, To any honest man.”

A still more absurd inscription accompanies the sign of the Fox at Folkesworth, near Stilton, Hunts:--

“I . HAM . A . CUNEN . FOX YOU . SEE . THER . HIS . NO . HARM . ATCHED . TO . ME . IT . IS . MY . MRS WISH . TO . PLACE . ME HERE . TO . LET . YOU . NO . HE . SELLS . GOOD . BEERE .”

Formerly there used to be a sign of the THREE FOXES in Clement’s Lane, Lombard Street, carved in stone, representing three foxes sitting in a row. But a few years ago the house came into the possession of a legal firm, who, no doubt afraid of the jokes to which the sign might lead, thought it advisable to do away with the carving by covering it over with plaster.

One of the most favourite combinations is the FOX AND GOOSE, represented by a fox currant, with the neck of the goose in his mouth and the body cast over his back. It seems suggested by an incident in the old tale of “Reynard the Fox,” and was a subject which mediæval artists were never tired of representing; it occurs in stall carvings, as in Gloucester Cathedral; in the border of the Bayeux tapestry, and in endless MS. illuminations. It is, or was, a coat of arms borne by the families of Foxwist and Foxfeld. Derived from this sign are the FOX AND DUCK, (two in Sheffield,) and the FOX AND HEN, of which there is an example at Long Itchington. Reynard’s predatory habits are further illustrated by the FOX AND LAMB, in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, in Allendale, &c., and the FOX AND GRAPES, borrowed from the fable. From the same well-known source also arose the sign of the FOX AND CRANE. But we see the punishment of all Reynard’s misdemeanours in the FOX AND HOUNDS, a sign of old standing, as there is one in Putney on a house which professes to have been “established above three hundred years.” The FOX AND OWL at Nottingham, seems to owe its origin to a curious qui pro quo in language. A bunch of ivy, or ivy tod, was generally considered the favourite haunt of an owl; but a tod also signifies a fox; and so the owl’s nest, owls-tod, may have led to the owl and tod, the fox and owl. The OWL’S NEST is still a sign at St Helen’s, Lancashire. See under Bird Signs.

In the sign of the FOX AND BULL, at Knightsbridge, the bull has been added of late years. About fifty years ago a magistrate used to sit once a week at this public-house to settle the small disputes of the neighbouring inhabitants. At that period Knightsbridge was still in such a benighted condition that neither a butcher’s nor draper’s shop was to be found between Hyde Park Corner and Sloane Street; and the whole locality could only boast of one stationer where note-paper and newspapers could be obtained. The voyage to London in those days was performed in a sort of lumbering stagecoach, over an ill-paved and dimly-lighted road. To this Fox Inn, by a very old wooden gate at the back, the bodies of the drowned in the Serpentine used to be conveyed, to the care of the Royal Humane Society, who had a receiving-house here. Among the many unhappy young and fair ones who were carried through that “Lasciate-ogni-speranza” gate, was Harriet Westbrook, the first wife of Shelley the poet, who had drowned herself in the Serpentine upon hearing that her husband had run off to Italy with Mary, the daughter of William Godwin, bookseller and philosopher of Snow Hill. The ancient inn remained much in its Elizabethan condition till the year 1799, when certain alterations cleared away the old-fashioned fire-places, chimney-pieces, and dog-irons, by which had sat the weather-beaten soldiers of Cromwell, the highwaymen lying in ambush for the mail coaches, and the fair London ladies out on a sly trip.

Some other combinations are not so easily explained, such as the FOX AND CAP, Long Lane, Smithfield: but when we see the bill of this shop[233] the mystery is explained; it was the sign of Tho. Tronsdale, a capmaker, and represented a fox running, with a cap painted above him, to intimate the man’s business. The FOX AND CROWN, Nottingham and Newark, is evidently a combination of two signs. The FOX AND KNOT, Snow Hill, seems to be of old standing, as it has given its name to a court close by. Its origin, doubtless, is exactly similar to that of the Fox and Cap; the knot or top-knot being a head-dress worn by ladies in the last century. The FLYING FOX at Colchester, may either allude to some kind of bat or flying squirrel (?) thus denominated, or is a landlord’s caprice.

It is certainly somewhat strange that in this sporting country the sign of the Brush or the Fox’s Tail should be so rare; in fact, no instance of its use is now to be found, although, beside the interest attached to it in the hunting field, it had the honour of being one of the badges of the Lancaster family. What is still more surprising is, that the FOX’S TAIL should have been the sign of a Parisian bookseller, Jean Ruelle, in 1540; but what prompted him to choose this sign is now rather difficult to guess.

DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

Notwithstanding the ballad of the “Vicar and Moses,” which says,

“At the sign of the Horse old Spintext of course Each night took his pipe and his pot,”

the horse rarely or never occurs without a distinctive adjective to determine its colour, action, or other attribute. All natural colours of the horse, and some others, are found on the signboard--black, white, bay, sorrel, (rare,) pied, spotted, red, sometimes golden, and in one instance, at Grantham, a BLUE Horse is met with. Frequently the sign of the Horse is accompanied by the following hippophile advice:--

“Up hill hurry me not; Down hill trot me not; On level ground spare me not; And in the stable I’m not forgot.”

Many years ago, at Greenwich, there was a public-house with the sign of a Horse. Behind the house was a large grass field, to which referred the following notice, painted under the sign:--“Good Grass for Horses. LONG TAILS three shillings and sixpence per week.” An inquisitive person passing that way, and not understanding the meaning of the notice, went in and questioned the landlord, who informed him that a difference was made for the bob-tailed horses; “for,” said he, “long-tailed horses can whisk off the flies, and eat at their leisure; but bob-tails have to shake their heads and run about from morning till night, and so do eat much less.”

The RED HORSE is now almost extinct; it occurs as the sign of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel lost by the Duke of Grafton.[234] By the term red was not meant vermilion; at that time it was the accepted word for what we now call roan. The BAY HORSE is a great favourite in Yorkshire; in 1861 there were, in the West Riding alone, not less than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public-houses, with such a sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the YORKSHIRE GREY more indigenous to that county. The DAPPLE GREY is apparently a tribute of gratitude of the publicans to the “Dapple Grey” of the nursery rhyme--

“I had a little bonny nag, His name was Dapple Grey, And he would bring me to an ale-house A mile out of the way.”

Dappled grey, too, was the fashionable colour of horses in the last century; thus Pope’s mercenary Duchess--

“The gods, to curse Pamela with her prayers, Gave her gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares.”

Of the WHITE HORSE innumerable instances occur, and many are connected with names known in history. At the White Horse, near Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the noted Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, spent the last years of his life, and died.

“The Duke of Queensbury being present at his death, knowing the Duke to be a dissenter, and thinking he must be a Catholic, offered to send for a Catholic priest, to which the Duke answered, ‘No,’ said he, ‘those rascals eat God; but if you know of any set of fellows that eat the devil, I should be obliged to you if you would send for one of them!’”

All of a piece! So ended

“That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim.”[235]

At the White Horse in Kensington, Addison wrote several of his Spectators. His favourite dinner, when he stayed at this house, was fillet of veal and a bottle of claret. The old inn remained in its original state till about forty years ago, when it was pulled down, and the name changed to the HOLLAND ARMS; but the sign is still preserved in the parlour of the new establishment.

Edinburgh also has its famous White Horse; in a close in the Canongate, an inn dating from the time of Queen Mary Stuart, and which Scott has introduced in one of his novels, may still be seen. It was well-known to runaway couples, and hundreds have been made happy or unhappy for life “at a moment’s notice,” in its large room, in which, as well as in the White Hart in the Grassmarket, these impromptu marriages were as regularly performed as at Gretna Green. The WHITE HORSE CELLAR, Piccadilly, now a tame omnibus office, was for more than a century one of the bustling coaching inns for the West. “Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the mail coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End.”--Hazlitt. This place calls up pleasant fancies of travelling by the mail, through merry roads, with blooming hawthorn and chestnut trees, larks singing aloft, the village bells, and the blacksmith’s hammer tinkling in the distance; but another White Horse Inn shows the dark side of the picture--the unsafety of the roads, for the White Horse, corner of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, was long a detached public-house, where travellers customarily stopped for refreshment, and to examine their firearms before crossing the fields to Lisson Green.[236] The last White Horse we shall mention was in Pope’s Head Alley, the sign of John Sudbury and George Humble, the first men that opened a printshop in London, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Peacham, in his “Compleat Gentleman,” says that Goltzius’ engravings were commonly to be had in Pope’s Head Alley. There also, in 1611, the first edition of Speed’s “Great Britain” was published.

At a certain place in Warwickshire a fellow started a public-house near four others, with signs respectively of the Bear, the Angel, the Ship, and the Three Cups. Yet quite undaunted at his neighbours, he put up the White Horse as his sign, and under it wrote the following spirited and prophetic rhymes:--

“My White Horse shall bite the Bear, And make the Angel fly; Shall turn the Ship her bottom up, And drink the Three Cups dry.”

And so it did; the lines pleased the people, the other houses soon lost their custom, and tradition says that the fellow made a considerable fortune.

The RUNNING HORSE or the GALLOPING HORSE--perhaps originally the horse of Hanover--is also very common. In the London Gazette, Feb. 12-15, 1699, a horse race is advertised at Lilly Hoo, in Hertford; the advertisement concludes: “and on the same day a smock worth £3 will be run for, besides other encouragements for those that come in 2d. or 3d. Any woman may run gratis, that enters her name at the Running Horse, where articles may be seen,” &c. Races by women were not uncommon in those days, and instances may yet occasionally be heard of, particularly in the east end of London, where every great match generally concludes with a race among the free and easy ladies of the neighbourhood.

The combinations in which we meet with the Horse are all very plain, and require no explanation. The HORSE AND GROOM, and the HORSE AND JOCKEY, are the most prevalent. Racing, from time immemorial, has been a favourite English sport. Fitzstephen mentions the races in the days of Henry II., and in the ballad of Syr Bevys of Hampton,[237] full details are given.

“In somer at Whitsontide, Whan knighten most on horseback ride, A course let they make or a daye Steedes and Palfraye for to assaye; Which horse that best may ren, Three miles the cours was then, Who that might ride them shoulde Have forty pounds of redy golde.”

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth races were much in vogue, and betting carried to great excess. The famous George Earl of Cumberland is recorded to have wasted more money than any of his ancestors, chiefly by racing and tilting. In 1599, private matches by gentlemen who rode their own horses were of frequent occurrence. In the reign of James I. public races were celebrated at various places, under much the same regulations as now. The most celebrated were called Bellcourses. In the latter part of the reign of Charles I. there were races in Hyde Park as well as at Newmarket. Charles II. was very fond of this diversion, and appointed meetings at Datchet Mead when he resided at Windsor. Gradually, however, Newmarket became the principal place. The king, a constant attendant, established a house for his own accommodation, and entered horses in his royal name. Instead of bells, he gave a silver bowl or a cup, value 100 guineas, on which the exploit and pedigree of the winning horse were generally engraved. William III. and Queen Anne both added to the plate. George I., towards the end of his reign, discontinued the plate and gave 100 guineas instead; George II. made several racing regulations, about the age of horses, the weight of jockeys, &c. Already, in 1768, the horses had obtained great swiftness; for Misson, in his “Travels,” mentions one that ran 20 miles in 55 minutes upon uneven ground, which for those times was certainly a remarkable feat.

The BELL AND HORSE is an old and still frequent sign; it occurs on trades tokens; as John Harcourt at the BELL AND BLACK HORSE in Finsbury, 1668, and on various others; whilst at the present day it may be seen at many a roadside alehouse. Bells were a favourite addition to the trappings of horses in the middle ages. Chaucer’s abbot is described:--

“When he rode men his bridle hear, Gingling in a whistling wind as clere, And eke as loud as doth a chapel bell.”

In a MS. in the Cottonian Library[238] relating the journey of Margaret of England to Scotland, there to be married to King James, we find constant mention of these bells. The horse of Sir William Ikarguil, companion of Sir William Conyars, sheriff of Yorkshire, is described as “his Hors Harnays full of campanes [bells] of silver and gylt.” Whilst the master of the horse of the Duke of Northumberland was “monted apon a gentyll horse, and campanes of silver and gylt.” And a company of knights is introduced, “some of their hors harnes was full of campanes, sum of gold and sylver, and others of gold.” This led to the custom of giving a golden bell as the reward of a race. In Chester, such a bell was run for yearly on St George’s day; it was “dedicated to the kinge, being double gilt with the Kynges Armes upon it,” and was carried in the procession by a man on horseback “upon a septer in pompe, and before him a noise of trumpets in pompe.”[239] This custom of racing for a bell led to the adoption of the still common phrase, bearing off the BELL.

Names of celebrated race horses are found on signboards as well as human celebrities. Such are BAY CHILDERS at Dronfield, Derby; FLYING CHILDERS at Melton Mowbray; WILD DAYRELL, Oldham; FILHO DA PUTA, Nottingham; and FILHO tavern, Manchester. BLINK BONNY is common in Northumberland; FLYING DUTCHMAN occurs in various places; and the ARABIAN HORSE at Aberford, in Yorkshire, may perhaps represent the great Arabian Godolphin, the sire of all our famous racers.

The HORSE AND TIGER, at Rotherham, is said to refer to the accident in a travelling menagerie which took place many years ago, when the tiger broke loose and sprang upon the leaders of a passing mail coach, although visitors from London generally suppose the “tiger” to mean the spruce groom, or horse attendant, coming from the country to London in such numbers. Even that poor hack, the MANAGE HORSE, is not forgotten, as he may be seen going through his paces before a public-house in Cottles Lane, Bath. In one of the turnings in Cannon Street, City, there is an old sign of the HORSE AND DORSITER, which is simply an old rendering of the more common PACK HORSE, formerly the usual sign of a posting inn. No doubt the FRIGHTED HORSE, which occurs in many places, belongs to this class of horses,--the expression “fright” being a corruption of freight. Some publicans who, with their trade combine the calling of farrier, set up the sign of the HORSE AND FARRIER,--in Ireland rendered as the BLEEDING HORSE. A Dutch farrier in the village of Schagen, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the WHITE HORSE, and wrote under it the following very philosophical verse:--

“In ’t witte Paard worden de paarden haar voeten met yzer beslagen Dat men de menschen dat mee kon doen zy hoefden dan geen schoenen te dragen.”[240]

The HORSE AND STAG, (Finningley, Nottinghamshire,) and the HORSE AND GATE, are both hunting signs; yet the last may have been suggested by the Bull and Gate. The HORSE AND TRUMPET is a very common sign, illustrating the war horse; the HORSE AND CHAISE (or shaze, as it is spelled) in the Broad Centry, (sanctuary,) Westminster, is named in an advertisement in the Postboy, Jan. 23-25, 1711; whilst the CHAISE AND PAIR is still to be seen at Northill, Colchester.

The NAG’S HEAD--which only in one instance is varied by the HORSE’S HEAD, namely, at Brampton in Cumberland--is a sign that has become famous in history; it is represented on the print of the entry of Queen Marie de’ Medici on her visit to her daughter Henriette Marie, Queen of Charles I., being the sign of a notorious tavern opposite the Cheapside Cross. It is suspended from a long square beam, at the end of which a large crown of evergreens is seen. As none of the other houses are decked with greens, this apparently represents the Bush.[241] This tavern was the fictitious scene of the consecration of the Protestant bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1559. It was pretended by the adversaries of the Protestant faith, that a certain number of ecclesiastics, in a hurry to take possession of the vacant sees, assembled here; where they were to undergo the ceremony from Antony Kitchen, alias Dunstane, Bishop of Llandaff, a sort of occasional Nonconformist, who had taken the oath of supremacy to Elizabeth; Bonner, Bishop of London, (then confined in the Tower,) hearing of it, sent his chaplain to Kitchen, threatening him with excommunication in case he proceeded. On this the prelate refused to perform the ceremony; whereupon, according to Catholics, Parker and the other candidates, rather than defer possession of their dioceses, determined to consecrate one another, which they did, without any sort of scruple. Scorey began with Parker, who instantly rose Archbishop of Canterbury. The refutation of this tale may be read in Strype’s life of Archbishop Parker.[242]

A curious anecdote is told concerning the sign of a GELDING. Golden Square, it appears, was originally called Gelding Square, from the sign of a neighbouring inn; but the inhabitants, indignant at the vulgarity of the name, changed it to its present title.

Some publicans appear to be of opinion that the GREY MARE is the best horse for their signboards; in Lancashire, especially, this sign abounds. Others put up the MARE AND FOAL; but they are evidently not very well acquainted with the old ballad of the “Mare and Foal that went to church,” for there the Mare says:--

“Oh! to pray for those publicans I am very loath, They fill their pots full of nothing but froth, Some fill them half full, and others the whole; May the devil go with them!--Amen, says the foal. Derry down,” &c.

Besides the Mare and Foal, there is the COW AND CALF, which is very common. A still more happy mother, the COW AND TWO CALVES, was, in 1762, a sign near Chelsea Pond; whilst a touching picture of paternal bliss might have been seen on a sign in Islington in the last century, viz., the BULL AND THREE CALVES; that animal, doubtless, was placed there in the company of his offspring, to illustrate the homely old proverb, “He that bulls the cow must keep the calf.” The GOAT AND KID was a sign at Norwich in 1711;[243] the SOW AND PIGS is common; and the EWE AND LAMB occurs on a trades token of Hatton Garden in 1668, and may still be seen in many places. A practical traveller in the coaching days, staying at the Ewe and Lamb in Worcester, wrote on a pane of glass in that inn the following very true remark:--

“If the people suck your ale no more Than the poor Lamb, th’ Ewe at the door, You in some other place may dwell, Or hang yourself for all you’ll sell.”

The CAT AND KITTENS was, about 1823, a sign near Eastcheap; it may have come from the publican’s slang expression, cat and kittens, as applied to the large and small pewter pots. In the police courts it is not uncommon to hear that such and such low persons have been “had up” for “cat and kitten sneaking,” i.e., stealing quart and pint pots.

So much for quadrupeds. Happy families of birds are equally abundant; there was the SPARROW’S NEST in Drury Lane, of which trades tokens are extant; the THROSTLE NEST, (a not inappropriate name for a free-and-easy singing club!) is the sign of a public-house at Buglawton, near Congleton; the MARTIN’S NEST, at Thornhill Bridge, Normanton; the KITE’S NEST, (an unpromising name for an inn, if there be anything in a name,) at Stretton, in Herefordshire; and finally, the BROOD HEN, or HEN AND CHICKENS, which latter is more common than any of the former. Not improbably it originated with the sign of the Pelican’s Nest, to which several of the above-named nests may be referred. Under the name of the “Brood Hen,” it occurs on a trades token of Battle Bridge, Southwark; as the “Hen and Chickens,” it was also known in the seventeenth century, for there are tokens of John Sell “at y^{e} Hen and Chickens on Hammond’s Key;” it is likewise mentioned in the following daily occurrence of the good old times:--

“Wednesday night last, Captain Lambert was stopt by three footpads near the Hen and Chickens, between Peckham and Camberwell, and robbed of a sum of money and his gold watch.”[244]

The prevalence of this sign may be accounted for by the kindred love for the barleycorn in the human and gallinaceous tribes. It was also used as a sign by Paulus Sessius, a bookseller of Prague, in 1606, who printed some of Kepler’s astronomical works; above his colophon, representing the hen and her offspring, is the motto: “GRANA DAT A FIMO SCRUTANS,” the application of which is not very obvious.

Speaking of birds’ nests figuring as signs, we may mention that, at the beginning of the present century, the small shops under the tree at the corner of Milk Street, City, used to describe themselves as “under the Crow’s Nest, Cheapside.” An old-fashioned snuff shop, still in existence, issued its tobacco papers in this way, and the small bookshop there at present advertises itself as “under the tree,” although it was only very recently that the crow ceased to visit and repair his nest here.

The THREE COLTS, in Bride Lane, 1652, is represented on a trades token by three colts running; such a sign gave its name to a street in Limehouse. The HORSESHOE is a favourite in combination with other subjects. Aubrey, in his “Miscellanies,” p. 148, says:--

“It is a very common thing to nail horseshoes on the thresholds of doors, which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into the house. Most houses of the West End of London have the horseshoe on the threshold; it should be a horseshoe that one finds.”

Elsewhere he says:--

“Under the Porch of Staninfield Church in Suffolk, I saw a tile with a horseshoe upon it placed there for this purpose, though one would imagine that the holy water would have been sufficient.”

Concerning the same superstition Brand observes:--

“I am told there are many other similar instances. In Monmouth Street (probably the part alluded to by Aubrey) many horseshoes nailed to the threshold are still to be seen. In 1813 not less than 17 remained, nailed against the steps of doors. The bawds of Amsterdam believed in 1687, that a horseshoe which had either been found or stolen placed on the hearth would bring good luck to their houses.”[245]

The charm of the horseshoe lies in its being forked and presenting two points; thus Herrick says:--

“Hang up hooks and sheers, to scare Hence the hag that rides the mare; Till they be all over wet With the mire and the sweat, This observ’d the manes shall be Of your horses all knot-free.”[246]

Any forked object, therefore, has the power to drive witches away. Hence the children in Italy and Spain are generally seen with a piece of forked coral (coral is particularly efficacious) hung round their necks, whilst even the mules and other cattle are armed with a small crescent formed by two boars’ tusks, or else a forked piece of wood, to avert the spells of what Macbeth calls “the juggling fiends.” Even the two forefingers held out apart are thought sufficient to avert the evil eye, or prevent the machinations of the lord and master of the nether world. Great power also lies in the pentagram and Solomon’s seal, which, being composed of two triangles, present not less than six forked ends. Both these figures are much used by the Moors, with the same object in view as the horseshoe by western nations. In this country, at the present day, scarcely a stable can be seen where there is not a horseshoe nailed on the door or lintel; there is one very conspicuous at the gate of Meux’s brewery at the corner of Tottenham Court Road, and conspicuous on the horse trappings of this establishment the shoe in polished brass may be seen; in fact, it has become the trade-mark of the firm, the same as the red triangle which distinguishes the pale ale of the Burton brewers. The iron heels of workmen’s boots are also frequently seen fixed against the doorpost, or behind the door, of houses of the lower classes.

The HORSESHOE, by itself, is comparatively a rare sign. There is a Horseshoe Tavern, mentioned by Aubrey in connexion with one of those reckless deeds of bloodshed so common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:--

“Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake 13 languages, was a captain under the Erle of Essex. He had a world of cuts about his body with swords and was very quarrelsome and a great ravisher. He met coming late at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane with a lieutenant of Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, the noise of your spurrs doe offend me, you must come over the kennel and give me satisfaction. They drew and passed at each other, and the lieutenant was runne through and died in an hour or two, and it was not known who killed him.”[247]

This tavern was still in existence in 1692, as appears from the deposition of one of the witnesses in the murder of Mountfort the actor by Captain Hill, who, with his accomplice, Lord Mohun, whilst they were laying in wait for Mrs Bracegirdle, drank a bottle of canary which had been bought at the Horseshoe Tavern.

The THREE HORSESHOES are not uncommon; and the single shoe may be met with in many combinations, arising from the old belief in its lucky influences: thus the HORSE AND HORSESHOE was the sign of William Warden, at Dover, in the seventeenth century, as appears from his token. The SUN AND HORSESHOE is still a public-house sign in Great Tichfield Street, and the MAGPIE AND HORSESHOE may be seen carved in wood in Fetterlane; the magpie is perched within the horseshoe, a bunch of grapes being suspended from it. The HORNS AND HORSESHOE is represented on the token of William Grainge in Gutterlane, 1666,--a horseshoe within a pair of antlers. The LION AND HORSESHOE appears in the following advertisement of a shooting match:--

“ON FRIDAY the 16th of this instant, at two in the afternoon, will be a plate to be (sic) shot for, at twenty-five guineas value, in the Artillerie Ground near Moorfields. No gun to exceed four feet and a half in the barrel, the distance to be 200 yards, and but one shot a piece, the nearest the centre to win. No person that shoots to be less than one guinea, but as many more as he pleases to compleat the sum. The money to be put in the hands of Mr Jones, at the Lion and Horseshoe Tavern, or Mr Turog, gunsmith in the Minories. Note, that if any gentleman has a mind to shoot for the whole, there is a person will shoot with him for it, being left out by mistake in our last.”[248]

The HOOP AND HORSESHOE on Towerhill, was formerly called the Horseshoe. This, like every old tavern, has its murder to record:--

“The last week one Colonel John Scott took an occasion to kill one John Buttler, a hackney coachman, at the Horse Shoe Tavern on Tower Hill, without any other provocation ’tis said, but refusing to carry him and another gentleman pertaining to the law, from thence to Temple Bar for 1s. 6d. Amongst the many pranks that he hath played in other countries ’tis believed this is one of the very worst. He is a very great vindicator of the Salamanca Doctor. He is a lusty, tall man, squint eyed, thin faced, wears a peruke sometimes and has a very h---- look. All good people would do well if they can to apprehend him that he may be brought to justice.”[249]

The HORSESHOE AND CROWN is named in the following handbill, which is too characteristic to curtail:--

“DAUGHTER OF A SEVENTH DAUGHTER. REMOVED TO THE SIGN OF THE HORSESHOE AND CROWN IN CASTLE STREET, NEAR THE 7 DIALS IN ST GILES.

Liveth a Gentlewoman, the Daughter of a Seventh Daughter, who far exceeds all her sex, her business being very great amongst the quality, has now thought fit to make herself known to the benefit of the Publick.

She resolves these questions following:--As to Life whether happy or unhappy? the best time of it past or to come? Servants or lodgers if honest or not? To marry the person desir’d or who they shall marry and when? A Friend if real or not? a Woman with child or not, or ever likely to have any! A friend absent dead or alive, if alive when return? Journey by Land or voyages by Sea, the Success thereof. Lawsuits, which shall gain the better? She also Interprets Dreams. These and all other lawful questions which for brevity sake are omitted, she fully resolves.

Her hours are from 7 in the Morning till 12, and from 1 till 8 at Night.”[250]

These quack “gentlewomen” were as much the order of that day as the broken-down clergymen who advertise medicines for nervous and rheumatic complaints are in our own time. Heywood, in his play of “the Wise Woman of Hogsden,” enumerates the following occupations as their perquisites:--

“Let me see how many trades have I to live by: First, I am a wise woman and a fortuneteller, and under that I deale in physick and fore-speaking, in palmestry and things lost. Next I undertake to cure madd folks; Then I keepe gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I let out by the night; Then I am provided for bringing young wenches to bed; and for a need you see I can play the matchmaker.”

Generally they proclaimed themselves the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, a relationship that is still thought to be accompanied by powers not vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. This belief in the virtue of the number 7 doubtless originated from the Old Testament, where that number seems in greater favour than all others. The books of Moses are full of references to it; the creation of the world in 7 days, sevenfold vengeance on whosoever slayeth Cain; Noah had to take 7 males and females of every clean beast, 7 males and females of every fowl of the air, for in 7 days it would begin to rain; the ark rested in the 7th month, &c., &c. From this the middle ages borrowed their predilection for this number, and its cabalistic power.[251]

Horned cattle are just as common as horses on the signboards; the BULL, in particular, is a favourite with the nation, whether as a namesake--so much so, indeed, as to have given it a popular name abroad--or as the source of the favourite roast-beef, or from the ancient sport of bull-baiting, it is difficult to say. From Ben Jonson we gather that there was another reason which sometimes dictated the choice of this animal on the signboard. In the “Alchymist” he introduces a shopkeeper, who wishes the learned Doctor to provide him with a sign.

“Face. What say you to his Constellation, Doctor, the Balance?

Sub. _No, that is stale and common: A Townsman born in Taurus gives the Bull Or the Bull’s head: in Aries, the Ram, A poor device._”--ALCHYMIST, a. ii. s. i.

Newton dates a letter from “the Bull,” at Shoreditch, September 1693; it is addressed to Locke, and a curious letter it is, containing an apology for having wished Locke dead.

The Bull is generally represented in his natural colour, black, white, grey, pied, “spangled” (in Yorkshire,) and only rarely red and blue; yet these two last colours may simply imply the natural red, brown, and other common hues, for newspapers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often contain advertisements about blue dogs; and whatever shade that was intended for, it may certainly with as much justice be applied to a bull as to a dog. The CHAINED BULL at North Allerton, Leeds, and the BULL AND CHAIN, Langworthgate, Lincoln, doubtless refer to the old cruel pastime of bull-baitings. Occasionally we meet also with a WILD BULL, as at Gisburn, near Skipton.

Leigh Hunt observes:--“London has a modern look to the inhabitants; but persons who come from the country find as odd and remote-looking things in it as the Londoners do in York and Chester; and among these are a variety of old inns with corridors running round the yard. They are well worth a glance from anybody who has a respect for old times.” Such a one is the Bull’s Inn in Bishopsgate Street, where formerly plays were acted by Burbadge, Shakespeare’s fellow-comedian, and Tarlton in good Queen Bess’s time amused our forefathers on summers’ afternoons with his quaint jokes and comic parts.[252] This inn is also celebrated as the London house of the famous Hobson, (Hobson’s choice,) the rich Cambridge carrier. Here a painted figure of him was to be seen in the eighteenth century, with a hundred pound bag under his arm, on which was the following inscription:--“The fruitful Mother of a Hundred More.”[253] At the Bull public-house on Towerhill, Thomas Otway, the play writer, died of want at the age of 33, on the 14th of April 1685, having retired to this house to escape his creditors.[254]

The BULL, at Ware, obtained a celebrity by its enormous bed. Taylor, the Water poet, in 1636 remarked, “Ware is a great thorowfare, and hath many fair innes, with very large bedding, and one high and mighty Bed called the Great Bed of Ware: a man may seeke all England over and not find a married couple that can fill it.” Nares, in his “Glossary,” quotes Chauncey’s, Hertfordshire; for a story of twelve married couple who, laid together in the bed, each pair being so placed at the top and bottom of the bed, that the head of one pair was at the feet of another. Shakespeare alludes to it in “Twelfth Night,” where Sir Toby Belch in his drunken humour advises Aguecheek to write: “as many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough for the Bed of Ware in England,” (a. iii. s. 2.) Where the “high and mighty Bed” was located, seems a mooted point; some say at the Bull, others at the Crown, and Clutterbuck places it at the Saracen’s Head, where there is or was a bed of some twelve feet square, in an Elizabethan style of carved oak, but with the date 1463 painted on the back. Tradition says that it was the bed of Warwick the king-maker, and was bought at a sale of furniture at Ware Park. Recently it has been sold, and Charles Dickens is now said to be its possessor.

The Bull Inn at Buckland, near Dover, deserves to be mentioned for its comical caution to the customers:

“The Bull is tame so fear him not, All the while you pay your shot. When money’s gone, and credit’s bad, It’s that which makes the Bull run mad.”

The famous OLD PIED BULL INN, Islington, was pulled down circa 1827, the house having existed from the time of Queen Elizabeth. The parlour retained its original character to the last. There was a chimney-piece containing Hope, Faith, and Charity, with a border of cherubims, fruit and foliage, whilst the ceiling in stucco represented the five senses. Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have been an inhabitant of this house.

“This conjecture is somewhat strengthened by the nature of the border [in a stained glass window,] which was composed of seahorses, mermaids, parrots, &c., forming a most appropriate allusion to the character of Raleigh, as a great navigator, and discoverer of unknown countries; and the bunch of green leaves [two seahorses supporting a bunch of green leaves,] has been generally asserted to represent the tobacco plant, of which he is said to have been the first importer into this country.”[255]

At what time the house was converted into an inn does not appear. The sign of the Pied Bull in stone relief, on the front towards the south, bore the date 1730, which was probably the year this addition was made to the building. That it was an inn in 1665, appears from the following episode of the Plague-time:

“I remember one citizen, who, having thus broken out of his house in Aldersgate Street, or there about, went along the road to Islington. He attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the White Horse, two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused; after which he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the same sign. He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to be going into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and free from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much that way. They told him they had no lodging, that they could spare but one bed up in the garret, and that they could spare that bed but for one night, some drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so if he would accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did; so a servant was sent up with a candle with him, to show him the room. He was very well dressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and when he came to the room he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, ‘I have seldom lain in such a lodging as this;’ however, the servant assured him again that they had no better. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I must make shift; this is a dreadful time, but it is but for one night.’ So he sat down upon the bed-side, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale; but some hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her otherwise, put it out of her head, and she went up no more to him. The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in the house asked the servant that had showed him up stairs, what was become of him. She started; ‘alas,’ said she, ‘I never thought more of him; he bade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot.’ Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent up to see after him, who coming into the room found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one of his hands; so that it was plain he died soon after the maid left him; and that it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. The alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having been free from the distemper till that disaster; which bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round about it. I do not remember how many died in the house itself, but I think the maid-servant who went up first with him, fell presently ill by the fright, and several others; for whereas there died but two in Islington of the plague the week before, there died seventeen the week after, whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week from the 11th of July to the 18th.”[256]

The RED BULL was the sign of another of the inn-playhouses in Shakespeare’s time; but, like the Fortune, mostly frequented by the meaner sorts of people. It was situated in Woodbridge Street,[257] Clerkenwell, (its site is still called Red Bull Yard,) and is supposed to have been erected in the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. At all events, it was one of the seventeen playhouses that arose in London between that period and the reign of Charles I. Edward Alleyn the actor, founder of Dulwich College, says in a memorandum, Oct. 3, 1617, “went to the Red Bull and received for the ‘Younger Brother’ [a play], but £3-6-4.” Killigrew’s troop of the king’s players performed in it until the theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-fields opened. The place was then abandoned to exhibitions of gladiators and feats of strength. The names of the principal theatres at the time of the Commonwealth occur in the following puritanical curse:--

“---- That the Globe Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consumed, the Phenix burnt to ashes, The Fortune whipp’d for a blind--Blackfriars, He wonders how it ’scaped demolishing I’ the time of Reformation; lastly he wished The Bull might cross the Thames to the Bear-gardens, And there be soundly baited.”[258]

The BULL’S HEAD is often seen instead of the Bull; its origin may be from the butchers’ arms, which are azure two axes salterwise, arg. between two roses arg. as many bulls’ heads couped of the second attired or, &c.; in Holland a carved bull’s head is always a leather-seller’s sign. At the BULL’S HEAD, in Claremarket, the artists’ club used to meet, of which Hogarth was a member, and Dr Ratcliffe a constant visitor. The Bull’s Head was already used in signs three hundred years ago, as we may see from an entry in Machyn’s Diary, which does not say much for the morality of the period:--

“The xij day of June (1560) dyd ryd in a care[259] abowt London ij men and iij women; one man, for he was the bowd and to brynge women unto strangers; and on women was the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous Strett; and a-nodur the wyff of the Bull-hed besyd London Stone, and boyth were bawdes and hores and the thodur man and the woman were brodur and syster and wher taken nakyd together.”

As a variation, on the Bull’s Head there is the COW’S FACE:--

“GEORGE TURNIDGE, aged about 16, a short thickset Lad with a little dark brown Hair, a scar in his left cheek under his eye, wears a canvass jacket lined with red and canvass Breeches, with a red cap, run away from his Master the 7th instant. Whoever secures him and gives Notice to Mr Henry Davis, Waxchandler at the Cow’s Face in Miles Lane in Canon Street, shall have a Guinea Reward, and reasonable charges.”--London Gazette, Jan. 13-17, 1697.

The BULL’S NECK is a sign at Penny Hill, Holbeach, and the BUFFALO HEAD is common in many places. The latter was the sign of one of the coffee-houses near the Exchange, during the South Sea bubble, and was hung up over the head quarters of a company for a grand dispensary, capital £3,000,000. The rage for joint-stock companies had come to such a pitch at that period, that an advertisement appeared stating:--

“THIS DAY the 8th instant at Sam’s Coffeehouse behind the Royal Exchange, at three in the afternoon, a book will be opened, for entering into a joint copartnership for carrying on a thing that will turn to the advantage of those concerned.”

Not less than £28,000,000 were asked for at that period to enter upon various speculations. At the Buffalo Head Tavern, Charing Cross, Duncan Campbell, the deaf and dumb fortune-teller, used at one time to deliver his oracles. He is immortalised in the Spectator, No. 474, where, in answer to the letter of a lady inquiring about Duncan’s address, a note is entered, “That the Inspector I employ about Wonders, inquire at the Golden Lyon, opposite the Halfmoon Tavern, Drury Lane, into the merit of this silent sage.”[260]

Among the combinations in which the Bull is met with on signboards, the BULL AND DOG is one of the most common, derived, like the Bull and Chain, from the favourite sport of bull-baiting, which amusement is described at full length and in brilliant colours by Misson, in his “Travels.” A comical variation of this is the BULL AND BITCH at Husborn Crawley, Woburn. In the sign of the BULL AND BUTCHER,[261] the bull is placed in still worse company; this was very forcibly expressed on the sign of a butcher in Amsterdam, who was represented with a glass of wine in his hand, standing between two calves, and pledging them with the cruel words,--

“Zyt verblyt Soo lang gy er zyt.”[262]

The BULL AND MAGPIE, which occurs at Boston, has been explained as meaning the Pie, πιναξ, and the Bull of the Romish Church; but this looks very like a cock-and-bull story. As “some help to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate thinly,” as Iago has it, it may be asked whether this might not have arisen out of the sign of the “Pied Bull,” thus leading to the “Pie and Bull,” or the “Bull and Magpie;” the transition seems simple and easy enough; but should this not be considered satisfactory, since we have the “Cock and Bull,” and the “Cock and Pie,” we may by a sort of rule of three manœuvre obtain the Bull and Pie or Magpie. See under Bird Signs.

The BLACK BULL AND LOOKING-GLASS is named in an advertisement in the original edition of the Spectator, No. lxviii., as a house in Cornhill. It was evidently a combination of two signs.

Still more puzzling is the BULL AND BEDPOST; but as the actual use of this sign as a house decoration remains to be corroborated, we may dismiss it with the remark, that the Bedpost, in all probability, was a jocular name for the stake to which the bull was tied when being baited, in allusion to the stout stick formerly used in bed-making to smooth the clothes in their place. The BULL AND SWAN, High Street, Stamford, may be heraldic, both these animals being badges of the York family; but the Swan in all probability was the first sign, the Bull being added on account of the singular custom of Bull Running, which yearly took place, both at Tamworth and Stamford, on St John’s eve. THE BULL IN THE POUND, is the Bull punished for trespass, and put in the pound or pinfold; whilst the BULL AND OAK at Wicker, Sheffield, (at Market Bosworth there is a house with the sign of the BULL IN THE OAK,) may have originated from the sign of “the Bull” being suspended from an oak tree, or referring to an oak tree standing near the house. Bulls are often tied to trees or posts in pastures, and this also may have given rise to the sign.

Visitors to the Isle of Wight will have noticed the word BUGLE frequently inscribed under the picture of a Bull on the inn signboards there. Bugle is a provincial name in those parts for a wild bull. It is an old English word, and is used by Sir John Mandeville; “homes of grete oxen, or of bugles, or of kygn.” It was still current in the seventeenth century, for Randle Holme, 1688, classes the “Bugle, or Bubalus,” amongst “the savage beasts of the greater sort.” The horns of this animal, used as a musical instrument, gave a name to the Buglehorn. It may be remarked that the term bugle doubtless came, in old times, with other Gallicisms common to Sussex and Hampshire, from across the Channel, where the word bugle is still preserved in the verb beugler, the common French word for the lowing of cattle.

The OX is rather uncommon; the DURHAM OX and the CRAVEN OX, two famous breeds, are sometimes met with; then there is a CRAVEN OX HEAD, in George Street, York, and a GREY OX at Brighouse, in the West Riding. The OX AND COMPASSES at Poulton Swindon, in Cumberland, is evidently a jocular imitation of the London sign of the Goat and Compasses.

The COW is more common; its favourite colours being RED, BROWN, WHITE, SPOTTED, SPANGLED, &c. The Red Cow occurs as a sign near Holborn Conduit, on the seventeenth century trades tokens. It also gave a name to the alehouse in Anchor and Hope Lane, Wapping, in which Lord Chancellor Jeffries was taken prisoner, disguised as a sailor, and trying to escape to the Continent after the abdication of James II. Thinking himself safe in this neighbourhood, he was looking out of the window to while the time away, when he was recognised by a clerk who bore him a grudge, and at once betrayed him. An heraldic origin is not necessary for this colour of the cow.

“Cows (I mean that whole species of horned beasts) are more commonly black than Red in England. ’Tis for this reason that they have a greater value for Red Cow’s Milk than for Black Cow’s Milk. Whereas in France we esteem the Black Cow’s Milk, because Red Cows are more common with us.”[263]

Speaking of the Green Walk, St James’s Park, Tom Brown says: “There were a cluster of senators talking of state affairs, and the price of corn and cattle, and were disturbed with the noisy Milk folk crying: A can of Milk, Ladies; a can of Red Cow’s Milk, sirs?”[264] The preference for the Red Cow’s milk may, however, have a more remote origin, namely, from the ordinance of the law contained in Numbers xix. 2, where a red heifer is enjoined to be sacrificed as a purification for sin. Hence, Red Cow’s milk is particularly recommended in old prescriptions and panacea, as, for instance, in the following receipt of “a Cock water for a Consumption and Cough of the Lunges:”--

“Take a running cock and pull him alive, then kill him and cutt him in pieces and take out his intrailes and wipe him cleane, breake the bones, then put him into an ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of Red Cow’s Milk,” &c., &c.[265]

The Red Cow, in Bow Street, was the sign of a noted tavern, (afterwards called the Red Rose,) which stood at the corner of Rose Alley. It was when going home from this tavern that Dryden was cudgelled by bravoes, hired by Lord Rochester, for some remarks in Lord Mulgrave’s Essay on Satire, in the composition of which Dryden had assisted his lordship. The king offered £50, and a free pardon, but “Black Will with a cudgel,” to whom Lord Rochester had intrusted the task of thrashing the laureate, showed that there was such a thing as honour amongst rogues, and did not betray him for the king’s £50. In all probability, however, he received a larger sum from his lordship. In Dryden’s old age, Pope, then a boy, came here to look at the great man whose fame in after years he was to equal if not to eclipse. This tavern was the famous mart for libels and lampoons; one Julyan, a drunken dissipated “secretary to the Muses,” as he calls himself, was the chief manufacturer.

Near Marlborough, Wilts, there is an alehouse having the sign of the RED COW, with the following rhyme:--

“The Red Cow Gives good Milk now.”

That under a BROWN COW at Oldham is still more sublime:--

“This Cow gives such Liquor, ’Twould puzzle a Viccar (sic.)”

The Heifer is to be met with sometimes in Yorkshire, but always with some local adjective, as the CRAVEN HEIFER; the AIRESDALE HEIFER, the DURHAM HEIFER, &c. The PIED CALF at Spalding seems to present a solitary instance of a calf on the signboard. Neither are sheep very common; the RAM was a noted carrier’s inn in the seventeenth century, in West Smithfield, and, indeed, continued as such until the recent destruction of this old cattle market. The crest of the cloth-workers was a mount vert, thereon a ram statant; so that this sign in that locality was very well chosen, being in honour of the cattle-dealers on ordinary occasions, and serving for the cloth-workers in the time of Bartholomew fair, for whose benefit the fair was founded. In 1668 there were two RAM’S HEAD inns in Fenchurch Street; one of them was a carriers’ inn for the Essex people. The RAM’S SKIN, which occurs at Spalding in Lincolnshire, is another name for the Fleece. The BLACK TUP figures on a sign near Rochdale, perhaps in allusion to the black ram frail matrons used to bestride in the old custom of Free Bench, thus related in Jacob’s “Law Dictionary:”--

“In the manors of East and West-Enbourne in the Co. of Berks, and the manor of Torre in Devonshire, and other parts of the West of England, there is a custom, that when a Copyhold Tenant dies his widow shall have ‘Free Bench’ in all his customary lands ‘dum sola et casta fuerit,’ but if she commits incontinency she forfeits her estate. Yet nevertheless on her coming into the court of the manor, riding backwards on a black ram with his tail in her hand and saying the words following, the steward is bound by the custom to readmit her to her free bench; The words are these:--

Here I am Riding upon a Black Ram Like a w----e as I am; And for my crincum crancum I have lost my bincum bancum; And for my T----’s game Have done this worldly shame. Therefore pray, Mr Steward, let me have my land again.

This is a kind of penance among jocular tenures to purge the offence.”

Though the ram is rarely, and the sheep never seen on the signboard, the LAMB is not uncommon. In 1586, it was the sign of Abraham Veale, (agreeably to the punning practices of the time, one would have expected the Calf from him,) a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard, and in 1728 of Thomas Cox, also a bookseller, under the Royal Exchange in Cornhill. Doubtless, these signs had originally represented the Lamb with the flag of the Apocalypse. The sign was used by other trades: in 1673, it was the distinctive ornament of a confectioner at the lower end of Gracechurch Street;[266] and an instance of an alehouse is found in the following advertisement, which at the same time affords us a peep at the homely proceedings of the Admiralty in those days:--

“THIS is to give notice to the Officers and Company of His Majesty’s Frigate Boreas, who were on Board her at the taking the Ship Vrow Jacoba and Briggantyne Leon, that they will be paid their respective Shares of said Prizes, on Wednesday the Eight of April next, at the sign of the Lamb, in Abchurch Lane. Paying will begin at Eight o’clock of the forenoon of the said Day.”[267]

Think of that, ye clerks in Her Majesty’s offices, eight o’clock in the forenoon!

A few combinations also occur, as the LAMB AND BREECHES, the sign of Churches & Christie, leather-sellers and breeches-makers, on London Bridge, in the last century; this was a sign like that of the HAT AND BEAVER, in which the living animal, and the article manufactured from its skin, were juxtaposed. The LAMB AND CROWN was a sort of colonial or emigration office in Threadneedle Street, near the Southsea House in 1759.[268] At the present day there is a LAMB AND LARK at Keynsham, Bath, and in Printing House Lane, Blackfriars. It is a typical representation of the proverb, “Go to bed with the Lamb and rise with the Lark.”

The LAMB AND HARE figure together in Portsmouth Place, Lower Kennington Lane. The LAMB AND STILL is a combination intimating the sale of distilled waters. It was the sign of a house in Compton Street, in 1711, which had the honour to lodge Mr Fert, a dancing-master, and author of a work called “A Discourse or Explanation of the ground of Dancing.”[269]

If we except the heraldic Blue Boar, and the Sow and Pigs, we shall find no other pigs on the signboard but the PIG AND WHISTLE,[270] the LITTLE PIG at Amblecote, Stourbridge, and the HOG IN THE POUND in Oxford Street, jocularly called the gentleman in trouble. This latter was formerly a starting-point for coaches, and became notorious through the crime committed by its landlady, Catherine Hayes. Having formed an illicit connexion, she was induced by her paramour to murder her husband, after which she cut off his head, put it in a bag, and threw it in the Thames. It floated ashore, and was put on a pole in St Margaret’s Churchyard, Westminster, in order that it might be recognised; and by this primitive means the murderess was detected. The man was hanged, and Catherine burnt alive at Tyburn in 1726.

The GOAT is not very common; there was a Goat Inn at Hammersmith, taken down in 1826, and rebuilt under the name of Suspension Bridge Inn; up to that time, the sign, and the woodwork from which it was suspended, used to extend across the street. The GOAT IN BOOTS, on the Fulham Road,[271] was in old times called simply “the Goat.” Besides these, there is a BLACK GOAT in Lincoln, and a GREY GOAT in Penrith and Carlisle, and a few others without addition of colour.

A walk through town on a fine Sunday morning will at once convince anybody of the good understanding that exists between the Englishmen and the canine species, “l’ami de l’homme” as Buffon calls the dog. From every lane and alley in the lower parts of the town sally forth men and youths in clean moleskins and corduroys, each invariably accompanied by some yelping cur, the least of whose faults is to be ugly. It is no wonder, then, that the DOG should be of frequent occurrence on the signboard. Pepys mentions a tavern of that name in Westminster, where, about the time of the Restoration, he used occasionally to show his merry face. In 1768, the author of the “Art of Living in London,” recommended the Dog in Holywell Street for a quiet good dinner:--

“Where disencumbered of all form or show, We to a moment might or sit or go; Eat what the palate recommends us hot, Yet not considered as a useless guest.”

For some unknown reason, the BLACK DOG seems the greatest favourite; perhaps the English terrier is meant by it, a dog who “once had its day,” as the Scotch terrier appears to have it now. In the seventeenth century, there was a Black Dog Tavern near Newgate; a house of old standing, of which trades tokens are yet extant.

Mr Akerman, in his work on “Trades Tokens issued between 1648-1672,” makes a mistake in surmising that Luke Hutton’s “Black Dog of Newgate” had anything to do with this tavern. That poem is simply against “coney-catchers,” i.e., roguish detectives or informers of the Jonathan Wild stamp, and even worse. Such a one is impersonificated under the name of the Black Dog of Newgate, because the coney-catchers used to hunt people down threatening them with Newgate. This Black Dog may have derived its name from the canine spectre that still frightens the ignorant and fearful in our rural districts, just as the terrible Dun Cow, and the Lambton Worm were the terror of the people in old times. Near Lyme Regis, Dorset, there is an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend that the spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen fire of a neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Royalist mansion, destroyed by Cromwell’s troops. The dog would sit opposite the farmer; but one night, a little extra liquor gave the man additional courage, and he struck at the dog, intending to rid himself of the horrid thing. Away, however, flew the dog and the farmer after him, from one room to another, until it sprang through the roof, and was seen no more that night. In mending the hole, a lot of money fell down, which, of course, was connected in some way or other with the dog’s strange visit. Near the house is a lane still called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog, and to this genius loci the sign is dedicated.

There was another notorious Black Dog next door to the Devil Tavern, the shop of Abel Roper, who printed and distributed the majority of the pamphlets and ballads that paved the way for the Revolution of 1688. He was the original printer of the famous ballad of “Lillibulero.” Whatever pleased the public, whether good or bad, he was always ready to provide and send into the world; he was also the editor of the newspaper called the Postman. In the beginning of the reign of Charles II. he lived “at the Sun, over against St Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet Street.”[272]

Tokens are extant of the PIED DOG in Seething Lane, 1667, a sign still frequently to be seen at the present day.

We very rarely meet with the BLUE DOG; but there is an example in Grantham, and the sign occurs in a few other places.

Sometimes a peculiar breed is chosen, as the SETTER DOG at Redford, Notts; the POINTER at Peckfield, Milford Junction; the BEAGLE at Shute, Axminster, and the MERRY HARRIERS, common in hunting counties. Equally common is the GREYHOUND, particularly in the North country, where coursing has long been a favourite sport. In the seventeenth century, it was the sign of a fashionable tavern in London, for in a sprightly ballad in the Roxburgh collection,[273] a young gallant is introduced who is going to forsake his evil courses and turn over a new leaf. He gives a last farewell to all his doxies:

“Farewell unto black patches, And farewell powder’d locks;”

and remembers all those delightfully wicked places he used to haunt formerly, and amongst them:

“Farewell unto the GREYHOUND, And farewell to the Bell, And farewell to my landlady, Whom I do love so well.”

This was probably the same Greyhound mentioned by Machyn, which seems to have been situated in Fleet Street, where the gaudily dressed Spanish ambassador took his stirrup-cup before leaving London. The same author mentions the sign elsewhere, apparently in Westminster; and the little picture of manners which accompanies it is rather curious:--

“The viij day of January (1557) dyd ryd in a care in Westmynster the wyff of the Grayhound, and the Abbot’s servand was wypyd [whipped] becawse that he toke her owt of the car, at the care h--e, [the back of the cart.]”

--another example that the course of true love never does run smooth, even though it runs upon wheels.

The WHITE GREYHOUND was the sign of John Harrison, in St Paul’s Churchyard, a bookseller who published some of Shakespeare’s early works, as “The Rape of Lucrece,” “Venus and Adonis,” &c. White greyhounds, or rather silver greyhounds, were, until eighty years ago, the badges worn on the arm by king’s messengers.

The sign of the BLACK GREYHOUND is also of frequent occurrence, and at Grantham there is a BLUE GREYHOUND. Indeed, although Lincoln was formerly famous for green, it seems also to have taken a great fancy to blue, for there we find the BLUE BULL and the BLUE COW, the BLUE DOG, the BLUE FOX, (all in Colsterworth,) besides the BLUE PIG, the BLUE RAM, in Grantham, which town can also boast of the unique sign of the BLUE MAN.

The TALBOT--old and now almost obsolete term for a large kind of hunting dog--has acquired a literary celebrity from having been substituted for the old sign of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, whence the pilgrims started on their merry journey to Canterbury. In 1606, we find the Talbot the sign of Thomas Man, bookseller in Paternoster Row, which, however, at that time, was not such a book market as now, being occupied by “eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen; and their shops were so resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in their coaches, that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was no passage for foot passengers.”[274] So it continued until the fire; and it was only in the middle of the last century that the booksellers began to make their appearance in it.

A Talbot Inn in the Strand is mentioned in the following very quaint advertisement:--

“TO BE SOLD, a fine Grey Mare, full fifteen hands high, gone after the hounds many times, rising six years and no more; moves as well as most creatures upon earth, as good a road mare as any in 10 counties and 10 to that; trots at a confounded pace; is from the country, and her owner will sell her for nine guineas; if some folks had her she would fetch near three times the money. I have no acquaintance, and money I want, and a service in a shop to carry parcels or to be in a gentleman’s service. My father gave me the mare to get rid of me, and to try my fortune in London, and I am just come from Shropshire, and I can be recommended, as I suppose nobody takes servants without, and have a voucher for my mare. Enquire for me at the Talbot Inn near the New Church at the Strand.

“A. R.”[275]

At the foot of Burdley’s Hill, Gloucester, there is a Talbot Inn, which has a sign painted with two inscriptions; at the side where the road is level, it says:--

“Before you do this hill go up, Stop and drink a cheerful cup.”

On the side of the hill it says:

“You’re down the hill, all danger’s past, Stop and drink a cheerful glass.”

A publican at Odell has chosen the MAD DOG for a sign, evidently his beau ideal of a “jolly fellow,” one having a great horror for water; another at Pidley, Hunts, not to be behindhand with the Mad Dog, has put up the MAD CAT. We have as odd and apparently as unmeaning a sign in Tabernacle Walk, namely, the BARKING DOGS.

All the combinations of the sign of the Dog point towards sports, as the DOG AND BEAR, which was very common in the seventeenth century, when bear-baiting was in fashion, and kings and queens countenanced it by their presence. The DOG AND DUCK refers to another barbarous pastime, when ducks were hunted in a pond by spaniels. The pleasure consisted in seeing the duck make her escape from the dog’s mouth by diving. It was much practised in the neighbourhood of London till the beginning of this century, when it went out of fashion, as most of the ponds were gradually built over. One of the most notorious DOG AND DUCK Taverns stood in St George’s Fields, where Bethlem Hospital now stands; it had a long room with tables and benches, and an organ[276] at the upper end. In its last days it was frequented only by thieves, prostitutes, and other low characters. After a long and wicked existence it was at length put down by the magistrates. In the seventeenth century it was famous for springs, but already in Garrick’s time its reputation was very equivocal:

“St George’s Fields, with taste and fashion struck, Display Arcadia at the Dog and Duck, And Drury Misses, here in tawdry pride, Are there “Pastoras” by the fountain side; To frowsy bowers they reel through midnight damps, With Fauns half drunk and Dryads breaking lamps.”[277]

In an unpublished paper from the MS. collection of William Hone, we have a mention of it:--

“It was a very small public-house till Hedger’s mother took it, who had been a barmaid to a tavern-keeper in London, who left this house to her at his death. Her son Hedger then was a postboy to a yard I believe at Epsom, and came to be master there. After making a good deal of money he left the house to his nephew, one Miles, (though it still went in Hedger’s name,) who was to allow him £1000 per annum out of the profits, and it was he that allowed the house to acquire so bad a character that the licence was taken away. I have this from one William Nelson who was servant to old Mrs Hedger, and remembers the house before he had it. He is now [1826] in the employ of the Lamb Street Water Works Company, and has been for thirty years. In particular, there never was any duck hunting since he knew the Gardens. Therefore, if ever, it must have been in a very early time indeed. Hedger, I am told, was the first person who sold the mineral water, (whence the St George’s Spa.) In 1787, when Hedger applied for a renewal of his licence, the magistrates of Surrey refused, and the Lord Mayor came into Southwark and held a court and granted the licence, in despite of the magistrates, which occasioned a great disturbance and litigation in the law courts.”

The old stone sign is still preserved, embedded in the brick wall of the garden of Bethlehem Hospital, visible from the road, and representing a dog squatted on his haunches, with a duck in his mouth, and the date 1617.

Another famous Dog and Duck inn formerly stood on the site of Hertford Street, in the now aristocratic precincts of May Fair. It was an old-fashioned wooden public-house, extensively patronised by the butchers and other rough characters during May Fair time. The pond in which the cruel sport took place was situated behind the house, and for the benefit of the spectators was boarded round to the height of the knee, to preserve the over-excited spectators from involuntary immersions. The pond was surrounded by a gravel walk shaded with willow trees.

THE DOG AND BADGER, Kingswood, Gloucester, refers to the now obsolete sport of badger-baiting. More genial sports, however, are called to mind by the DOG AND GUN, DOG AND PARTRIDGE, DOG AND PHEASANT, all of which are very common.

“As I was going through a street of London, where I never had been till then, I felt a general clamp and faintness all over me, which I could not tell how to account for, till I chanced to cast my eyes upwards and found that I was passing under a signpost on which the picture of a cat was hung.” This little incident of the cat-hater, told in No. 538 of the Spectator, is a proof of the presence of cats on the signboard, where, indeed, they are still to be met with, but very rarely. There is a sign of the CAT at Egremont, in Cumberland, a BLACK CAT at St Leonard’s Gate, Lancaster, and a RED CAT at Birkenhead. There is also a sign of the Red Cat in the Hague, Holland, and “thereby hangs a tale.” It was put up by a certain Bertrand, a Frenchman, who had left his native country, having been mixed up in some conspiracy against Mazarin. Arrived at the Hague, he opened a cutler’s shop, and put up a double sign, representing on the one side a red cat, on the other a portrait of his Eminence Cardinal Mazarin in his red gown, and with his bristling moustache; underneath he wrote “aux deux méchantes bêtes” (the two obnoxious animals.) Holland, however, was at peace with France at that time, and so the Burgomaster, afraid of offending the French ambassador, requested Bertrand to alter his sign. Mazarin’s face was then painted out and another red cat put in its place. Gradually as the first sign was forgotten, the name became unmeaning, and was finally altered into the Red Cat, and in this shape it has come down to the present day, still the sign of a cutler, and a descendant of Bertrand.[278]

The CAT AND LION, which we meet with sometimes, as at Stockport, was probably at one time the Tiger and Lion. It is occasionally accompanied by the following elegant distich:--

“The lion is strong, the cat is vicious, My ale is strong, and so is my liquors.”

The CAT AND PARROT was, in 1612, the sign of Thomas Pauer, a bookseller, dwelling near the Royal Exchange. At Santry, near Dublin, and in some other places, we meet with the CAT AND CAGE, which is represented by a cat trying to pull a bird out of a cage; but its origin may be found in the CAT IN THE BASKET, a favourite sign of the booths on the Thames when that river was frozen over in 1739/40. The sign was a living one, a basket hanging outside the booth, with a cat in it. It was revived when the river was again frozen in 1789, and seems to have had many imitators, for on a print[279] representing a view of the river at Rotherithe during the frost, there is a booth with a merry company within, whose sign, inscribed the Original CAT IN THE CAGE, represents poor Tabby in a basket. This sign of the Cat in the Basket, or in the Cage, doubtless originated from the cruel game, once practised by our ancestors, of shooting at a cat in a basket. Brand, in his “Popular Superstitions,” gives a quotation, from which it appears that a similar cruel sport was still practised at Kelso in 1789; but instead of shooting at the cat, it was placed in a barrel, the bottom of which had to be beaten out. The same game is still practised in Holland, and generally, if not always, on the ice.

[196] J. Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, London, 1597, p. 97.

[197] “Allectorius is a stone similar to a dark crystal, which is taken from the stomach of a capon when it is four years old. Its utmost size is that of a bean. Gladiators take it in their mouths in order to be invincible, and not to suffer from thirst.”--Tractatus de Animalibus et Lapidibus, 4to, circa 1465-75.

[198] Guillim’s Display of Heraldry. The same is also related in the Latin Bestiarium. Harl. MSS. 4751; and by Albertus Magnus, Camerarius, &c.

[199] “Boyne’s and Akerman’s Trades Tokens of the 17th Century,” in England, Ireland, and Wales.

[200] Steward’s Accounts of Sir John Howard.

[201] See Cunningham’s London Past and Present, p. 41.

[202] Burnet’s History of the Reformation, Lib. ii., vol. ii., p. 14. It is possible also that the White Bear was set up in compliment to Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, queen to Richard III., who, as a difference from her father’s bear and ragged staff, had adopted the White Bear as a badge.

[203] Timbs’s Flyleaves.

[204] Bagford, who was present at the excavations, relates this story in a letter prefixed to Leland’s Collectanea, p. lxiii., 1770. See also Sir John Oldcastle.

[205] “Lambspring, das ist ein herzlichen Teutscher Tractat von Philosophischen Steine, welchen für Jahren ein adelicher Teutscher Philosophus, Lampert Spring geheissen mit schöne Figuren beschrieben hat. Frankfort am Main, 1625.”

[206] “This is a great wonder, and very strange: the dragon contains the greatest medicament.”

[207] “Mercury rightly precipitated or sublimated in its own water dissolved and again coagulated.”

[208] “There is a dragon lives in the forest who has no want of poison: when he sees the sun or fire he spits venom, which flies about fearfully. No living animal can be cured of it; even the basilisk does not equal him. He who can properly kill this serpent has overcome all his danger. His colours increase in death; physic is produced from his poison, which he entirely consumes, and eats his own venomous tail. This must be accomplished by him in order to produce the noblest balm. Such great virtue as will point out herein that all the learned shall rejoice.”

[209] Bossewell, Workes of Armourie, p. 61.

[210] Allusions to the unicorn occur frequently in the Old Testament, and commentators inform us that these references were typical of the coming Saviour.

[211] “It is reported that the unicorn’s horn sweats when it comes in the presence of poison, and that for this reason it is laid on the tables of the great, and made into knife-handles, which, when placed on the tables, show the presence of poison. But this is not sufficiently proved.”--Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus, lib. xxv.

[212] Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 403.

[213] Relation of the Island of England, published by the Camden Society.

[214] See Bib. Harl. 5953, vol. i., p. 407.

[215] Hentzner’s Travels, p. 54.

[216] Henry Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman.

[217] Fuller’s Worthies, voce Middlesex.

[218] “It is rather peculiar that the same superstitious notions should be found in India in connexion with the horn of the rhinoceros, whom some consider as the fabled unicorn divested of his romantic garb. His horn, too, was thought useful in diseases, and for the purpose of discovering poisons.”--Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible. “The fine shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. Goblets made of these would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.”--Thunberg’s Journey to Caffraria.

[219] Daily Courant, February 2, 1711.

[220] “This is the Civet, as you may see; but enter. Perfumes sold here for men and women.”

[221] The reason why the hedgehog was generally represented with apples stuck on his quills, appears from the following words in Bossewell, (p. 61,)--“He clymeth upon a vine or an apple-tree and biteth off their braunches and twigges, and when they [the apples] be fallen downe, he waloweth on them, and so they sticke on his prickes, and he beareth them unto a hollow tree or some other hole.” The early naturalists also said that if, when he was so loaded, one of the apples happened to drop off, he would throw all the others down in anger and return to the tree for a new load.

[222] Harl. MSS. 353, fol. 145.

[223] London Gazette, No. 368.

[224] London Gazette, Sept. 18-21, 1682. I am confident the newspapers made a misprint, and that the man’s name was Haase, Dutch or German, for the Hare he represented on his sign.

[225] Hone’s Every-Day Book, Oct. 17, fol. 1.

[226] Rev. J. Richardson, LL.B., Recollections of the Last Half Century. See also under STUNNING JOE BANKS in the Slang Dictionary, recently issued by the publisher of this work.

[227] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842.

[228] See under RELIGIOUS SIGNS.

[229] London Gazette, Oct. 2-6, 1673.

[230] Childe Harold, canto I. lxx.

[231] Hone’s Every Day Book, Jan. 17, vol. ii.

[232]

“I wear horns, which everybody sees, But many a one wears horns and does not know it.”

[233] Bagford Bills. Bib. Harl. 5962.

[234] Postman, February 1-3, 1711.

[235] Richardsoniana, p. 168.

[236] Timbs, Curiosities of London, p. 402.

[237] As quoted by Strutt in “Gliggam,” &c.

[238] Printed in Leland’s Collectanea, pp. 270, 272.

[239] A MS. of the sixteenth century, Bib. Harl. 2150, fol. 356, gives full particulars of this fête and procession.

[240]

“At the White Horse, horses are shod with iron, Pity the same cannot be done to men, for then they would need no shoes.”

[241] Crowns exactly similar to this, made of box, tinsel, and coloured paper, are yearly hung out by the fishmongers in Holland on the first arrival of the salt herring after the summer fishery.Return to passage

[242] Pennant’s Account of London, p. 423.Return to passage

[243] Gentleman’s Magazine, March 1842; and London Gazette, Dec. 30, 1718.Return to passage

[244] Lloyd’s Evening Post, Jan. 16-19, 1761.Return to passage

[245] Brand’s Popular Superstitions.Return to passage

[246] Robert Herrick, Hesperides, p. 234.Return to passage

[247] Aubrey, Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 3.Return to passage

[248] Postman, June 1703.Return to passage

[249] Intelligencer, May 30, 1681.Return to passage

[250] Bagford Bills. Bib. Harl. 5964.Return to passage

[251] Hence we have 7 ages, 7 churches, 7 champions, 7 penitential psalms, 7 sleepers of Ephesus, 7 years’ apprenticeship, 7 cardinal virtues and deadly sins, 7 make a gallows-ful, boots of 7 leagues, 7 liberal arts, and innumerable other instances.Return to passage

[252] Collier’s Annals, vol. iii. p. 271, and Halliwell’s Introduction to Tarlton’s Jests, p. 16.Return to passage

[253] Spectator, No. 509.Return to passage

[254] “He went about almost naked in the rage of hunger,” says Dr Johnson, “and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffeehouse asked him for a shilling; and Otway going away bought a roll and was choked with the first mouthful.”Return to passage

[255] Lewis’s Islington, p. 160.Return to passage

[256] The History of the Plague, by Defoe.Return to passage

[257] There is still a BULL’S HEAD public-house in this street, built on the site of the house of Thomas Britton, the Musical Small-Coal Man, where he gave his celebrated concerts for a period of 36 years, powdered duchesses and fastidious ladies of the Court tripping through his coal repository, and climbing up a ladder to assist at these famous meetings.Return to passage

[258] Randolph’s Muses’ Looking-Glass.Return to passage

[259] This riding in a cart was a very ancient punishment, probably introduced by the Normans; in the romance of Lancelot du Lac the cart is mentioned with the following remarks:--“At that time a cart was considered so vile that nobody ever went into it, but those who had lost all honour and good name; and when a person was to be degraded, he was made to ride in a cart, for a cart served at that time for the same purpose as the pillory now-a-days, and each town had only one of them.” In the old English laws it was called the Tumbrill; thus Edward I. in 1240 enacted a law by which millers stealing corn were to be chastised by the Tumbrill.--See Fabian’s Chronicles, 2 Edw. I.Return to passage

[260] For the chequered life of this strange individual, see Caulfield’s Memoirs of Remarkable Persons, vol. ii. From the Original Weekly Journal, Sept. 13, 1718, we gather the information that, “Last week Dr Campbell, the famous dumb fortune-teller, was married to a gentlewoman of considerable fortune in Shadwell.”Return to passage

[261] A curious story of Bulleyn Butchered, the sign said to have been put up in commemoration of Henry VIII.’s unfortunate queen, and its corrupted form of Bull and Butcher will be found in the first division of this work. Vide HISTORICAL SIGNS.Return to passage

[262] “Be happy while you live.”Return to passage

[263] M. Misson’s Memoirs and Observations on his Travels in England, 1719.Return to passage

[264] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1700.Return to passage

[265] From a MS., entitled “Medycine Boke” of one Samson Jones, doctor of Bettws, Monmouthshire, 1650-90; a note on the flyleaf says, “I had this book from Mr Owen of Bettws, Monmouth. He assured me he knew for a fact it was the receipt booke of Samson Jones, a good doctor of that parish, a hundred and fifty years agone.” It contains some extraordinary prescriptions. Surely if Master Samson Jones made use of them, the earth must very quickly have hidden his blunders.Return to passage

[266] London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1673.Return to passage

[267] Idem, March 24-28, 1761.Return to passage

[268] Public Advertiser, March 4, 1759.Return to passage

[269] Postman, Feb. 13, 1711.Return to passage

[270] See under HUMOROUS SIGNS, further on.Return to passage

[271] See under HUMOROUS SIGNS, further on.Return to passage

[272] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, March 30 to April 6, 1683.Return to passage

[273] The Merry Man’s Resolution, or his last farewell to his former acquaintance. Rox Ball. iii. f. 242.Return to passage

[274] Strype, B. iii. p. 195.Return to passage

[275] Public Advertiser, March 1759.Return to passage

[276] Organs were first introduced in taverns during the Commonwealth. When the liturgy and the use of organs in Divine service were abolished, these instruments being removed from churches, were set up in inns and taverns. Hence a pamphlet of 1659 has these words:--“They have translated the organs out of their churches and set them up in taverns, chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial Bacchanalias to the tune of those instruments which were wonted to assist them in the celebration of God’s praises.”Return to passage

[277] Garrick’s Prologue to the Maid of the Oaks, 1774.Return to passage

[278] La Haye, par de Fonseca. 1853.Return to passage

[279] Crowle Pennant, vol. viii.Return to passage

V. BIRDS AND FOWLS

Thomas Coryatt, a gentleman from Somerset, who travelled over a great part of Europe in the reign of King James I., and wrote an amusing account of his travels, gives a curious instance of the prevalence of signs in Paris representing birds. Speaking of the bridges over the Seine, he says one of them is “the Bridge of Birdes, formerly called the Millar’s Bridge. The reason why it is called the Bridge of Birdes is because all the signes belonging unto shops on each side of the streete are signes of birdes.”[280] They never were so general in England, though certainly the Cock and the Swan appear to have found more votaries than any other signboard animals. The EAGLE is not nearly so common; some we have mentioned in a former part as undoubtedly of heraldic origin. From this source the GOLDEN EAGLE may be derived; it was the emblem of the Eastern Empire, and occurs in various family arms; but it is also a fera naturæ. It was, in 1711, the sign of James Levi, a bookseller in the Strand, near the Fountain Tavern. The EAGLE AND BALL, of which there are two in Birmingham, was suggested by the imperial eagle standing on the globe, or the spread eagle with the globe in his talon. The EAGLE AND SERPENT, or the EAGLE AND SNAKE, is a mediæval emblem of courage united to prudence.

Mythical birds also have been in great favour. The burning and reviving of the PHŒNIX, for instance, like the salamander and the dragon, typified certain transformations obtained by chemistry, whence he was a very general sign with chemists, and may still be seen on their drug-pots and transparent lamps. The firm of Godfrey and Cooke, for instance, have adhered to it ever since the opening of their establishment, A.D. 1680. Persons of a highly imaginative turn will probably shudder to think of the awful quantities of physic prepared by this house in those 184 years. The pills, if piled up like cannon-balls, would make pyramids higher than those of Gizeh; the draughts would be sufficient to cover the earth with a nauseous deluge; and the powders, if blown about by an evil wind, levelling valleys and mountains, would change the whole of Europe into a medicated desert. The original shop referred to by the date 1680 stood in Southampton Street, and there phosphorus was first manufactured by the predecessor of this firm, Hanckwitz, a Pole or Russian by birth, who advertised it wholesale at 50s., and retail at £3 the ounce. Ambrose Godfrey was his successor.

Not only apothecaries used this emblem, but all kinds of shops adopted it. In the time of James I. it was the sign of one of the places where plays were acted in Drury Lane,--sometimes also called the Cockpit Theatre. This was destroyed by the unruly apprentices during one of their saturnalia. Being rebuilt, it was sacked a second time by the Parliamentary soldiers. In Charles II.’s piping times of peace Killigrew’s troop of “the king’s servants” played in it, until they removed to the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn.

The character ascribed to the PELICAN was fully as fabulous as that of the Phœnix. From a clumsy, gluttonous, piscivorous water-bird, it was transformed into a mystic emblem of Christ, whom Dante calls “nostro Pellicano.” St Hieronymus gives the story of the pelican restoring its young ones destroyed by serpents, as an illustration of the destruction of man by the old serpent, and his salvation by the blood of Christ. The “Bestiarium,” in the Royal Library at Brussels, says:--

“Phisiologus dist del Pellican qu’il aime moult ses oiseles et quant ils sont nés et creu ils s’esbanoient en lor ni contre lor pere et le fierent de lors eles en ventilant ensi come il li vont entor et tant le fierent qu’ils le blechent es ex. Et lors les refiert li peres et les occit. Et la mere est de tel nature que ele vient al ni al tierc jor et s’accoste sor ses oiselès mors et ell oevre son costé de son bec et en espant son sanc sor ses oiseles et ensi les resucite de mort; car li oiseles par nature rechoivent le sang si toit come il saut de la mere et le boivent.”[281]

In the Armory of Birds by Skelton, a similar notion is expressed:

“Than sayd the Pellycane, When my Byrdts be slayne, With my Bloude I them reuyue, Scrypture doth record The same dyd our Lord, And rose from deth to lyue.”

There is still an old stone carving of the Pelican walled in the front of a house in Aldermanbury, and as a sign the bird appears to be a great favourite at the present day. An anecdote is told of Jekyl’s dissatisfaction at the prices at the Pelican Inn, Speenham Land, and of his writing the following epigram upon the same:--

“The Pelican at Speenhamland, That stands below the hill, May well be called the Pelican, From his enormous bill.”

Longfellow made a similar epigram on the RAVEN INN at Zurich:--

“Beware of the raven of Zurich, ’Tis a bird of omen ill, With a noisy and unclean breast, And a very, very long bill.”

It is amusing to see how wit runs in the same channel. In “Scrapeana, a Collection of Anecdotes, 1792,” a similar anecdote is fathered upon Foote. “Pray what is your name?” said Foote to the Master of the Castle Inn at Salthill. “Partridge, sir!”--“Partridge! it should be Woodcock by the length of your bill!”

But the coincidence is most amusing in the case of Longfellow. It is observed by a contributor to Notes and Queries,[282] that the verses may be a plagiarism; at any rate they have a strange family resemblance to the following, said to have been written by a commercial traveller on an inside window shutter of the GOLDEN LION, Brecon, kept by a Mr Longfellow, alias Tom Longfellow:--

“Tom Longfellow’s name is most justly his due, Long his neck, long his bill, which is very long too; Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led, Long before he’s rubbed down, and much longer till fed. Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room, Till from kitchen, long dirty, your dinners shall come. Long the often-told tale that your host will relate, Long his face while complaining how long people eat, Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again, Long ’twill be ere I long for Tom Longfellow’s inn.”

And long, doubtless, was his face when he read the above.

The RAVEN, or the BLACK RAVEN, is still a common inn sign. There is one in Bishopsgate yet in existence, of which trades tokens of the seventeenth century are extant; and on the Great Western Road between Murrell Green and Basingstoke, the Raven Inn is still, or was not many years ago, to be seen, in which Jack the painter, alias James Aitken, the man who set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard, Dec. 7, 1776, was taken prisoner. This house was built in 1653, and has preserved much of its original appearance. In 1711 the RAVEN or the BLACK RAVEN was the sign of S. Popping, bookseller in Paternoster Row; and about the same time John Dunton published at the BLACK RAVEN, in the Poultry, the earliest printed review of literary works, under the name of “Literature from the North, and News from all Nations.” What the work was worth we may judge from D’Israeli’s description of the man: “a crack-brained, scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed.” Notwithstanding this, his autobiography, under the name of the “Life and Errors of John Dunton,” is one of the most curious works in existence. In Molesworth Street, Dublin, there is a sign of the THREE RAVENS, which may be called a living sign, for there are always some ravens kept on the premises. The Raven was the badge of the old Scotch kings, and thus may have been adopted as a kind of Jacobite symbol. To this may be attributed its frequency on the signboard as well as some other sable birds. The common occurrence of the BLACKBIRD and the COCK AND BLACKBIRD as signs had long puzzled us, till one day turning over some old Scotch ballads we came upon one, which Allan Ramsay gives as a favourite old Scotch song. We shall merely quote the first two stanzas, (there are six in all,)--quite sufficient, as far as the poetry is concerned:--

“Upon a fair morning for soft recreation, I heard a fair lady was making her moan, With sighing and sobbing, and sad lamentation, Saying, my blackbird most royal is flown.” My thoughts they deceive me, Reflections do grieve me, And am o’erburthen’d with sad misery. Yet if death should blind me, As true love inclines me, My blackbird I’ll seek out wherever he be.

“Once in fair England my blackbird did flourish, He was the chief blackbird that in it did spring, Prime ladies of honour his person did nourish, Because he was the true son of a king. But since that false fortune, Which still is uncertain, Has caused this parting between him and me, His name I’ll advance, In Spain and in France, And I’ll seek out my blackbird wherever he be.”

To which dark-haired prince of the Stuart family the song alludes is not known; but there is a passage in a letter of Sir John Hinton, physician to Charles II., which seems to imply that the black boy was a nickname for Charles II.

“The day before General Monk went into Scotland he dined with me; and after dinner he called me into the next room, and after some discourse, taking a lusty glass of wine, he drank a health to his bonny black boy, (as he called Your Majesty,) and whispered to me, that if ever he had power, he would serve Your Majesty to the utmost of his life.”[283]

What lends strength to the supposition is the occurrence of such a sign as the CROW IN THE OAK, at Foleshill, Coventry, which seems to have been a covert way of representing the royal oak during the times of the Commonwealth, the disguise continuing after there was no more need of it, similar to the “Cat and Wheel,” and other signs dating from the same period, for no other reason than because the house had become known by them. In the same manner the OAK AND BLACK DOG, (at Stretton on Dunsmoor,) if not a combination of two signs, may have been put up in derision of the Prince in the Royal Oak. The CROW or the BLACK CROW, is also a common sign; so are the THREE BLACKBIRDS;[284] then there is the CHOUGH, at Chard in Sommerset, the THREE CHOUGHS at Yeovil; the THREE CROWS,--all of which belong to the same family, and seem to have the same origin.

On Friday, August 27, 1770, at the Three Crows in Brook Street, Holborn, the coroner sat on the body of Thomas Chatterton, and the ten jurymen returned a verdict of felo de se. One cannot think of this sign and the crowner (as the vulgar still term this officer) sitting on the body of poor Chatterton without calling to mind the ballad of the three corbies; but the poor suicide had no “fallow doe” that

“buried him before the prime, And was dead herself ere even-song time.”

He was interred in the burying ground of Shoelane workhouse; at the present day Farringdon market-place occupies the spot.

The STORK now is of frequent occurrence, although it does not occur among the older English signs. Coryatt thus speaks of these birds:--

“There, [at Fontainebleau] I saw two or three birds that I never saw before; yet I have much read of admirable things of them, in Aelianus the Polyhistor, and other historians, even Storckes, which do much haunt many cities and towns of the Netherlands, especially in the sommer. For in Flushing, a towne of Zeland, I saw some of them, those men esteeming themselves happy in [on] whose houses they harbour, and those most unhappy whom they forsake. It is written of them that when the old one is become so old that it is not able to helpe itselfe, the young one purveyeth foode for it, and sometime carryeth it about on his backe, and if it seeth it so destitute of meate, that it knoweth not where to get any sustenance, it casteth out that which it hath eaten the day before, to the end to feede his damme. This bird is called in Greeke πελαργος where hence cometh the Greeke word αντιπελαργειν which signifieth to imitate the stork in cherishing our parents.”[285]

This fabled virtue of the stork suggested the sign to many Continental booksellers and printers. The TWO STORKS was the sign of Martin Nutius of Antwerp, 1550, and his son, Philip Nutius. Their colophons, which were varied continually, all represent a young stork feeding an old one, sometimes carrying him on his back, with the motto: “PIETAS HOMINI . TUTISSIMA . VIRTUS.” A similar sign was used, circa 1682, by Franciscus Canisius; and, in 1651, by Joan. Bapt. Verdussen, both of Antwerp. The Parisian booksellers adopted it as well, for we find it on the titlepages of Sebastien Nivelle, and of Sebastien Cramoisy, the king’s printer, of the Rue St Jacques, 1636. He used a Scripture motto with it: “HONORA PATREM TUUM ET MATREM TUAM UT SIS LONGAEVUS SUPER TERRAM, Ecc. XX.” In the Banks’ Collection of Bills there is one of the STORK HOTEL at Basle, of the end of the last century. It gives the address in four languages. The English stands thus:--Christophe Imhoff, “a the Seigne off the Storgk at Basel.”

The THREE CRANES was formerly a favourite London sign. With the usual jocularity of our forefathers, an opportunity for punning could not be passed, so instead of the three cranes, which in the vintry used to lift the barrels of wine, three birds were represented. The Three Cranes in Thames Street, or in the vicinity, was a famous tavern as early as the reign of James I. It was one of the taverns frequented by the wits in Ben Jonson’s time. In one of his plays he says:--

“A pox o’ these pretenders to wit, your Three Cranes, Mitre and Mermaid men! not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard among them all!”--Bartholomew Fair, a. i. s. 1.

On the 23d of January 1661/2, Pepys suffered a strong mortification of the flesh in having to dine at this tavern with some poor relations. The sufferings of the snobbish secretary must have been intense:--

“By invitation to my uncle Fenner’s and where I found his new wife, a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt, a midwife. Here were many of his and as many of her relations, sorry mean people; and after choosing our gloves we all went over to the Three Cranes Taverne, and though the best room of the house in such a narrow dogghole we were crammed, and I believe we were near 40, that it made me loath my company and victuals and a very poor dinner it was too.”

Opposite this tavern people generally left their boats to shoot the bridge, walking round to Billingsgate, where they would re-enter them.

The COCK occurs almost as frequently on the signboard as alive at the head of his family in the farm yard. It is one of the oldest signs, already in use at the time of the Romans, who record that one Eros, a freeman of Licius, Africanus Cerealis, kept an inn at Narbonne at the sign of the Cock--“a gallo gallinaceo.” In Christian times the sign acquired a new prestige. The cock is thus mentioned in “The Armory of Byrdes:”--[286]

“The Cocke dyd say I use alway To crow both first and last. Lyke a Postle I am, For I preche to Man, And tell hym the nyght is past.

“I bring new tydynges That the Kyng of all Kynges, In tactu profudit chorus: Then sang he mellodious Te Gloriosus Apostolorum chorus.”

This bird, in the legends of the middle ages, was surrounded with a mystical, religious halo:--

“It was about the time of cock-crowing when our Saviour was born,--the circumstance of the time of cock-crowing being so natural a figure and representation of the Morning of the Resurrection; the Night as shadowing out the night of the Grave; the third Watch being as some suppose the time our Saviour will come to judgment at; the noise of the cock awakening sleepy man and telling him as it were the night is far spent, and the day is at hand, representing so naturally the voice of the Archangel awakening the dead and calling up the righteous to everlasting day; so naturally does the time of cock-crowing shadow out these things, that probably, some good, well meaning men might have been brought to believe that the very devils themselves when the cock crew and reminded them of them did fear and tremble and shun the light.”[287]

Ideas such as these continued a long time in the popular mind, for Aubrey tells us that in his younger days people “had some pious ejaculation too when the cock did crow, which put them in mind of y^{e} Trumpet at y^{e} Resurrection.”[288]

One of the oldest Cock taverns in London is the COCK in Tothill Street, Westminster, lately re-christened as the COCK AND TABARD. An ancient coat of arms, carved in stone, England quartered with France, discovered in this house, is now walled up in the front of the building. In the back parlour is a jolly, bluff-looking man in a red coat, said to represent the driver of the first mail to Oxford, which started from this tavern. Tradition says that the workmen employed at the building of Westminster Abbey, in the reign of Henry VII., used to receive their wages at this house. It was formerly entered by steps; the building now exhibiting traces of great antiquity, and appears at one time to have been a house of considerable pretensions. The rafters and timber are principally of cedar wood. There is a curious hiding-place on the staircase, and a massive carving of Abraham about to offer his son Isaac; and another, in wood, representing the Adoration of the Magi, said to have been left in pledge, at some remote period, for an unpaid score. The cock may have been adopted as a sign here on account of the vicinity of the Abbey, of which St Peter was the patron, for in the middle ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was often one of the accessories in a picture of the apostle. This certainly was a very unkind allusion for the poor saint, particularly when accompanied with such a sneering rhyme as that under the sign of the Red Cock in Amsterdam in 1682. On the one side was written:--

“Doe de Haan begost te kraayen Toen begost Petrus te schraayen.”

On the reverse:--

“De haan die kraait niet by ongeval Vraagt Petrus die ’t U zeggen zal.”[289]

The Cock in Bow Street witnessed a disgraceful scene in the reign of Charles II.:--

“Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the public, in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened. The crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this demeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined £500. What was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission of the king, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves and exacted it to the last groat.”[290]

It was on his way home from supper at this house, December 21, 1670, that Sir John Coventry was attacked by several men, and had his nose cut to the bone. Sir John had remonstrated in the House of Commons against the improper distribution of public money, and proposed to lay a tax on the theatres; this was opposed by the Court, the players being “the king’s servants and a part of his pleasure;” upon which Sir John asked “whether the king’s pleasure lay among the men or among the women that acted?” The assault was committed by Simon Parry, Miles Reeves, O’Brian, and Sir Thomas Sandys, instigated by the Duke of Monmouth.

Pepys much praises the Cock in Suffolk Street:--

“15th March 1669.--Mr Hewes and I did walke to the Cocke, at the end of Suffolke Street, where I never was, a great ordinary mightily cried up, and there bespoke a pullet, which, while dressing, he and I walked into St James’s Park, and thence back and dined very handsome with a good soup and a pullet for 4s. 6d. the whole.”

This first visit evidently had given great satisfaction, for, three weeks after, he took Mrs P. and some friends there, and was, as usual, “mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, and particularly pease porridge.”

At the same period there was another celebrated Cock Tavern in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar, properly called the COCK AND BOTTLE, a sign still of daily occurrence, which seems to be a figurative rendering of liquor on draught and in bottle, cock being an old English, and still provincial word for the spigot or tap in a barrel.[291] The sign is, however, generally represented by a cock standing on a bottle. The present sign of the house, still conspicuous in gilt over the door, is said to have been carved by no less a hand than Grinling Gibbons. During the plague time of 1665, the following advertisement appeared in the Intelligencer:--

“THIS is to certify that the Master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants and shut up his house for this long vacation, intending (God willing) to return at Michaelmass next so that all persons who have any accounts or farthings belonging to the said house are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant July and they shall receive satisfaction.”

Certainly those were dull times, and well might that fashionable establishment close for the “long vacation,” for the plague was then coming to its highest pitch; all the gallant customers had fled town, and according to Defoe’s computation, “not less than 10,000 houses were forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs:”--

“There was not so much velvet stirring as would have bene a cover to a little booke in octavo, or seamde a Lieftenant’s Buff-doublet; a French hood would have been more wondered at in London, than the Polonyans with their long-tayld Gaberdynes; and, which was most lamentable, there was never a Gilt spur to be seene all the Strand over, never a feather wagging in all Fleet Streete, vnlesse some country Fore-horse came by, by meere chaunce with a Raine-beaten Feather in his costrill; the streete looking for all the world like a Sunday morning at six o’Clocke, three hours before service, and the Bells ringing all about London, as if the Coronation day had beene a half a yeare long.”[292]

But there was a good time coming after the plague and fire, when troops of gay courtiers might quaff their wine and sparkling ale, as happy as the “merry monarch” himself. Amongst them, our friend Pepys, who informs us, that on the 23d of April 1668, he went “by water to the Temple, and then to the Cock alehouse, and drank and eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs Pierce home, and then Knipp and I to the Temple again and took boat, it being darkish, and to Foxhall, it being now night, and a bonfire burning at Lambeth for the king’s coronation day.”

Exactly one hundred years later, the Cock is named with encomiums on its porter, in the “Art of Living in London;” but it is to be hoped the porter was better than the poetry:--

“Nor think the Cock with these not on a par, The celebrated Cock of Temple Bar, Whose Porter best of all bespeaks its praise, Porter that’s worthy of the Poet’s lays.”[293]

In William Waterproof’s Monologue, the fame of a waiter of this tavern is handed down to posterity in the harmonious verses of the Poet Laureate.

Jackson the pugilist, who has a pompous epitaph on his grave in the Brompton burial-ground, kept for some time the Cock alehouse, Sutton, on the Epsom Road; but being patronised by the Prince of Wales and a great many of the leading members of the “nobility and gentry,” he was in a very short time enabled to retire with a £10,000 fortune. Finally, some twenty years ago, there was a Cock and Bottle public-house in Bristol kept by a man named John England, who added to his sign the well known words:--

“England expects every man to do his duty.”

The sign of the THREE COCKS occurs in the following advertisement:--

“ALL persons that have any Household Goods, Plate, Rings, Watches, Jewels, Wearing Apparel, etc., in the hands of Thomas Bastin, at the THREE COCKS in St John’s Lane, Pawnbroker, which were pledged to him before the 25th of December 1709, are desired to fetch them away by the 25th of March next, or they will be disposed off.”--London Gazette, Jan. 18-21, 1711.

From this and innumerable other similar advertisements, it appears that pawnbrokers in those days did not always rigorously adhere to the Three Balls; that is to say, they were occasionally goldsmiths, and in that capacity used any sign.

It is rarely that the sign of the Cock designates any particular colour. There is a BLACK COCK in Owen Street, Tipton; a cock of this colour was always considered something more than an ordinary bird; with the Greeks it was a grateful sacrifice to Esculapius and Pluto, and in the middle ages it played a prominent part in matters of witchcraft. The BLUE COCK is a sign at Leicester; but neither colour is common. At Hargrave, near Bury St Edmunds, there is a COCK’S HEAD, put up either in imitation of a nag’s,--bull’s,--bear’s,--or boar’s head, or as the crest of a fool’s cap, which, in old times, usually terminated with a cock’s head.

Though some sort of religious prestige may at first have prompted the choice of the cock, more profane ideas latterly contributed to make it popular, such as the pastimes of cock-throwing, or “shying,” and cock-fighting. To this first practice alludes the sign of William Brandon, on Dowgate Hill, which was called, HAVE AT IT; his token representing a man about to throw a stick at a cock. This cruel game was very common in alehouses in former times; the whole sport consisting in throwing a stick at an unfortunate cock tied to a stake; if the animal was killed it was the thrower’s property; if not, he forfeited the small sum paid for each “shy.” What a slaughter of cocks was carried on in this way may be judged from the following:--

“Last Tuesday a Brewer’s servant in Southwark took his walk round Towerhill, Moorfield, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and knocked down so many cocks that by selling them again, he returned home twenty shillings odd pence richer man than he came out.”[294]

Medals are extant of the reign of William III., on which John Bull is represented throwing sticks at the French cock: not a very lofty allegory, it must be confessed; but in those days the public taste was not very refined; thus, after the victory of Blenheim, the simile was in equal bad taste, the same idea being expressed by a huge lion tearing an unfortunate cock in pieces.

Cock-fighting was a favourite diversion with the Romans, and we find continual traces of it during their occupation here. Fitz-Stephen says, it was the sport of schoolboys in his time; but as they grew up it seems the taste adhered to them. That sturdy bluebeard-king, Henry VIII., though always ready to chop off the heads of his subjects, felt his heart melt at the miseries of the cocks, and made edicts against cock-fights, yet with the inconsistency that marked his other tastes built a cock-pit unto himself at Whitehall. James I., also, was a great amateur. Though habitually suppressed by various sovereigns, the evil would always break out again, till it was finally abolished by an Act of Parliament in the 12 & 13 Queen Victoria. In Staffordshire, and other counties where this sport is still practised “on the sly,” the FIGHTING COCKS is a favourite sign.

The cock occurs in innumerable combinations with all kinds of heterogeneous objects, many of which seem merely selected for their oddity: among the most explicable is the Cock and Bottle, of which we have offered a solution, (p. 207) and which again occurs in the following title:--

“JUST PUBLISHED,

“A full account of the Life and Visions of Nicholas Hart who has every year in his Life past, on the 5th of August, fall’n into a Deep Sleep and cannot be awaked till 5 Days and Nights are expired, and then gives a surprising Relation of what he hath seen in the other World. Taken from his own mouth in September last; after he had slept 5 days in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the August before. By William Hill, of Lincoln’s Inn. The Truth of all which the said Nicholas Hart hath attested under his Hand, the 3d Day of August 1711, before several credible Witnesses, and declared his Readiness to take oath of the same. He began to sleepe as usual the 5th Day of this instant August 1711 at Mr Dixies at the Cock and Bottle in Little Britain. Entered according to Law. Printed for J. Baker, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster Row, price 2d.”[295]

This same book, under the title of “Life and Visions of William Hart, in which are particularly described the state of the Blessed Spirits in the Heavenly Canaan, and also a Description of the Condition of the Damned in a State of Punishment, etc., by Will. Hill, senior of Lincoln’s Inn, London,” is still sold as a chapbook by the “running stationers.” The Spectator did not believe in Nicholas Hart, and introduced the subject to the public with his usual humour in No. 191. Hart seems to have tested the truth of the proverb which says, that fortune comes whilst we are sleeping, for he certainly made more by sleeping than many others by waking. Stow tells a similar story of one William Foxley, potmaker to the mint, who slept full fourteen days and fifteen nights, and when he woke up “was in all points found as if he had slept but one night.”

The COCK AND TRUMPET is a common sign, typifying those ideas about the cock expressed on p. 205. This simile is constantly used by the poets; and most beautifully enlarged upon by Shakespeare:--

“The Cock that is the Trumpet of the morn,” &c.--Hamlet, a. i. sc. 1.

“And now the Cock, the morning’s trumpeter, Play’d hunt’s up to the day-star to appear.”--Drayton.

“All the night shrill chaunticler, Day’s Proclaiming Trumpeter, Claps his wings and loudly cries, Mortals, mortals, wake, arise.”--Nativity Hymn.[296]

The COCK AND BELL, if not a simple combination of two signs, may be derived from a custom formerly practised in some parts of England, for boys to have cock-fights on Shrove Tuesday; the party whose cock won the most battles, was held victorious in the cock-pit, and gained the prize--a small silver bell suspended to the button of the victor’s hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. It is an old sign, and occurs on a Birchin Lane trades token between 1648 and 1672.

The COCK AND BREECHES originated in a favourite form of gilt gingerbread at Bartholomew Fair, although the very objectionable anecdote of Joe Miller concerning such a sign is generally believed to have had something to do with its origin.

The COCK AND BULL is still frequently seen, but though the meaning of the phrase is well understood, neither its origin, nor the meaning of the two animals on the signboard, have as yet been properly explained. As we have no sound theory to offer, we shall abstain from entering on the subject, for fear of giving an illustration of what a cock-and-bull story is, rather than clearing up the mystery of the signboard. It occurs amongst the seventeenth century trades tokens.

The COCK AND DOLPHIN was the sign of one of the London carriers’ inns:--

“James Nevil’s Coach to Hampstead comes to the Cock and Dolphin in Gray’s Inn Lane, in and out every day.”--De Laune’s Present State of London, 1681.

Hatton, in 1708, placed this inn “on the east side of Gray’s Inn Lane, near the middle.” At the present day it is a public-house sign in Kendal, Westmoreland. It is more likely to be a combination of two signs, than to refer to the French Cock and the Dolphin in the arms of the Dauphin. The same applies to the COCK AND ANCHOR in Gateshead and Dublin; the COCK AND SWAN, and the COCK AND CROWN, both in Wakefield; and the COCK AND BEAR at Nuneaton; whilst the COCK AND HOUSE in Norwich may originally have been the cocking-house of the district,--that is, the house where cock-fights were held.

Fully as general as the sign of the Cock is that of the SWAN; the reason why, is perhaps truly, though coarsely, expressed under an old Dutch signboard:--

“De Swaan voert ieder kroeg, zoowel in dorp als stad, Om dat hy altyd graag is met de bek in ’t nat.”[297]

Not only is there a conformity of æsthetic symbolism in various parts of Europe, observable in the constant recurrence of the same objects on signboards, but even the same jokes are found. Thus the Swan at Bandon, near Cork, has the following rhymes, nearly akin to the Dutch epigram above, but strongly flavoured with Hibernian wit:--

“This is the Swan That left her pond, To Dip her Bill in porter, Why not we, As well as she Become regular Topers.”

Another Milesian at Mallow, also near Cork, has it thus modified:--

“This is the Swan that dips her neck in Water, Why not we as well as she, drink plenty of Beamish and Crawford’s Porter.”

In London it was always a favourite sign by the river side:--

“‘I find the Swan to be your usual sign by the River,’ said I. ‘Why, yes,’ replied George. ‘I don’t know what a Coach or a Waggon and Horses or the High-mettled Racer have to do with our River.’ ‘Pray, now,’ said I to my oracle, ‘do enumerate the signs of the Swan remaining [this was in 1829] on the Banks of the River, between London and Battersea Bridges.’ ‘Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one--there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two,--then ours here, (Hungerford Stairs,) three,--the Swan at Lambeth; that’s down though. Well, then the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a Brewhouse, though that was where our people [the Watermen] rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan, beyond the Physick Garden; we’ll say that’s four, then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.’”[298]

The Swan, by London Bridge, was a very ancient house, and gave a name to the Swan stairs. Trades tokens of this house are extant, representing a Swan walking on Old London Bridge, with the date 1657. This feat was performed by the Swan on the token, to intimate that it was the Swan above the Bridge in contradistinction to another tavern known as the Swan below the Bridge. Pepys once dined at this house; and though always very ready to be pleased, he has not much good to say about it. “27 June, 1660. Dined with my Lord and all the officers of his regiment, who invited my Lord and his friends, as many as he would bring to dinner, at the Swan at Dowgate, a poor house and ill dressed, but very good fish and plenty.” The landlady of this tavern is mentioned in a curious manner in a tract printed in 1712, entitled “The Quack Vintners:”--

“May the chaste widow prosper at the Swan Near London Bridge, where richest wines are drawn, And win by her good humour and her trade, Some jolly son of Bacchus to her bed.”

Previous to 1598 there was a SWAN THEATRE on the Bankside, near the Globe; so named from “a house and tenement called the Swan,” mentioned in a charter of Edward VI., granting the manor of Southwark to the City of London. It fell into decay in the reign of James I., was closed in 1613, and subsequently only used for gladiatorial exhibitions. Yet, in its time, it had been well frequented, for a cotemporary author says--“it was the Continent of the world, because half the year a world of beauties and brave spirits resorted to it.” One of the oldest Swan signs on record is that of the old printer, Wynkyn de Worde, assistant, and finally successor to Caxton, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, issued some works “emprynted at the signe of the Swane in Fletestrete.”

From an anecdote preserved by Aubrey, iii. 415, it appears that Ben Jonson did not always “go to the Devil,” but was also in the habit of having his cup of sack at a Swan tavern near Charing Cross:--

“A GRACE BY BEN JONSON EXTEMPORE, BEFORE KING JAMES.

“Our king and queen, the Lord God blesse, The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse, And God blesse every living thing That lives and breathes and loves the King. God blesse the Councill of Estate, And Buckingham the fortunate. God blesse them all and keep them safe, And God blesse me, and God bless Ralph.

“The king was mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was. Ben told him ’twas the drawer at the Swanne Taverne by Charing-crosse, who drew him good canarie. For this drollerie, his Ma^{tie} gave him an hundred poundes.”

Tokens of this house of the plague year are extant, representing a Swan with a sprig in its mouth, and the inscription, “Marke Rider at the Swan against the Mewes,[299] 1665. His Halfe Penny.”

The Swan at Knightsbridge had a reputation which we should call “fast.” It was well known to young gallants, and was the terror of all such jealous husbands and fathers as the Sir David Dunce who figures in Otway’s “Soldier of Fortune,” 1681:--

“I have surely lost and never shall find her more. She promised me strictly to stay at home till I came back again; for ought I know, she may be up three pairs of stairs in the Temple now, or it may be taking the air as far as Knightsbridge with some smoothfaced rogue or another; ’tis a damned house that Swan; that Swan at Knightsbridge is a confounded house!”

Tom Brown also alludes to it; Peter Pindar (Dr Woolcot) commemorates a vestry dinner there:--

“At Knightsbridge at a Tavern called the Swan, Churchwardens, Overseers, a jolly clan, Order’d a dinner for themselves, A very handsome dinner,” &c.

The old house was pulled down in 1788, and its name transferred to a public-house in Sloane Street, which, with three other houses, occupies the site of the old Swan.

The Swan tavern in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, was well known among the musical world in the last century. In this house, some celebrated concerts were given, at a time when there were no proper concert-rooms; they commenced in 1728, under the management of one Barton, formerly a dancing-master, and continued for twelve years, when the place was burnt down; at the rebuilding, it was christened the King’s Head.

In 1825, the landlord of the Swan tavern at Stratford, near London, recommended the charms of his place in the following poetical strain:--

“At the Swan Tavern kept by Lound The best accommodation’s found,-- Wine, Spirits, Porter, Bottled Beer, You’ll find in high perfection here. If in the Garden with your lass You feel inclin’d to take a glass, There Tea and Coffee of the best, Provided is for every guest. And females not to drive from hence, The charge is only fifteen pence. Or if disposed a Pipe to smoke, To sing a song or crack a joke, You may repair across the Green, Where nought is heard, though much is seen. There laugh, and drink, and smoke away, And but a mod’rate reckoning pay. Which is a most important object To every loyal British subject. In short, The best accommodation’s found By those who deign to visit Lound.”

The BLACK SWAN, though formerly considered a rara avis in terris, may now be seen in every town and village, swinging at the door of mine host, the picture painted just as fancy may have suggested, long before the actual bird was brought over from Australia. At the Black Swan tavern in Tower Street, the Earl Rochester, when banished from the Court, took lodgings under the name of Alexander Bendo, his profession that of an Italian quack, and there he had those comical adventures with the waiting-maids of the Court. Hamilton says in his “Memoires de Grammont,” that the adventures Rochester had in this disguise are by far the most amusing given in his works. Another Black Swan alehouse is named in a broadside of 1704:--

“A most strange but true account of a very large sea monster that was found last Saturday in a common-shore in New Fleet Street in Spittlefields, where at the Black Swan alehouse thousands of people resort to see it,” &c.

This dreadful monster was simply “a dead Porpoise of a very large size, it being above Four Foot in length, and Three Foot about,” and the fact of it “leaving the deep to rove up into Fresh Water Rivers, and more especially to crawl up so far a common-shore,” prognosticated, it was thought, some dire calamities, which are told in not very parliamentary language.

The SWAN WITH TWO NECKS is another lusus naturæ observable on the signboard, said to owe its origin to the corruption of the word nick into neck.[300] This explanation, however ingenious, is somewhat “sujet à caution,” for this reason: it is a well-known and established fact that the London signs of old had no inscriptions under them. Now, considering the small size of the nicks in question, they would scarcely have been perceptible at the height on which the sign was generally suspended, and even if visible, would never have been sufficiently noticed or understood to give a name to the sign. We shall not venture to propose another solution, as nothing of a sufficiently distinct character occurs to us: but it is just possible that a sign of two swans represented swimming side by side may have given rise to the “Swan with two necks,” or that the symbol of two birds’ necks encircled by a coronet which was used by a foreign publisher--taken, it has been conjectured, by him from the arms of some trade company--may have been the origin.

Machyn, in his “Diary,” mentions the sign of “the Swane with the ij nekes at Mylke Street end,” in 1556, when on the 5th of August, a woman living next door to that sign drowned herself in Moorfields.

In 1636, the TWO NECKED SWAN was already to be seen in Berkshire, at the town of Lamburne, where Taylor the water poet names it as the sign of a tavern. In later years it was a famous carriers’ inn in Lad Lane, Cheapside, whence, for more than a century and a half, passengers and goods were despatched to the North. To this inn the following couplet alludes:--

“True sportsmen know nor dread nor fear, Each rides, when once the saddle in, As if he had a neck to spare, Just like the Swan in Ladlane.”

Huddersford Cape Hunt.

Notwithstanding the “double bill” suggested by the two heads, it still continues a favourite inn sign. Four is rather an unusual number on the signboard, but we have this quadruple alliance in one solitary instance, the FOUR SWANS, Bishopsgate, which is internally one of the best remaining examples of those famous galleried inns of old London.

The SWAN AND BOTTLE, Uxbridge, is a variation of the Cock and Bottle; the SWAN AND RUMMER was a coffee-house near the Exchange, during the South Sea bubble--the Rummer, a common addition, being simply joined to the Swan, to intimate that wine was sold; the SWAN AND SALMON are combined on many signs, doubtless in honour of the two ornaments of our English rivers. The very name is sufficient to call up a pleasant picture.

The SWAN AND HOOP, Moorfields, was the birthplace of Keats the poet. The Swan on the Hoop, “on the way called old Fysshe Strete,” is mentioned as early as 1413.[301] The same combination may still be seen on London signboards.

With regard to the SWAN AND SUGARLOAF, which occurs amongst the trades tokens, and is still seen, (as in Fetter Lane, for instance,) the sugarloaf was at first added by a grocer, whose sign having gained popularity as a noted landmark, or from other causes, was imitated by rivals or juniors, particularly on account of its presenting the favourite alliteration. Combinations with the sugarloaf are very common, all arising from its being the grocer’s sign: thus the THREE CROWNS AND SUGARLOAF, Kidderminster; WHEATSHEAF AND SUGARLOAF, Ratcliff Highway, seventeenth century, (trades token;) TOBACCO ROLL AND SUGARLOAF, Gray’s Inn Gate, Holborn;[302] the THREE COFFINS AND SUGARLOAF, Fleet Street, 1720.

In the sign of the SWAN AND RUSHES, at Leicester, the rushes were merely a pictorial accessory, placed in the background to bring out the white plumage of the Swan, whilst the SWAN AND HELMET, at Northampton, no doubt originated from a helmet with a Swan for crest.

In one instance, a DRAKE occurs as a sign, namely, on the token of Will. Johnson, at “ye Drake in Bell Yard,” near Temple Bar, 1667. The Duck is only to be seen in company with the Dog; in one instance it accompanies a Mallard. This last animal was otherwise well known to the Londoners, since in 1520, amongst “the articles of good gouernãce of the cite of London,” it was recommended to magistrates--“also ye shall enquyre, yf ony person kepe or norrysh hoggis, oxen, kyen, or mallardis within the ward in noying of ther neyhbours.”[303] The DUCK AND MALLARD was the sign of a lock (and probably gun-) smith in East Smithfield in 1673.[304]

The PIGEON was a tavern at Charing Cross in 1675.[305] The THREE PIGEONS were very common; there still exists an inn of this name at Brentford:--

“It is a house of interest as being in all likelihood one of the few haunts of Shakespeare now remaining; as being indeed the sole Elizabethan tavern existing in England, which in the absence of direct evidence, may fairly be presumed to have been occasionally visited by him.”[306]

It was kept at one time by Lowin, one of the original actors in Shakespeare’s plays, and is often named by the old dramatists:

“Thou art admirably suited for the Three Pigeons at Brentford. I swear I know thee not.”--The Roaring Girl.

“We will turn our courage to Braynford, westward, My Bird of the Night--to the Pigeons.”

Ben Jonson’s Alchymist.

There, also, George Peel played some of his merry pranks. In the parlour is an old painting dated 1704, representing a landlord attending to some customers seated at a table in the open air, with these lines:--

“Wee are new beginners And thrive wee would fain, I am honest Ralph of Reading, My wife Susana to name.”

Bat Pidgeon, the famous hairdresser, immortalised by the Spectator, lived at the sign of the Three Pigeons, “in the corner house of St Clement’s Churchyard, next to the Strand.” There he remained as late as 1740, when he cut the “boyish locks” of Pennant.

In 1663 it was the sign of a bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard,[307] and in 1698 of John Newton, also a bookseller over against Inner Temple Gate, Fleet Street.

The DOVE was the sign of a coffeehouse on the riverside, between the two malls at Fulham. “In a room in this house, Thomson wrote part of his ‘Winter.’ He was in the habit of frequenting the house during the winter season, when the Thames was frozen and the surrounding country covered with snow. This fact is well authenticated, and many persons visit the house to the present day.”[308] The STOCKDOVE is a sign at Romiley, Stockport; the DOVECOTE is a public-house at Laxton, Carlton-on-Trent, probably on account of the pigeons constantly flying out and in; and there is a PIGEON BOX at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffnall. The pigeon-shooting matches may have something to do with the selection of this sign.

The FALCON was another of the devices used by Wynkyn de Worde over his shop in Fleet Street. Falcon Court, in that locality, perhaps derives its name from this house. Subsequently, Gordobuc, the earliest English tragedy, was “imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sign of the Faucon,” no doubt Wynkyn’s house, by William Griffiths in 1565; and in 1612, Peacham’s “Garden of Heroical Devises” was published by Wa. Dight at the sign of the Falcon in Shoe Lane. These booksellers, perhaps, borrowed their device from the stationers’ arms, which are, argent on a chevron between three bibles, or, a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy Ghost in chief; it was also a badge of some of the kings. At the Falcon inn, Stratford-on-Avon, there is still a shovelboard on which William Shakespeare is said often to have played. Another Falcon Tavern connected with Shakespeare’s name used to stand on the Bankside, where he and his companions occasionally refreshed themselves after the fatigues of the performances at the Globe. It long continued celebrated as a coaching inn for all parts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, till it was taken down in 1808. The name is still preserved in the Falcon Glass-house, which stands opposite its site, and in the Falcon Stairs. There was another Falcon Inn in Fleet Street, bequeathed to the company of cordwainers, by a gentleman named Fisher, under the obligation that they were yearly to have a sermon preached in the Church of St Dunstan, in the West, on the 10th of July. Formerly, on that day, sack and posset used to be drunk by those concerned, in the vestry of the church, if not to the health, at least to the “pious memory” of this Fisher; but that good custom has long since been abandoned.

The FALCON ON THE HOOP is named in 1443. “In the xxj yer of Kyng Harry the vj^{te},” the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity received “for the rent of ij yere of Wyllym Wylkyns for the Sarrecyn Head v li. vj s. viij d., paynge by the yer liij s. iiij d. and of the Faucon on the Hope, for the same ij yer vi li., that is to say paynge by the yer iij li.” Rent, it must be confessed, seems small, and landlords exceedingly accommodating in those days. Six days before that period, there is an entry in the church-wardens’ accounts for “kervyng and peinting of the seigne of the Faucon vj sh.”[309] This mention of the sign clearly shows that it was not a picture, but a carved and coloured falcon, suspended in a hoop, whence the name of the sign.

The MAGPIE being a bird of good omen, was, on that account, very often chosen; with this another reason concurred, namely, the sign of the eatable pie falling into disuse, it was transformed into the Magpie, (see Cock and Pie;) and this transition was so much the easier as the original name of the magpie was pie, (Latin pica, French pie,) and only subsequently for its knowing antics, did it receive the nickname of maggoty[310] pie, which gradually was abbreviated into Magpie. The full form of the epithet is preserved in the nursery rhyme:--

“Round about, round about, Maggoty Pie, My father loves good ale And so do I.”

The MAGGOTY PIE was an inn in the Strand during the reign of James I.: it is alluded to in Shirley’s Comedy of “The Ball,” a. i. sc. 1, where Freshwater, the Italianised Englishman, says:--

“I do ly at the signe of Dona Margaretta de Pia in the Strand.”

which his man Gudgin explains to mean, “the Maggety Pie in the Strand, sir.”

As late as 1654, we find the name “maggoty pie” used in “Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal,” July 26 to August 3, where the Welshman’s arms are described as a fly, a maggoty pie, &c.[311] The MAGPIE AND STUMP represents the magpie sitting on the stump of a tree; it was the sign of one of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The MAGPIE AND PEWTER PLATTER, in Wood Street, originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking out of it. The MAGPIE AND CROWN, says the author of “Tavern Anecdotes,” (1825,) is a ridiculous association; but when once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, as it happened in the case of a Mr Renton, who was originally waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Magpie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as usual; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, and Renton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, that Renton, at his death, left behind him property amounting to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maestricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the GRAY ASS Inn, (L’Ane Gris,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord discarded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the EMPEROR’S HEAD. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a NEW GRAY ASS, which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet unwilling to part with his Emperor’s head, after long thinking and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise: he kept up the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, “At the Original Gray Ass, (au veritable Ane Gris.)”

The PARROT, or POPINJAY, is an old sign now almost out of fashion, the GREEN PARROT, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, resided at the Parrot in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1570, and continued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water poet, mentions the POPINJAY at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandiloquent style:--

“NOBLE or IGNOBLE, you may be foretold anything that may happen to your Elementary Life: as at what time you may expect prosperity; or if in Adversity the End thereof, or when you may be so happy as to enjoy the Thing desired. Also young Men may foresee their Fortunes as in a Glass, and pretty Maids their Husbands in this Noble, yea, Heavenlie art of Astrologie. At the sign of the Parrot opposite to Ludgate Church within Blackfriars’ Gateway.”[312]

The PARROT AND CAGE, in St Martin’s Lane, Strand, advertised in 1711 as a “just and substantial office of insurance” on marriages, births, &c. This office, apparently, had chambers in some bird-fancier’s house, at all events to that class of the community the sign belonged more exclusively. In 1787, there was one near the monument, the sign of a cagemaker who sold “likewise parrots and other forring birds.”

The PEACOCK, in ancient times, was possessed of a mystic character. The fabled incorruptibility of its flesh led to its typifying the Resurrection; and from this incorruptibility, doubtless, originated the first idea of swearing “by the Peacock,” an oath that was to be inviolably kept. Its first introduction on the signboard is lost in the unrecorded wastes of time; but the oath was a common one in early times, especially on occasions of military adventures. Near the Angel in Clerkenwell, there is the PEACOCK public-house, which bears the date 1564. This was formerly a great house of call for the mail and other coaches travelling on the Great North Road, much the same as the Elephant and Castle was for the southern counties. The PEACOCK AND FEATHERS was a sign in Cornhill in 1711.

The OSTRICH seems more common at present than in ancient times. There is one on a stone-carved sign in Bread Street, probably the sign of a feather shop. Generally, the ostrich is represented with a horseshoe in his mouth, in allusion to its digestive powers; for this reason Cade says to Iden:--

“I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin.”--Henry VI., 2d Part, a. iv. sc. 10.

The landlord of an alehouse at Calverley, near Leeds, has put his premises under the protection of Minerva’s bird, the OWL. At St Helens, Lancashire, there is a still more curious sign, viz., the OWL’S NEST, or the Owl in the Ivy Bush. A bush or tod of ivy was formerly supposed to be a favourite place for the owl to make its nest in. The old dramatists abound in allusions to this:

“And, like an owle, by night to go abroad, Roosted all day within an ivy-tod.”[313]--Drayton.

“Michael von Owle, how dost thou? In what dark barn or tod of aged ivy Hast thou been hid?”--Beaumont and Fletcher, a. iv. sc. 3.

In a masque of Shirley’s, entitled “The Triumph of Peace,” 1633, one of the scenes represented a wild, woody landscape, “a place fit for purse-taking,” where, “in the furthest part was seene an ivy-bush, out of which came an owle.” Opinion, one of the dramatis personæ, informed the public, that this scene was intended for “a wood, a broad-faced owl, an ivy-bush, and other birds beside her.”[314]

In districts where GROUSE and MOORCOCK are found, these birds frequently court the patronage of the thirsty sportsman at the village alehouse door. One publican, at Upper Haslam, Sheffield, invites at once the follower of Nimrod and of Walton: his sign is the GROUSE AND TROUT.

The last bird-sign which remains to be noticed, is unquestionably the most puzzling of all. It occurs on an old trades token of Cornhill, and is there called “THE LIVE VULTURE.” That the man should have kept a live vulture at his door seems very improbable. The only explanation which occurs to us, is the possibility that, at some period or other, a live vulture had been exhibited at this house, and that from this event its name was derived.[315]

A curious instance of a tradesman exhibiting a living bird as an attraction to his house, is supplied us in a recent letter of a Paris correspondent, which gives at the same time an amusing anecdote of the well-known Alexandre Dumas. The writer, speaking of a magnificent new café which had recently been completed, says:--

“Writing of this newly started restaurant naturally recals the fact of the disappearance of the historic pavilion of Henry IV. at St Germain-en-Laye, kept for many years by the Duchess of Berry’s maître d’hôtel, Collinet. He was the pupil of Carême, and learnt to make sauces from Richout, saucemaker to the last of the Condés, and pastry from Heliot, “Ecuyer ordinaire de la bouche de Madame la Dauphine,” a title I have vainly searched for in the list of the queen’s household. The result of this combination of culinary instructions was that his “Bifsteaks à la Bearnaise,” and his woodcock pies, attracted not only all the fashionable world, but a brilliant galaxy of literary celebrities to the “Pavilion Henry IV.” Alexandre Dumas’s château of Monte Christo was close to St Germain. He sent daily for his cutlets to Collinet, who let his bill run on till it amounted to 25,000f. (£1000), in payment of which the distinguished chef received an autograph letter from the great novelist, accompanied by a live eagle. Alexandre Dumas expressed his regret at not being able to pay the bill, but suggested his exhibiting the eagle and the letter, which exhibition would inevitably attract crowds to his hotel, and there I myself have seen the eagle and read the letter.”

[280] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol. i. p. 29.

[281] “Phisiologus tells us that the Pelican is very fond of his young ones, and when they are born and begin to grow, they rebel in their nest against their parent and strike him with their wings, flying about him and beat him so much till they wound him in his eyes. Then the father strikes again and kills them. And the mother is of such a nature that she comes back to the nest on the third day and sits down upon her dead young ones, and opens her side with her bill and pours her blood over them, and so resuscitates them from death, for the young ones by their instinct receive the blood as soon as it comes out of the mother, and drink it.”--Bibl. Nat. Belg. No. 10074.

[282] Notes and Queries, No. 236, May 6, 1854.

[283] Letter of Memorial to King Charles II. from Sir John Hinton, physician in ordinary to His Majesty, 1679. Ellis, Orig. Letters, 3d series, vol. iii. p. 307.

[284] The Three Blackbirds, Choughs, Crows, Ravens, &c., may allude to Charles, James, and Rupert.

[285] Coryatt’s Crudities, vol. i. p. 39. In the East the same fable is current as to the paternal affection of young storks; their name in Hebrew is chesadao, which implies mercy or pity.

[286] “Armory of Byrdes, Imprynted at Londõ by John Wyght dwellĩg Poules Church yarde at the sygne of the Rose.” A poem of the time of Henry VIII., attributed to Skelton, the poet laureate.

[287] Bourne’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1725, p. 65.

[288] Aubrey’s Remains of Gentilisme and Judaism.--Lansdown MSS.

[289] On the obverse:--

“When the cock began to crow St Peter began to cry.”

Reverse:--

“The cock does not crow for nothing; Ask St Peter, he can tell you.”

[290] Johnson’s Life of Lord Dorset.

[291] There was formerly a kind of ale called Cock ale, but what it was is not exactly known.

[292] Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie. London, 1604. Percy Society, 1841. Though this is a description of the state of London in 1603, it perfectly applies to the plague of 1665.

[293] The Art of Living in London. Poem in 2 cantos, 1768.

[294] Protestant Mercury, Feb. 14, 1700.

[295] Daily Courant, Aug. 9, 1711.

[296] Bisson’s Janus, or Small Tokens for the Old Year, and Little Gifts for the New Year. 1674. Luttrell Ballads, vol. ii. p. 20.

[297] “The reason why so many alehouses in town and country have the sign of the swan, is because that bird is so fond of liquid.”

[No English translation can convey the peculiar significance of the original. The above gives only the bare sense.]

[298] J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 280.Return to passage

[299] The king’s stables (which stood on the site now occupied by Trafalgar Square) called the “mews,” because formerly his majesty’s falcons were kept there, mue being a French word for a certain kind of bird-cage or coop: whence the words “mewed up.”Return to passage

[300] These nicks were little horizontal, vertical, and diagonal notches cut in the swan’s bill, in order that each owner might know his own swans. In the Archæologia for 1812, a roll of 219 swan marks is given, together with the ordinances respecting swans on the river Witham, in Lincoln, belonging to various gentlemen; this paper bears the date of June 1570. The nicking was done by swanherds, appointed by the king’s licence, who kept a register of all the various marks. None but freeholders were to have marks, and these were to be perfectly distinct from those used by other gentlemen. The Corporation of London had the right of keeping swans on the Thames for fourteen leagues above and below bridge, and their flocks seem to have been very numerous, for Paulus Jovius describing the approach to London in 1552, says, “This river abounds in swans swimming in flocks, the sight of which, and their noise, are very agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course.” Those of the company of the vintners had two nicks or marks on their bill, it is said, and hence the popular explanation of the sign. This nicking of swans on the river was formerly a matter of great state. The members of the Corporation of London used annually to go up the Thames in the month of August, in gaily decorated barges, and after the swans were nicked and counted, to land off Barn Elms, and there partake of a collation in the open air, ending which, history informs us, they used to dance, but it would require very reliable authority to convince us that an alderman could find enjoyment on the “light fantastic toe,” particularly after a hearty collation.Return to passage

[301] For the origin of the sign, see under HOOP.Return to passage

[302] Mercurius Publicus, Aug. 30-Sept. 16, 1660.Return to passage

[303] Arnold’s Customs of London.Return to passage

[304] London Gazette, October 2-6, 1673.Return to passage

[305] City Mercury, or Advertisements concerning Trade, Nov. 4, 1675.Return to passage

[306] Halliwell’s Local Illustrations to the “Merry Wives of Windsor.” Folio Shakespeare.Return to passage

[307] Kingdom’s Intelligencer, March 30 to April 6, 1663.Return to passage

[308] Faulkner’s Account of Fulham, 1813, p. 359.Return to passage

[309] Hone’s Ancient Mysteries Described, p. 81.Return to passage

[310] Magot is in French a quaint, little figure.Return to passage

[311] For the benefit of those curious in Cambrian heraldry we will give these arms in a note:--“A fly, a maggoty pie, a gammon of bacon and a ----: the fly drinks before his master; a magpie doth prate and chatter, a gammon of bacon is never good till it be hanged, and a ---- when it is out never returns to its country, no more will a Welshman; otherwise, his arms are two trees verdant, a beam tressant, a ladder rampant, and Taffe pendant.”Return to passage

[312] Bagford Bills Harl. MSS., 5931.Return to passage

[313] A tod is an old word for any entangled mass, but generally applied to flax and ivy.Return to passage

[314] This comment of “Opinion” might lead to the conclusion that either there was no painted scene at all, or at least that it was badly executed; yet such can scarcely have been the case, for a notice occurs at the end of the masque, purporting that “the scene and ornament was the act of Inigo Jones, Esq., surveyor of His Majesty’s Works.” This play was acted by the gentlemen of the Inns-of-Court, in the presence of the king and queen, at Whitehall, Feb. 3, 1633.Return to passage

[315] That vultures were exhibited as great curiosities, will be seen from our notice of the George and Vulture. See under RELIGIOUS SIGNS.Return to passage

VI. FISHES AND INSECTS

The MERMAID, as a sign, must have had great attractions for our forefathers. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatists, notice this taste for strange fishes. The ancient chronicles teem with captures of mermen, mermaids, and similar creatures. Old Hollinshed gives a detailed account of a merman caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last “fledde secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after seene nor heard off.” Another chronicler says, “About this time [1202] fishes of strange shapes were taken, armed with helmets and shields like armed men, only they were much bigger.” And Gervase of Tilbury roundly asserts that mermen and mermaids live in the British Ocean. Even in more modern times, every now and then a mermaid (the mermen seem to have been more scarce) made her appearance. In an advertisement at the beginning of the seventeenth century, we find:--

“IN BELL YARD, on Ludgate Hill, is to be seen, at any hour of the day, a living Mermaid, from the waist upwards of a party colour, from thence downwards is very strange and wonderful.

Mulier formosa superne Desinit in piscem.”

After which follows a most promising and tempting little bit of information in French:--“Son corps est de divers couleurs avec beaucoup d’autres curiosités qu’on ne peut exprimer.” Again, in 1747:--

“We hear from the north of Scotland, that some time this month a sea creature, known by the name of Mermaid, which has the shape of a human body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some miles up the water of Devron.”[316]

In 1824, a mermaid or merman (for the sex was discreetly left in dubio) made its appearance before “an enlightened public,” when, as the papers inform us, “upwards of 150 distinguished fashionables” went to see it. At Bartholomew Fair, in 1830, a stuffed mermaid was exhibited; but if once she had been such a “mulier formosa” as captivated the ancient mariners, she was certainly much altered.[317] A very different specimen had been exhibited in Fleet Street in 1822; but she disappeared all at once most mysteriously, not, however, without a rumour of her being under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, which, as she was a comely maiden with flaxen hair, “mulier superne et inferne,” lies within the range of possibilities. The sea-serpent has now almost done away with the mermaid; yet, as late as 1857, there appeared an article in the Shipping Gazette, under the intelligence of 4th June, signed by some Scotch sailors, and describing an object seen off the North British coast, “in the shape of a woman, with full breast, dark complexion, comely face,” and the rest.

At one time it appears to have been a very common sign, if we may judge from the way in which it is mentioned by Brathwait in his New Cast of Characters, (1631):--

“If she [the hostess] aspire to the conceit of a sine and device, her birch pole pull’d downe, he will supply her with one, which he performes so poorely as none that sees it, but would take it for a sign he was drunk when he made it. A long consultation is had before they can agree what sign must be reared. ‘A meere-mayde’ says she, ‘for she will sing catches to the youths of the parish.’ ‘A lyon,’ says he, for that is the onely sign he can make; and this he formes so artlessly, as it requires his expression, this is a lyon. Which old Ellenor Rumming, his tapdame, denies, saying it should have been a meere-mayde.”

Among the most celebrated of the Mermaid taverns in London, that in Bread Street stands foremost. As early as the fifteenth century, it was one of the haunts of the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464:--“Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Stret, for my mastyr and Syr Nicholas Latimer, x d. ob.” In 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh established a literary club in this house, doubtless the first in England. Amongst its members were Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, Cotton, &c. It is frequently alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in their comedies, but best known is that quotation from a letter of Beaumont to Ben Jonson:--

“What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that any one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly, Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies (Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

There was another Mermaid in Cheapside, frequented by Jasper Mayne, and in the next reign by the poet laureate, John Dryden. Mayne mentions it in “The City Match,” (1638:)--

“I had made an ordinary, Perchance at the Mermaid.”

At one time the landlord’s name was Dun, which is told us in a somewhat amusing anecdote:--“When Dun, that kept the Meremaid Tavern in Cornhill, being himself in a room with some witty gallants, one of them (which, it seems, knew his wife) too boldly cryd out in a fantastick humour, ‘I’ll lay five pound there’s a cuckhold in this company.’ ‘’Tis Dun,’ says another.”[318] In 1681, there was a Mermaid in Carter Lane, which had a great deal of traffic as a carriers’ inn.[319]

The sign was also used by printers. John Rastall, for instance, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, “emprynted in the Cheapesyde at the sygne of the Meremayde; next to Poulysgate in 1527;” and in 1576 a translation of the History of Lazarillo de Tormes, dedicated to Sir Thomas Gresham, was printed by Henry Binnemann, the queen’s printer, in Knight-rider Street, at the sign of the Mermaid. A representation of this fabulous creature was generally prefixed to his books.

The SEAHORSE may be seen in Birmingham, York, and various other places. Bossewell, in his peculiar mixture of English and Latin, gives a quaint description of this animal:--

“This waterhorse of the sea is called an hyppotame, for that he is like an horse in back, mayne, and neying: rostro resupinato a primis dentibus: cauda tortuosa, ungulis binis. He abideth in the waters on the day, and eateth corn by night et hunc Nilus gignit.”[320]

The DOLPHIN is another sign of very old standing. One of the first instances of its use was probably the following inn:--

“The other side of this High Street, from Bishopsgate and Houndsditch, the first building is a large inn for the receipt of travellers, and is called the Dolphin, of such a sign. In the year 1513, Margaret Ricroft, widow, gave this house, with the gardens and appurtenances, unto William Gam, R. Clye, their wives, her daughters, and to their heirs, with condition they yearly do give to the warders or govornors of the Greyfriars’ Church, within Newgate, 40 shillings, to find a student of divinity in the university for ever.”[321]

Moser, in his “Vestiges Revived,” mentions this same inn as the Dolphin, or rather, Dauphin Inn; and says that it was adorned with fleur-de-lys, cognisances, and dolphins; and was reported to have been the residence of one of the dauphins of France, probably Louis, the son of Philip August, who, in 1216, came to England to contest the sceptre with King John.[322] The house was still in existence at the end of the seventeenth century, when it was a famous coaching inn. Perhaps it was to this tavern that Pepys and his company adjourned on 27th March 1661:--

“To the Dolphin to a dinner of Mr Harris’s, where Sir William and my Lady Batten and her two daughters, and other company, when a great deal of mirth, and there staid till 11 o’clock at night, and in our mirth I sang and sometimes fiddled, (there being a noise of fiddlers there,) and at last we fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life, which I did wonder to see myself to do. At last we made Mingo, Sir W. Batten’s black, and Jack, Sir W. Penn’s, dance, and it was strange how the first did dance with a great deal of skill.”

Pepys might well wonder what a man may come to, he who had been born when “lascivious dancing” was considered a heinous crime. Another Dolphin, well worthy of remembrance, was the sign of Sam. Buckley, a bookseller in Little Brittain, at whose house Steele and Addison’s Spectator was published.

Ancient naturalists made a wonderful animal of the dolphin. Bossewell, for instance, from whom we have just quoted, tells most extraordinary stories about him; but they are unfortunately too long to quote. Londoners formerly might have seen the living fish from the river banks, for old chroniclers every now and then have entries to the effect that dolphins paid London a visit. Thus: “3 Henry V. Seven dolphins came up the river Thames, whereof 4 were taken.” “14 Rich. II. On Christmas day a dolphin was taken at London Bridge, being 10 ft. long, and a monstrous grown fish.”[323] The DOLPHIN AND ANCHOR is still a common sign; and the FISH AND ANCHOR, at North Littleton, Warwickshire, evidently implies the same emblem. Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, was the first to use the sign, adopting it from a silver medal of the Emperor Titus, presented to him by Cardinal Bembo, with the motto, σπευδε βραδεως. Camerarius thus (in our translation) mentions this sign in his book on Symbols:--

“That the dolphin wound round the anchor was an emblem of the Emperors August and Titus, to represent that maturity in business which is the medium between too great haste and slowness; and that it was also used in the last century by Aldus Manutius, that most famous printer, is known to everybody. Erasmus clearly and abundantly explains the import of that golden precept.

“Our emblem is taken from Alciatus, and has a different meaning. He reports, namely, that ‘when violent winds disturb the sea, as Lucretius says, and the anchor is cast by seamen, the dolphin winds herself round it, out of a particular love for mankind, and directs it, as with a human intellect, so that it may more safely take hold of the ground; for dolphins have this peculiar property, that they can, as it were, foretell storms. The anchor, then, signifies a stay and security, whilst the dolphin is a hieroglyphic for philanthropy and safety.’”--Joach. Camerarius, “Symbolorum et Emblematum Centuriæ Quatuor.” Centuria iv. p. 19; Moguntia, 1697.

This sign was afterwards adopted by William Pickering, a worthy “Discipulus Aldi,” as he styled himself; Sir Egerton Bridges made some verses upon it, amongst which occur the following:--

“Would you still be safely landed, On the Aldine Anchor ride; Never yet was vessel stranded, With the Dolphin by its side.

* * * * *

“Nor time, nor envy ever shall canker The sign that is my lasting pride; Joy then to the Aldus Anchor, And the Dolphin at its side.

“To the Dolphin as we ‘re drinking, Life and health and joy we send; A poet once he saved from sinking, And still he lives--the poet’s friend.”

The DOLPHIN AND COMB was the sign of E. Herne, a milliner on London Bridge in 1722. This is an instance of one of the articles sold within being added to the original sign of the house. Milliners in those days used to have a much more extensive variety of objects for sale than they have now, comprehending almost every article required for female apparel,--and including knives, scissors, combs, pattens, patches, poking sticks, fans, bodkins, &c. Such additions to signs were of frequent occurrence, thus the Fox and Topknot, the Lamb and Breeches, the Fox and Cap, and the LAMB AND INKBOTTLE, which last figures on the imprint of Thomas Roch, Newgate Street, a bookseller who made “the best ink for deeds and records,” 1677. Frequently the sign of the Fish is seen without any further specification; in this case it is probably meant for the Dolphin, which is the signboard-fish par excellence. The Fish sign is a very common public house decoration at the present day, probably for the same reason as the Swan, because he is fond of liquor,--nay, to such an extent goes his reputation for intemperance, that to “drink like a fish” is a quality of no small excellence with publicans. In Carlisle, however, there are two signs of the FISH AND DOLPHIN, a rather puzzling combination,--unless it has reference to the dolphin’s chase after the shoals of small fishes. The FISH AND BELL, Soho, may either allude to a well-known anecdote of a certain numskull, who, when he caught a fish, which he desired to keep for dinner on some future grand occasion, put it back into the river, with a bell round its neck, so that he should be able to know its whereabouts the moment he wanted it; or it may be the usual Bell added in honour of the bell-ringers. A quaint variety of this sign is the BELL AND MACKEREL, in the Mile-End Road. The THREE FISHES was a favourite device in the Middle Ages, crossing or interpenetrating each other in such a manner, that the head of one fish was at the tail of another. We cannot prove that it had any emblematic meaning, but it may possibly represent the Trinity, the fish being a common symbol for Christ, derived from the Greek monogram or abbreviation, ΙΧΘΥΣ. It occurs as a sign in the following advertisement, which minutely describes the livery of a page in the year of the Restoration:--

“On Saturday night last run away from the Lord Rich, Christophilus Cornaro, a Turk christened; a French youth of 17 or 18 years of age, with flaxen hair, little blew eyes, a mark upon his lip, and another under his right eye; of a fair complexion, one of his ears pierced, having a pearl-coloured suit, trimmed with scarlet and blue ribbons, a coat of the same colour with silver buttons; his name Jacob David. Give notice to the Lord, lodging at the Three Fishes in New Street, in Covent Garden, a cook-shop, and good satisfaction shall be given.”[324]

THE THREE HERRINGS, the sign of James Moxton, a bookseller in the Strand, near Yorkhouse, in 1675, is evidently but another name for the Three Fishes; at the present day it is the sign of an ale-house in Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Several taverns with this sign are mentioned in the French tales and plays of the 17th century; two of them seem to have been very celebrated, one in the Faubourg St Marceau, the other near the Palais de Justice; this last one seems to have been particularly famous, for it is named as a rival to the celebrated Pomme de Pin. “Si je vay au Palais, tous ces clercs sont alentour de moy; l’un me mène aux Trois Poissons, l’autre à la Pomme de Pin.”--Comédie de la Vefve, ac. iii. s. 3.[325] The FISH AND QUART at Leicester must be passed by in silence, as the combination cannot immediately be accounted for. Were it in France a solution would be easier, for in French slang a “poisson,” or fish, means a small measure of wine. The FISH AND EELS at Roydon, in Essex; the FISH AND KETTLE, Southampton; and the WHITE BAIT, Bristol, all tell their own tale, and need no comment. The SALMON is seen occasionally near places where it is caught. The SALMON AND BALL is the well-known Ball of the silkmercers in former times, added to the sign of the Salmon; whilst the SALMON AND COMPASSES is the masonic emblem that is added to the sign. Both these occur in more than one instance in London. The FISHBONE is rarely met with as a public-house sign, though there is an example of it at Netherton in Cheshire, and also amongst the seventeenth century tokens of New Cheapside, Moorfields. But generally it is the sign of a rag and bone shop, or, in the euphonious language of the day, a “miscellaneous repository,” or “bank of commerce.” These shops, as their title of “marine stores” implies, used to buy all the odds and ends of rope, sails, seamen’s old clothes, in short all the rubbish of which a ship is cleared after its return from a long voyage. Bones of large fish would be often amongst the curiosities brought home by the sailors, these also they bought and hung them up outside their doors, and in the end these bones became their distinctive sign. The SUN AND WHALEBONE at Latton, in Essex, may have originated from a whalebone hanging outside the house, or that the landlord had laid the foundation of his fortune as a rag merchant.

* * * * *

Insects are of very rare occurrence. The industrious habits of the bees, however, made their habitation a favourite object to imply a similar industry in the shopkeepers. Many years ago there used to be at Grantham in Lincolnshire, a signpost on which was placed a Beehive in full swarm, with the following lines under it:--

“Two wonders, Grantham, now are thine, The highest spire and a living sign.”

Though the living bees were gone the following season, yet the sign and inscription remained until very recently. The following is a common inscription under the sign of the Beehive:--

“Within this hive we’re all alive, Good liquor makes us funny; If you are dry, step in and try The flavour of our honey.”

A tea-dealer at the corner of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, in the end of the last century, had for his sign the Walking Leaf, (the Phyllium siccifolium of the naturalists,) an East Indian insect, of an anything but agreeable association, when we consider the remarkable vegetable appearance of this insect, and the possibility that it might be dried among the tea-leaves.

Although the frog cannot be considered either an insect or a fish, yet we may include it in this chapter. Of frogs there are some instances on the signboard; the THREE FROGS, (see under Heraldic Signs,) and FROGHALL, formerly a public-house at the south end of Frog Lane, Islington. On the front of this house there was exhibited the ludicrous sign of a plough drawn by frogs. There is at the present day a Froghall Inn at Wolston, near Coventry; and a public-house of that name at Layerthorpe in the West Riding, but the picture of the sign was doubtless unique. The principal inn on the island of Texel is called the GOLDEN FROG, (de Goude kikker.) We may wonder that there are not more examples of this sign in Holland, for there are, without doubt, as many frogs in that country as there are Dutchmen; and even unto this day it is a mooted point, which of the two nations has more right to the possession of the country; both, however, are of a pacific disposition, so that they live on in a perfect entente cordiale.

[316] General Magazine, Jan. 1747.Return to passage

[317] It was sketched by George Cruikshank; and a wood-cut of it may be seen in Morley’s “Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair,” p. 488.Return to passage

[318] “Coffeehouse Jests,” 1688, p. 128.Return to passage

[319] Delaune’s “Present State of London,” 1681.Return to passage

[320] Bossewell’s “Works of Armourie,” 1589, p. 65.Return to passage

[321] Stow, p. 62. A striking instance of the depreciation of money within the last three centuries. At the present day, 40s. would scarcely keep an Oxford or Cambridge student in cigar-lights.Return to passage

[322] Moser makes a slight error. The heir-apparent to the throne of France did not assume the title of Dauphin till 1349, when Humbert II., Dauphin of Vienne, having no posterity, retired to a monastery, and sold his estates to Philip VI., King of France, on behalf of his grandson, afterwards Charles V.Return to passage

[323] Delaune’s “Present State of London.”Return to passage

[324] “Mercurius Publicus,” Aug. 30; Sep. 6, 1660.Return to passage

[325] “If I go to the Palace of Justice, all those clerks are constantly after me; one takes me to the Three Fishes, the other to the Pine Cone.”--Comedy of the Widow, a. iii. s. 3.Return to passage