Chapter IV: Signs of Animals and Monsters (1)

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]

TWO SPIES.

(Banks’s Collection, 1730.)

THREE NEATS’ TONGUES.

(Harleian Collection, 1708.)

MAN IN THE MOON.

(Banks’s Collection, 1760.)

BULL AND MOUTH.

(St Martin’s-le-Grand, 1835.)

BULL AND MOUTH.

(Angel St., St Martin’s-le-Grand, circa 1800.)]

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.”