Chapter XIV: Humorous and Comic (1)

Animals performing human actions, or dressed in human garments, are great items in signboard humour. This is a kind of comicality undoubtedly dating from the first development of human wit. The “Batromyomachia” is one of the oldest performances of the same description in literature, but the joke was already too well understood at the period that piece was produced to have been a first attempt. The Fable was the higher walk of art in this branch, the simple Caricature the lower.

Numerous Egyptian, Greek, and Roman caricatures of animals personating men have come down to us; from them this conceit was borrowed by the mediæval limners. Their MSS. teem with such subjects; and so much was this kind of humour relished at that period, that even in church decoration the caricatures of animals were liberally mixed up with the sacred subjects of biblical history. Not only the fable, conferring a moral lesson, but even the plain and unpretending animal-caricature was admitted indiscriminately with representations of saints and miracles. Thus the well-known sign of PIG AND WHISTLE is seen in more than one church. In the stall carving of Winchester Cathedral a sow is represented sitting on her haunches, playing on a whistle, the companion carving to which is a pig playing on a violin, in accompaniment to which another pig appears to be singing. These musical pigs are also common in illustrated MSS. In Harl. MS., 4379, a sow is represented dressed in the full fashion of the fifteenth century, with horned head-dress and stilted heels, playing on a harp.

In old towns, such as Chester, Macclesfield, Coventry, &c., the Pig and Whistle is still found on signboards. Very different and learned explanations have been given for its origin, some saying it was a corruption of the _pig and wassail bowl_, or of the _pix and housel_; others that it is a facetious rendering of the Bear and Ragged Staff. Very lately the correspondents of a learned periodical have busied themselves in claiming for it a Danish-Saxon descent, as _pige-washail_, our Ladies’ Salutation. The Scotch also claim it as their own; _pig_ being a pot or pot-sherd; _whistle_, small change; and “to go to _pigs and whistles_,” a free translation of “going to _pot_,” which Mr Jamieson states (quoting two examples) to have been at one time a colloquial phrase. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites_; but the proverb says, “a hog though in armour is still but a hog;” and therefore we are inclined to think that a pig with a whistle is still but a pig, and not relating in any way to the Virgin; and we can see nothing in the Pig and Whistle but simply a freak of the mediæval artist.

As little hidden meaning is there in the CAT AND FIDDLE, still a great favourite in Hampshire, the only connexion between the animal and the instrument being that the strings are made from the cat’s entrails, and that a small fiddle is called a _kit_, and a small cat a _kitten_. Besides, they have been united from time immemorial in the nursery rhyme--

“Heigh diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle.”

Amongst other explanations offered is, the one that it may have originated with the sign of a certain _Caton fidèle_, a staunch Protestant in the reign of Queen Mary, and only have been changed into the cat and fiddle by corruption; but, if so, it must have lost its original appellation very soon, for as early as 1589 we find “Henry Carr, signe of the Catte and Fidle in the Old Chaunge.” Formerly, there was a Cat and Fiddle at Norwich, the cat being represented playing upon a fiddle, and a number of mice dancing round her. The bagpipes being the national instrument of the Irish, the sign is there frequently changed into the CAT AND BAGPIPES. This was also, some twenty or thirty years ago, a public- and chop-house, of considerable notoriety, at the corner of Downing Street, Westminster, where the clerks of the Foreign Office used to lunch; at the present day, it is the sign of a public-house near Moate, King’s Co., Ireland. The APE AND BAGPIPES occurs on trades tokens as the sign of John Tayler, in St Ann’s Lane. This, too, was a joke not confined to our country, for in the marginal illustrations to the title-page of “P. Dioscoridæ Pharmacorum Simplicum,” &c., printed at Strasburg by John Schot in 1529, an ape is represented playing on the bagpipes, and a camel dancing to the tune, with these words, χαμηλον αλλαπτεν. The French were equally fond of this kind of caricature. The SPINNING SOW (_la Truie qui file_) is common even at the present day, and has given its name to more than one street in Paris and other cities. It is said to have originated from a legend:--A certain Christian queen, Pedauca, whose honour was in danger, imitated the chaste heroines of mythology; but, instead of praying to be metamorphosed into a tree or a bird, she merely asked to have one of her feet changed into a goose’s foot, which was enough to frighten her ardent lover away.[627] Another young lady, under similar circumstances, preferred going the whole hog,--to use a colloquialism,--and was changed into a sow, merely praying to be permitted to keep her spindle, as a token of her former condition: hence the sign. It is also--(and hence, probably, the legend of the metamorphosis, to remove the prejudices of the godly)--represented in relief carving on the exterior of the cathedral of Chartres. In the Fishmarket of the same town there is a stone carved sign of a _Donkey playing on a Hurdy-gurdy_, (L’ANE QUI VEILLE.) Both this sign and another, representing a _Cat playing at Racket_, (LA CHATTE QUI PELOTE,) have transmitted their names to streets in Paris. The French seem to have delighted above all things in such comicalities. Besides those named above, they had _the Fishing Cat_, (LA CHATTE QUI PÊCHE,) the _Dancing Goat_, (LA CHÈVRE QUI DANCE,) both of which Walpole mentions. We have one modern sign in London of this class--namely, the WHISTLING OYSTER, the name of an oyster-shop in Drury Lane.

The JACKANAPES ON HORSEBACK was, unfortunately for the monkeys, a painful truth. A jackanapes or monkey on horseback was generally the winding-up of a bear or bull baiting at Paris Garden. Hollinshed, in his Chronicles, anno 1562, relates how, at the reception of the Danish ambassadors at Greenwich--

“For the diversion of the populace, there was a horse with an ape on
his back which highly pleased them, so that they expressed their
inward conceived joy and delight with shrill shouts and variety of
gestures.”

The “inward conceived joy,” we may safely conclude, was not expressed by either the monkey or the horse, particularly when we remember that in those days dogs were often let in the ring to frighten both the horse and its animal Mazeppa. The prevalence of this sport is to be inferred from an admonition to Parliament by Tho. Cartwright, published in 1572, in order to show the impropriety of an established form of prayer for the church services, in which he remarks that the clergyman

“Posteth it over as fast as he can galope, for eyther he has two
places to serve, or else there are some games to be playde in the
afternoon, as lying for the whetstone,[628] heathenish dauncing for
the ring, a beare or a bull to be baited, or else a _jackanapes to
ride on horsebacke_, or an interlude to be playde in the church. We
speak not of [bell-] ringing after matins is done.”

Not much more than ten years ago, the good people of Paris were, every Thursday afternoon, in the summer, entertained in the Hippodrome, with “jackanapes on horseback,” dressed up like Arabs, and followed by miniature _chasseurs d’Afrique_, to the great gratification of our martial neighbours. This sign is named in an advertisement, of the year 1700, for a mare stolen by a “lusty black man with a brown coat,”[629] notice of the mare to be given “to Mr John Wright, at the _Jackanapes_ on Horseback,” in Cheapside. The grinning, or, as it was written, “GRENNING IACKANAPES,” is a sign mentioned by Eliot in his “Fruits for the French,” or “Parlement of Pratlers,” 1593, “ouer against the Vnicorne in the Iewrie.” The HOG IN ARMOUR, in Hanging Sword Court, Fleet Street, is mentioned in an advertisement,[630] in 1678, as the place where there was to be sold “seacole sutt for the great improvement of all sorts of lands, as well as gardens and hop grounds.” It is named amongst the absurd London signs in the _Spectator_ 28, April 2, 1711, and is still occasionally seen, as in James’ Street, Dublin. Though the sign does not exist any longer in London, yet the name is not lost among the lower orders, it being a favourite epithet applied to rifle volunteers by costermongers, street fishmongers, and such like. A jocular name for this sign is the “_pig in misery_.” There is also a GOAT IN ARMOUR on the Narrow Quay, Bristol, and a GOAT IN BOOTS on the Fulham Road, Little Chelsea. In 1663 this house was called the GOAT, and enjoyed the right of commonage for two cows and one heifer upon Chelsea Heath.

“How the goat became equipped in boots, and the designation of the
house changed, have been the subject of various conjectures, the most
probable of which is, that it originated in a corruption of the latter
part of the Dutch legend--

‘Mercurius is _der Goden Boode_,’
(Mercury is the messenger of the gods,)--

which being divided between each side of the sign, bearing the figure
of a Mercury--a sign commonly used in the early part of the last
century [?] to denote that post-horses were to be obtained--‘der Goden
Boode’ became freely translated into English, ‘the Goat in Boots.’ To
Le Blond[631] is attributed the execution of this sign and its motto;
but whoever the original artist may have been, or the intermediate
re-touchers or re-painters of the god, certain it is that the pencil
of Morland, in accordance with the desire of the landlord, either
transformed the Petasus of Mercury into the horned head of a goat, his
talaria into spurs upon boots of huge dimension, and his caduceus into
a cutlass, or thus decorated the original sign, thereby liquidating a
score which he had run up here, without any other means of payment
than what his pencil afforded. The sign, however, has been painted
over, with additional embellishments from gold leaf, so that not the
least trace of Morland’s work remains, except, perhaps, the
outline.”[632]

With all deference to the opinion of Mr Croker, we cannot help thinking of this, as of many other signboard explanations, “_Se non è vero è ben trovato_.” 1^{o}. the house was called the Goat in 1663; 2^{o}. there is no proof that it ever was called the Mercury, (nor was that sign ever so common as Mr Croker asserts.) From the following quotation it will appear that as early as 1738 some Goats in Boots had already appeared, not the result of any mythological metamorphosis. The _Craftsman_ for June 17, 1738, in ridiculing some lenient measures taken by Government, blames the signs for putting a martial spirit in the nation, and proposes that “no lion should be drawn rampant, but couchant; and none of his teeth ought to be seen without this inscription, ‘Though he shows his teeth he wont bite.’ All bucks, bulls, rams, stags, unicorns, and all other warlike animals ought to be drawn without horns. Let no general be drawn in armour, and instead of truncheons let them have muster-rolls in their hands. In like manner, I would have all admirals painted in a frock and jockey cap, like landed gentlemen. The common sign of the two Fighting Cocks might be better changed to a Cock and Hen, and that of the Valiant Trooper to a _Hog in Armour_, or a GOAT IN JACKBOOTS, _as some Hampshire and Welsh publicans have done already_ for the honour of their respective countries.” The sign, then, seems to be a sort of caricature of a Welshman, the Goat having always been considered the emblem of that nation, and the jackboots an indispensable article of Taffy’s costume. Thus, Captain Grose, in his “Essay on Caricatures,”[633] mentions a Welshman with his _goat_, leek, _hay-boots_, and long pedigree, as a standard joke. Not improbably the switch carried by the goat on this sign was originally a leek. Of the same origin is the well-known WELSH TROOPER, representing a man with a leek in his hat riding on a goat. This sign may still be seen in London. In the Roxburghe ballads the Welshman with his jackboots and leek occurs in an old woodcut; in other places he is drawn riding a goat, and similarly dressed.

PUSS IN BOOTS occurs at Windley, Duffield, near Derby. The Goat in Boots may have suggested the idea of making a sign of this nursery-tale hero. The Dutch shoemakers, in pursuance of the proverb, seem to have taken a particular delight in these booted animals. Various creatures in boots occur amongst the Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century. One was the OX IN BOOTS, (_in den gelaarsden os_,) with this inscription:--

“’t Leer geeft den Schoenmaker de os daar hy schoenen van maakt om te
verslyten;
Ik heb den os weer met leer tot dank gelaerst en gespoord doen
conterfyten.”[634]

Another innkeeper put up the COW IN BOOTS, (_de gelaersden koe_,) and wrote beneath:--

“Ziet dees koe heeft laarzen aan
Was ’t noch een Bul dan kon het gaan.”[635]

A third, in Amsterdam, had the COCK IN BOOTS, (_de gelaarsde Haan_,) with the following extraordinary rhymes:--

“Dit is de gelaarsde haan
Christus is naar ’t kruys gegaan,
Met een doornenkroon op ’t hoofd.
Hy slacht Thomas die ’t niet gelooft.”[636]

The JACKASS IN BOOTS (_de gelaarsde ezel_) was the sign of a publican, with this inscription:--

“In den gelaarsden ezel zeer kloek,
Verkoopt men toebak, brandewyn, en knapkoek.”[637]

The Dog also appears dressed, as the DOG IN DOUBLET, a sign which may be seen at Pyebridge, Derby, at Northbank, Cambridge, and a few other out-of-the-way places. Dr Johnson did this sign the honour of applying it as a metaphor. Speaking of an old idea newly expressed, he said: “It is an old coat with a new facing.” Then (laughing heartily) “it is the old dog in a new doublet!”[638]

The Dog occurs in various other humorous combinations. Ned Ward mentions a famous inn, in Petty Cury, Cambridge--

“the sign of the DEVIL’S LAPDOG, kept by an old grizly curmudgeon,
corniferously wedded to a plump, young, gay, brisk, black, beautiful,
good landlady, who I afterwards heard had so great a kindness for the
University, that she had rather see two or three gowns’ men come into
her house, than a c---- crew of aldermen in all their
pontificalibusses.”[639]

The DOG’S HEAD IN THE POT is mentioned on the Pardoner’s Roll in “Cocke Lorell’s Bote:”--

“Also Annys Angry with the croked buttocke
That dwelled at y^{e} sygne of ye Dogges hede in ye Pot,
By her crafte a brechemaker.”

It seems originally to have been a mock sign to indicate a dirty, slovenly housewife. A woodcut above the second part of the Roxburghe ballad of “The Coaches’ Overthrow” represents various dirty practices. From the upper windows of one of the houses a woman is emptying the unsavoury contents of a domestic vase almost on the heads of the people underneath, and the sign of that house is the Dog’s head in the Pot, representing a dog licking out a pot. A coarse woodcut sheet of the commencement of the last century--evidently copied from a much older original--to judge by the costumes, represents two ancient beldames with high-crowned hats, starched ruffs and collars, and high-heeled boots, in a very disorderly room or kitchen; one of the women wipes a plate with the bushy tail of a large dog, whose head is completely buried in a capacious pot, which he is licking clean; under it:--

“All sluts behold, take view of me,
Your own good housewifry to see.
It is (methinks) a cleanly care,
My dishclout in this sort to spare,
Whilst Dog, you see, doth lick the pot,
His taile for dishclout I have got,” &c.

One of the Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., fol. 385, entitled, “Seldome Cleanely,” has the same idea:--

“If otherwise she had
But a dishcloute faile,
She would set them to the dog to licke,
And wipe them with hys tayle.”

In Holland there is a proverb still in use, to the effect that when a person is late for dinner he is said to “find the dog in the pot,” (_hy vindt den hond in de pot_,) meaning that he has arrived late,--that the empty pot has been given to the dog to lick out, previously to being washed, a custom still daily practised by the peasantry of that country. This sign is sometimes also called the DOG AND CROCK, as in the Blackfriars’ Road; at Michelmouth, Romsey, Hants, and elsewhere. In the western counties the word “crock” is indiscriminately applied to iron or earthen pots. From the latter application comes the term “_crockery_ ware.”

The DANCING DOGS was a sign at Battlebridge in 1668, as appears from the trades tokens. This kind of canine entertainment was one of the attractions of Bartholomew Fair, where Ben Jonson mentions “dogs that dance the Morris.”

The LAUGHING DOG (_le chien qui rit_) was formerly a sign in Rouen, and gave its name to a street, now called Du Guay Troin, from the name of a celebrated admiral. This was one of those quaint signs of which we have some specimens in this country, as the TWO SNEEZING CATS, which is said to be somewhere in London; the FLYING MONKEY, Lambeth; the MONKEY ISLAND, at Bray, near Maidenhead; the GAPING GOOSE, at Leeds, Oldham, and various parts of Yorkshire; and the LOVING LAMB, two in Dudley. In Paris there was the old sign of the GREEN MONKEY, (_le singe vert_,) and some fifteen years ago Lille could boast of the HUNCHBACKED CATS (_les chats bossus_) in the Rue Sec-Arembault.

Equally absurd is the COW AND SNUFFERS, at Llandaff, Glamorgan. In a play of George Colman, entitled the “Review, or the Wags of Windsor,” the following lines occur:--

“Judy’s a darling; my kisses she suffers;
She’s an heiress, that’s clear,
For her father sells beer,
He keeps the sign of the _Cow and the Snuffers_.”

The same song also occurs in the “Irishman in London, or the Happy African.” At Llandaff the sign is represented by a cow standing near a ditch full of reeds and grasses, with a pair of snuffers, placed as if they had fallen from the cow’s mouth. The oddity of the combination in all probability pleased a publican who had heard the song, and adopted it forthwith as his sign, leaving the arrangement of the objects to the taste of the sign-painter.

The COLT AND CRADLE might have been seen in St Martin’s Lane in 1667. It is still a common sign for houses of evil repute in Holland, as may be seen from two examples in the Zandstraat, Rotterdam, where the cradle is carved above the door, with the colt in it lying on his back: the inscription is, “Het paard in de Wieg,” (the horse in the cradle.) And since, according to Stow, in ancient times “English people disdayned to be bawdes, froes of Flaunders were women for that purpose,” it is more than probable that these “froes” introduced this sign from their own country. In the Dutch language _paar_ means “a couple,” and is constantly used for a man and woman, either united by the bands of lawful marriage or otherwise. The original form of the sign, then, we suppose was “the couple in the cradle,” (_het paar in de wieg_.) But the Dutch have an inveterate habit of adding diminutives, so that with this appendix it became _paartje_--from paar_t_je to paar_d_je, a small horse, the transition was easy enough; and, covered with that transparent veil, the indelicate sign has come down to the present day. This seems so much the more probable to be the meaning, since the _Cradle_ in London also was a “bad sign,” (see p. 394.)

The GOOSE AND GRIDIRON occurs at Woodhall, Lincolnshire, and in a few other localities: it is said to owe its origin to the following circumstances:--The Mitre (see p. 319) was a celebrated music-house in London House Yard, at the N.-W. end of St Paul’s. When it ceased to be a music-house, the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its former destiny, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the SWAN AND HARP, a common sign for the early music-houses. Such an origin does the _Tatler_ give; but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended probably at the door of the Mitre when it was a music-house. These arms are, a swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double tressure might have suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated passers-by. PADDY’S GOOSE is, at the present day, a nickname for a public-house in Shadwell called the White Swan; but why it was thus travestied _non liquet_. This tavern acquired some notoriety during the Crimean campaign. When the Government wanted sailors to man the fleet, the landlord of the house used to go among the shipping in the river and enlist numbers of men. His system of recruiting was to go in one of the small steamers, with flags and colours flying and a band playing, the heart-stirring or heart-rending notes of which used to awaken the martial ardour of the merchant sailors, and make them enlist in the Royal Navy. This sign also triumphantly proclaims the presence of British gin and Irish whisky in a low public-house near the harbour of La Valette at Malta.

Not a few signs represent proverbs or proverbial expressions. The BIRD IN HAND, for instance, with occasionally the BOOK IN HAND,--the former denoting the landlord’s full appreciation of the truth of the proverb, “One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” It is frequently accompanied by the following truthful rather than grammatical distich:--

“A bird in hand far better ’tis
Than two that in the bushes is.”

This sign occurs among the trades tokens, being literally rendered by a hand holding a bird. Innumerable are the jokes resorted to by landlords to intimate that hard truth that no credit is given.[640] Frequently the pill is gilt in the most agreeable manner: a deceptive hope of “better luck to-morrow” is frequently held out, as

“Drink here, and drown all sorrow;
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

Or:--

“Pay to-day and trust to-morrow,
And so endeth all our sorrow.”

The same in Holland:--

“Vandaag voor geld, morgen voor niet.”[641]

In Italy a cock is sometimes painted, with the following inscription:--

“Quando questo gallo cantarà
Allora credenza si farà.”[642]

The inventive genius of the French, with its usual fondness for romance, has constructed a little dramatic incident to express the idea:--

“Crédit est mort; les mauvais payeurs l’ont tué.”[643]

Which phrase was seen by Coryatt, nearly two centuries ago, on one of the inns where he put up at in France: a similar idea is expressed at Smethwick in the following inscription:--

“Sacred to the memory of Poor Trust, who fought hard at the battle of
Deception, but fell under General Bad Pay.”

A print hung up in a public-house in Nottingham, depicting a black tombstone (or signboard,--it is difficult to say which) spotted with briny white tears, gives the inscription with still greater force:--

“This monument is erected to the memory of Mr Trust, who was some time
since most shamefully and cruelly murdered by a villain called Credit,
who is prowling about, both in town and country, seeking whom he may
devour.”

Others have the picture of a dead dog, and under him:--

“Died last night, Poor Trust! Who killed him? Bad Pay.”

A very general inscription is:--

“This is a good world to live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man’s own,
It is such a world as never was known.”

Or:--

“The rule of this house, and it can’t be unjust,
Is to pay on delivery, and not to give trust;
I’ve trusted many to my sorrow,
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

Stuck up in many tap-rooms may be seen the following:--

“All you that bring tobacco here
Must pay for pipes as well as beer;
And you that stand before the fire,
I pray sit down by good desire,
That other folks as well as you
May see the fire, and feel it too.
Since man to man is so unjust,
I cannot tell what man to trust.
My liquor’s good, ’tis no man’s sorrow,
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”

At an ale-house in Ranston, Norfolk, the usual information is conveyed in the following manner, (to be read upwards, beginning from the bottom of the last column):--

MORE BEER SCORE CLERK
FOR MY MY THEIR
DO TRUST PAY SENT
I I MUST HAVE
SHALL IF I BREWERS
WHAT AND AND MY

At other places it comes in a still more “questionable shape,” reminding us of the curious literary conceits of the old monkish rhymesters. In the following, the letters must be connected into words, thus--_The brewer_, &c.

Th. ebr: Ewe ! Rh. eH. Ass?
en . THI.S. cLEr
k a N d ! IM. ustp, A. YM. Ys
cO. r. ef, O
r IFIT r US. ? tandam, No tpA.
i D wha. ts; Ha:
LL i D , O? Fo Rm. Or .e.

The little wayside inn, between Pateley Bridge and Ripon, has the following plaintive appeal to a stiffnecked race:--

“The malster doth crave
His money to have,
The exciseman says have I must.
By that you can see
How the case stands with me;
So I pray you don’t ask me for trust.”

A small beer-house at Werrington, in Devonshire, yclept the Lengdon Inn, has:--

“Gentlemen, walk in, and sit at your ease,
Pay what you call for, and call what you please;
As trusting of late has been to my sorrow,
Pay me to-day, and I’ll trust ee to-morrow.”

The Maypole, near Hainault Forest, has:--

“My liquor’s good,
My measures just;
Excuse me, sirs!
I cannot trust.”

At Preston, in Lancashire:--

“Greadley Bob, he does live here,
And sells a pot of good strong beer;
His liquor’s good, his measure just,
But Bob’s so poor he cannot trust.”

HAT AND BEAVER.

(Banks’s Collection, 1750.)

SWAN WITH TWO NECKS.

(Banks’s Collection, 1785.)

HARROW AND DOUBLET.

(Banks’s Collection, 1700.)

MAN IN THE MOON.

(Vine Street, Regent Street; modern.)

THE APE.

(Stone carving, Philip Lane, Barbican, 1670.)]

The Green Man, on Finchley Common, under a trophy composed of two pipes crossed and a pot of beer, presents us with the following:--

“Call. Softly,
Drink. Moderate
Pay. _Honourably_,
Be Good. _Company_
Part. _FRIENDLY_
Go. =HOME=. quietly.
_Let those lines be no MANS Sorrow_
_Pay to_ =DAY= _and i’ll_ =TRUST= _to Morrow_.”

At Middleton, Co. Cork, the verses usually accompanying the sign of the Bee-hive are slightly altered to meet the emergency of the case, _surgit amari aliquid_:--

“Within this hive we’re all alive
With whisky sweet as honey;
If you are dry, step in and try,
But don’t forget the money.”

So old is the necessity of informing the public that they must pay for what they obtain, that even in the ruined city of Pompeii a similar caution is found. Above the door of a house, once inhabited by a surgeon, occurs the following laconic intimation:--“EME ET HABEBIS.” And so widely spread is the evil, that even in Chinese towns the shopkeepers have found it necessary to inform the public on their signs--

“Former customers have inspired us with caution; no credit given
here.”

One publican, at Littletown, in Durham, seems to have taken a somewhat opposite view, putting up, for a sign, the BIRD IN THE BUSH, but it may be doubted if his experience has confirmed him in a preference of the bird in the bush to the bird in the hand.

Another proverb illustrated is the COW AND HARE, at Stafford, Bottisham, (near Newmarket,) and other places, evidently suggested by the adage, “A cow may catch a hare.” This sign is mentioned, about 1708, in a rather curious memorandum from the pen of Partridge, the almanac-maker, at the commencement of a book of “the Cælestial Motions and Aspects for the years of our Lord 1708 to 1720.”[644] The MS. note is as follows:--“At the Cowe and Hare by Whitechappel Church, a rare rogue lives there, a pickpocket.” Of the same class as the Cow and Hare is WHO’D HA’ THOUGHT IT? which sometimes is seen on an ale-house sign, as, for instance, at North End, Fulham. A wag suggested this as the motto to the coat-of-arms of a certain baronet-brewer:

“Who’d ha’ thought it?
Hops had bought it.”

The sign of the JOLLY BREWER--WHO’D HA’ THOUGHT IT? occurs in the Jersey Road, Hounslow. Originally, it seems to have implied that, after a hard struggle in some other walk of life, the landlord had succeeded in opening the long-wished-for ale-house. So in Holland: many country retreats of retired tradespeople bear such names as “_Nooit gedacht_,” (never expected,) &c.

WHY NOT, the name of a public-house at Essington, in Staffordshire, seems to imply quite the reverse, and to have been adopted as the motto of a more sanguine landlord; unless it may be considered as a ready answer to the often-repeated question, before “popping in round the corner,” “Shall we have a drop?”

The LAME DOG is very common; but is particularly appropriate at Brierley Hill, near Dudley, the establishment being kept by a collier, rendered lame in a pit accident. Under a pictorial representation of a lame dog trying to get over a stile, the following appeal is made to the thirsty and benevolent public:--

“Stop, my friends, and stay awhile
To help the Lame Dog over the stile.”

Sometimes, as at Bulmer, Essex, we see a somewhat similar idea expressed by a man struggling through a globe--head and arms protruding on one side, his legs on the other--with the inscription, “HELP ME THROUGH THIS WORLD.” The same allegory might have been seen on a beer-house in Holland in the seventeenth century, but the inscription was different--“_Dus na ben ik door de wereld_,” (“Thus far I have got through the world.”) This sign is also called the STRUGGLER, or the STRUGGLING MAN, and at Hampton, where the house is kept by a widow, the WIDOW’S STRUGGLE. In Salop Street, Dudley, the struggle is represented by a man, with a dog beside him, walking against a strong head wind. The LIVE AND LET LIVE has a somewhat similar meaning; it occurs at North End, Fulham, and in many other places. To this class, also, the following seems to refer:--“A witty, though unfortunate, fellow having tryed all trades, but thriving by none, took the pot for his last refuge, and set up an ale-house, with the sign of the SHIRT, inscribed under it, ‘This is my last shift.’ Much company was brought him thereby, and much profit.”[645] Nathaniel Oldham, the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, Doctor Mead, and the leading _virtuosi_ of that time, himself a collector, as well as a sporting man, at last got so reduced in circumstances that he had to dispose of his curiosities and superfluities. He opened his house, therefore, as a curiosity shop, and wrote over the door, _Oldham’s last Shift_. Unfortunately, it _was_ his “last shift,” for scarcely had he opened his shop when one of his innumerable creditors had him arrested and sent to King’s Bench Prison, where he died. J. T. Smith, in his “Cries of London,” tells a similar device of a sailor, maimed at the battle of Trafalgar, who used to go about town with a wheelbarrow of ginger nuts, which he called “Jack’s last shift.”

The uncertainty of success in trade is expressed by the sign of the TWO CHANCES; and HIT OR MISS, the good and the bad chance which innkeepers, as well as all other mortals, have to run in this transitory world. This sign occurs at Hannington, Northampton, and at Clun, in Salop. At Openshaw, near Manchester, a similar idea is expressed by a sign representing two men running a race, which seems to promise a dead heat, with the inscription, LUCK’S ALL.

Others have a sort of satirical humour in them, such as the well-known FOUR ALLS, representing a king who says, “I rule all;” a priest who says, “I pray for all;” a soldier who says, “I fight for all;” and John Bull, or a farmer, who says, “I pay for all.” Sometimes a fifth is added in the shape of a lawyer, who says, “I plead for all.” It is an old and still common sign, and may even be seen swinging under the blue sky in the sunny streets of La Valette, Malta. In Holland, in the seventeenth century, it was used, but the king was left out, and a lawyer added; each person said exactly the same as on our signboards, but the farmer answered:--

“Of gy vecht, of gy bidt, of gy pleyt,
Ik ben de boer die de eyeren leyt.”[646]

The author of “Tavern Anecdotes” observes that he used to notice in Rosemary Street, the sign of the Four Alls, but passing that way some time after, he found it altered into the _Four Awls_; the sign painter who renewed the picture had probably found himself not equal to a representation of the four human figures. In Ireland, a similar corruption may be observed, the four shoemaker’s awls taking the place of the four representatives of society. Although having no connexion with the Four Alls, it may be mentioned that three and four awls constitute the charges in the shoemakers’ arms of some of the continental trade societies or guilds.

This enumeration of the various performances coupled with the word _all_ has been used in numerous different epigrams: an address to James I. in the Ashmolean MSS., No. 1730, has:--

“THE LORDS craved all,
THE QUEENE graunted all,
THE LADIES of honour ruled all,
THE LORD-KEEPER seal’d all,
THE INTELLIGENCER marred all,
THE PARLIAMENT pass’d all,
HE THAT IS GONE oppos’d himself to all,
THE BISHOPS soothed all,
THE JUDGES pardon’d all,
THE LORDS buy, ROME spoil’d all,
Now, GOOD KING, mend all,
Or else THE DEVIL will have all.”

This again seems to have been imitated from a similar description of the State of Spain in Greene’s “Spanish Masquerade,” 1589:--

“THE CARDINALLS solicit all,
THE KING grauntes all,
THE NOBLES confirm all,
THE POPE determines all,
THE CLEARGIE disposeth all,
THE DUKE of Medina hopes for all,
ALONSO receives all,
THE INDIANS minister all,
THE SOLDIERS eat all,
THE PEOPLE paie all,
THE MONKS and friars consume all,
And THE DEVIL at length will carry away all.”

The NAKED BOY was a satirical sign reflecting upon the constant changes of the fashions of our ancestors. William Herbert has this observation in his manuscript memoranda, “I remember very well when I was a lad seeing on Windmill Hill, Moorfields, a taylor’s sign, a _naked boy_ with this couplet:--

“So fickle is our English nation,
I wou’d be clothed if I knew the fashion.”[647]

The same idea is expressed in the “Introduction to Knowledge,” by Andrew Borde, (the original “Merry Andrew,”) Doctor of Physick, 1542, where a _naked man_ is introduced undecided as to the style of dress he should adopt on account of the continual change in the fashions:--

“Now am I a frysker, all men doth on me looke,
What should I do but set cocke on the hoope,
What do I care yf all the worlde me fayle,
I will get a garment shall reche to my tayle.”

Coryatt also reflects upon this ever-varying change in his “Crudities:”--“For whereas they [the gentlemen of Venice] have but one colour, we use many more than are in the rainbow; all the most light garish and unseemly colours that are in the world. Also for fashion we are much inferior to them: for we weare more phantastical fashions than any nation vnder the Sunne doth, the French onely excepted; which hath given occasion to the Venetians and other Italians to brand the Englishmen with a notable mark of levity by painting him stark naked with a pair of shears in his hand, making his fashion of attire according to the vain conception of his brain sick head, not to comeliness and decorum.”

So ancient is this complaint as to the versatility of our fashions that we verily believe even our tattooed forefathers must have been constantly altering the hue of their blue stencilling, and bedaubing themselves with new patterns. John Harding, in his “Chronicles,” of the reign of Richard II., describing the various materials and cuts of the “unpayed doublettes and gownes,” even long before his time, says, ch. 193:--

“Broudur and furres and goldsmith werke ay newe,
In many a wyse eche day they did renewe.”

Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, wrote not less angrily in the days of Edward III:

“Englyshmen hawnted so moche unto the folye of strawngers that fro
that tyme every yere thei chaungedde them in diverse schappes and
disgisingges of clothengge now long, now large, now wide, now streite,
and every day clothingges newe destitute and deserte from alle honeste
of holde array and gode usage.”[648]

Indeed so angry does the good monk become about these extravagant fashions, that he says,--“If I sethe shalle say, they weren more like to turmentours and Diviles in their clothing and also in schoyng and other aray that they semed no menne.”

Not only did we invent, but we borrowed absurd foreign fashions. Samuel Rowland, in “The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine,” 1611, says:--

“Behold a most accomplish’d cavaleere,
That the world’s ape of fashions doth appeare;
Walking the streete his humours to disclose,
In the French dowblet and the German hose,
The muffes, cloake, Spanish hat, Tolledo blade,
Italian ruffe, a shoe right Flemish made,
Like the Lord of Misrule, where he comes he’ll revel.”

And Heywood, in the “Rape of Lucrece,” 1638, epigr. xxvi., has:--

“The Spaniard loves his ancient slop,
The Lombard his Venetian;
And some like breechless women go,
The Russ, Turk, Jew, and Grecian;
The thrifty Frenchman wears small waist,
The Dutchman his belly boasteth,
The Englishman is for them all,
And for each fashion coasteth.”

Shakespeare seems to allude to the sign of the Naked Boy in his “Comedy of Errors,” act iv., scene 3, where Dromio says, “What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparell’d.” At Skipton-in-Craven, there is still a stone bas-relief of the Naked Boy, fixed in the front of a house, with the date 1633.

The GOOD WOMAN, or the SILENT WOMEN, and at Pershore, in Worcestershire, the QUIET WOMAN, represent a headless woman carrying her head in her hand. Brady, in his “Clavis Calendaria,” vol. ii., p. 203, says, “The martyrs who had been decapitated were, therefore, usually represented with headless trunks, and the head on some adjoining table, or more commonly in their hands; and it was easy for ignorance and credulity not only to mistake that type, but to be led into belief that those holy persons had actually carried their heads about for the benefit of believers.” The sign, yet preserved, particularly by the oilshops, of the Good Woman, although originally meant as expressive of some female saint, holy or good woman, who had met death by the privation of her head, has been converted into a joke against the females whose alleged loquacity is considered to be satirised by this representation, which, to conform to such meaning, they now more commonly call the Silent Woman. The fact, however, of it being particularly an oilman’s sign, makes it possible that it may have some reference to the heedless [_head_ anciently was pronounced _heed_] or foolish virgins of the parable, who had no oil in their lamps when the bridegroom came. Where is your head? is still a question addressed to forgetful people.

There is a very curious example of this sign at Widford, near Chelmsford, representing on one side a half-length portrait of Henry VIII., on the reverse, a woman without a head, dressed in the costume of the latter half of the last century, with the inscription _Forte Bonne_. The addition of the portrait of Henry VIII. has led to the popular belief that the headless woman is meant for Anna Boleyn, though probably it is simply a combination of the KING’S HEAD AND GOOD WOMAN.

This sign is equally common on the Continent; the book of Dutch signboard inscriptions of the seventeenth century, from which we have constantly quoted, gives several verses which figured under various signs of the Good Woman. Amongst them the following are worth noticing:--

“Hier is de goede vrouw te vinden,
Na ’t leven zeer net afgebeeld,
Daar niet als ’t hoofd maar aan en scheeld,
Dewyl dat draait met duizend winden;
Indien er ’t hoofd was aangebleven
Sy was nooit goed haar gansche leven.”[649]

Another had:--

“De vrouw die is een mannen-plaag,
Al zyn snot-leepels daarna graag;
Dies als dat vuur is uitgedoofd
Dan wenschen zy, haar zonder hoofd.”[650]

In Italy, also, it is known, and serves as a sign to many an inn. Readers who may have visited Turin will remember the kind reception of “la buona Moglie” in that town. In Paris it gives its name to a street, _Rue de la Femme sans Tête_. The picture in France is generally accompanied by the legend, “_Tout en est bon_,” the absence of the head probably implying “_fors la tête_,” except the head; _ergo_, everything is good in woman except her head--her ever-changing whims and fancies. At the present day there is, in the Rue St Marguerite, a pork butcher who has made the following use of this sign: Under the usual representation of the Good Woman he has written in golden letters, “Tout en est bon, depuis les” (a representation of four pigs’ feet) “jusqu’à la,” (a representation of an enormous boar’s head.) This ungallant association of ideas of a woman and a pig is, we are sorry to say, not without an example in our nation, though fortunately our rudeness was two hundred years ago, and we have grown more refined since:--

“One Ambrose Westrop, vicar of the Parish church Much to Sham (?) in
the county of Essex, taught in a Sermon That a Woman is worse than a
sow in two respects; First: because a sowskin is good to make a cart
saddle and her bristles good for a sowter. Secondly: because a sow
will run away if a man cry but _hoy_, but a woman will not turn her
head, though beaten down with a leaver, and that all the difference
between a woman and a sow is in the nape of the neck, where a woman
can bend upwards, but a sow cannot, etc. The said Westrop is a great
malignant and very envious and full of venome against the Parliament.
But his benefit is sequestered, as well he deserves, from his
filthiness and unfitnesse to the place.”--_Remarkable Passages and
Occurrences of Parliament_, &c. December 8 to 15, 1644.

Lawyers, priests, and women have, at all times and in all countries, received a liberal share of abuse and slander; no wonder, then, that the Lawyer kept the Good Woman in countenance. In a sign derived from the Good Woman the man of law is “damned to fame” as the HONEST LAWYER, the sign representing him with his head in his hand, as the only condition in which by any possibility he could be honest. Another sign abusive of the softer sex is the MAN LOADED WITH MISCHIEF, the sign of an ale-house in Oxford Street. The original, said to be painted by Hogarth, is fastened to the front of the house, and has the honour of being specified in the lease of the premises as one of the fixtures. An engraving of it is exhibited in the window. It represents a man carrying a woman, a magpie, and a monkey, the woman with a glass of gin in her hand. In the background, on the left-hand side, is a public-house with a pair of horns as a “finial” on the gable end; this house is called “_Cuckhold’s Fortune_;” a woman is passing in at the door, and a sow is asleep in a pot-house, with a label above, “She is as drunk as a sow,” whilst two cats are making love on the roof. On the right-hand side is the shop of _S. Gripe, Pawnbroker_, which a carpenter enters to pledge his tools. The engraving is signed: “Drawn by Experience; engraved by Sorrow.” Under it is the following rhyme:--

“A monkey, a magpie, and a wife,
Is the true emblem of strife.”

This sign has been imitated in other places, sometimes called the MISCHIEF, as at Blewbury, Wallingford, or the LOAD OF MISCHIEF, as at Norwich. About twenty years ago there was one to be seen in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, with this expressive addition, that the man was tied to the woman by a chain and padlock. A similarly malicious reflection on the “softer sex” is seen in many parts of France, as in Paris, Troyes, and various other towns. It is called “_Le trio de Malice_,” (the three bad ones,) the trio being composed of a cat, a woman, and a monkey.

NOBODY was the singular sign of John Trundell, a ballad-printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century. In one of Ben Jonson’s plays Nobody is introduced, “attyred in a payre of Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face.” This comedy was “printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body.” A unique ballad, preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled “The Well-spoken No-Body,” is accompanied by a woodcut representing a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. Above him is a scroll in black-letter:--

“Nobody . is . my . Name . that . Beyreth . Every . Bodyes .
Blame.”

The ballad commences as follows:--

“Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe,
So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe;
But nowe, beholde, here I am,
Whom all the worlde doeth diffame;
Long have they also scorned me,
And locked my mouthe for speking free.
As many a Godly man they have so served
Which unto them God’s truth hath shewed;
Of such they have burned and hanged some,
That unto their ydolatrye wold not come:
The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage,
Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge.
For as much nowe as they name Nobodye
I thinke verilye they speke of me:
Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne--
The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne,
Wrought by no man, but by God’s grace,
Unto whom be prayse in every place,” &c.

In J. O. Halliwell’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i., p. 450, from whence we borrow the above, the subject is still further illustrated by the following quotation:--

“Nobody keeps such a rule in every bodies house that from the
mistresse to the basest maide, there is not a shrewde turne done
without him: for if the husband finde his study opened and enquire who
did it? he shall finde Nobody: if the goodwife see her utensils
disordered and demand who displast them, the issue of every servant’s
reply will bee, Nobody: if the servants discover the beds towsed and
the chambers durtied it will bee, Nobody; when every child is
examined; nay, if the children fall and break their noses, or scratch
one another’s faces, and either mother or nursse seeme angry and aske,
who hurt them, they will quickly answer Nobody toucht them; and their
desire of excuse hath brought lying to a custom.”--_Rich Cabinet
furnished with Variety of Excellent Description_, 1616.

At present there is an inn in Plymouth called NO PLACE inn; and formerly there was at Norwich a public-house called NOWHERE--a name which would, to the truant husband returning home in the small hours of night, suggest a ready answer to the warm reception of his partner for better and for worse, who, for the last few hours, has been

“Gath’ring her brows, like gath’ring storm--
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.”

Another ancient sign, to which constant allusions are made in the old writers, is the THREE LOGGERHEADS, which, old as it is, and stale as the joke may be, has not yet lost its charms for the inhabitants of many of our villages and quiet inland towns. It represents two silly-looking faces, with the inscription--

“WE THREE
LOGGERHEADS BE,”

--the unsuspecting spectator being, of course, the third. Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” suggests that the original picture should have represented three fools. Thus, in Shirley’s “Bird in Cage,” Morello, who counterfeits a fool, says, “_We be three of old_, without exception to your lordship, only with this difference, I am the wisest fool.” In Day’s “Comedy of Law Tricks,” 1608, Julia says, “Appoint the place prest,” to which the answer is, “_At the three fools._” Sometimes, as Mr Henley has stated, it was two asses. Thus, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Queen of Corinth.” ac. iii., sc. 1:--

“_Nean._ He is another ass, he says; I believe him.
_Uncle._ We be three, heroical prince.
_Nean._ Nay, then we must have the picture and the word _Nos sumus_.”

In this form it is still seen on valentines and humorous _cartes de visite_. Shakespeare, too, alludes to this sign in “Twelfth Night,” ac. ii., sc. 2:--“How now, my hearts? did you never see the picture of We Three?” Decker, ridiculing the manners and customs of his day, speaks of the fast men sitting on the stage at theatrical representations--“but assure yourself, by continual residence, you are the first and principal man in election, to begin the number of _We three_.”[651] In a pamphlet, entitled, “Heads of all Fashions; being a plain Disection or Definition of Divers and Sundry Sorts of Heads,” London, 1642, the Loggerheads are thus mentioned:--

“A Logerhead alone cannot well be,
_At scriveners’ windows many time hang three_.
A country lobcocke, as I once did heare,
Upon a penman put a grievous jeare.
If I had been in place, as this man was,
I should have called this country coxcomb asse.”

This alludes to one of the jokes in “Mother Bunch’s Merriments,” 1604, where a country fellow asks a poor scrivener, sitting in his shop, “I pray you, master, what might you sell in your shop, that you have so many ding-dongs hang at your dore?” “Why, my friend,” quoth the obligation-maker, “I sell nothing but loggerheads.” “By my fay, master,” quoth the countryman, “you have a fair market with them, for you have left but one in your shop, that I see;” and so, laughing, went his way, leaving much good sport to them that heard him. This old anecdote may have given rise to scriveners using the Loggerheads as their sign, which otherwise seems a not very pleasant reflection on their customers. We can scarcely think that any symbolism was intended, and that the Loggerheads were emblematical of the secretary’s silence and discretion. In the seventeenth century the sign might have been seen in London. There was one in Tooley Street in 1665, having on its trades token the inscription, “We are 3;” another variety had “We three Logerheads” underneath the usual heads. In the ballad of the “Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt., printed for Timothy Tosspot,” the trial takes place at the Three Loggerheads, by the Justices Oliver and Old Nick. The witnesses are cited at the sign of the _Three Merry Companions in Bedlam_--viz., Poor Robin, Merry Tom, and Jack Lackwit.