Druidical recollections are called up by the Oak and Ivy, at Bilston, Stafford; Hearts of Oak is the material out of which, according to the song, our ships and seamen are constructed, and therefore well deserves the favourite place it occupies amongst the signboards of the present day; whilst the Acorn, the fruit of the British oak, is nearly as common as the other oak signs.

Next to the oak the Elm seems to have had most followers. From the trades tokens it appears that the Three Elms was the sign of Edward Boswell in Chandos Street, in 1667; and also of Isaac Elliotson, St John Street, Clerkenwell. Besides these there was, about the same date, the One Elm, and the Elm. At present we have the Nine Elms, and the Queen’s Elm, Brompton, which is mentioned under the name of the Queen’s Tree, in the parish books of 1586. This tree is said to derive its name from the fact of Queen Elizabeth, when on a visit to Lord Burleigh, being caught in a shower of rain, and taking shelter under the branches of an elm-tree, then growing on this spot. The Seven Sisters, the sign of two public-houses in Tottenham, were seven elm-trees, planted in a circular form, with a walnut tree in the middle; they were upwards of 500 years old, and the local tradition said that a martyr had been burnt on that spot. They stood formerly at the entrance from the high road at Page Green, Tottenham. Within the last twenty years they have been removed. The Chestnut, the Sycamore, the Beech Tree, the Fir Tree, the Birch Tree, and the Ash Tree, all occur in various places where ale-houses are built in the shadow of such trees. The Thorn Tree is peculiar to Derbyshire. The Buckthorn Tree was, in 1775, the sign of “William Blackwell in Covent Garden, or at his garden in South Lambeth.” He had chosen this sign because he sold, amongst other herbs, “buckthorn and elder-berries, besides leeches and vipers.” What the use of the first was is well known; as for the vipers, they were eaten in broth and soups, before Madame Rachel’s enamels were employed, by ladies who wished to continue “young and beautiful for ever.” The Crab Tree, our indigenous apple-tree, is also seen in a great many places. A house in Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen on the Thames. It derives its denomination from a large crab-tree growing near the public-house, which gave its name to the whole village. The Willow Tree is very rare; in the seventeenth century it was the sign of a shop in the Old Exchange, as appears from a trades token, but what business was carried on under this gloomy sign does not appear. Fuller, in his Worthies, (voce Cambridgeshire,) says of willows:—

“A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning garlands; and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful supporters; the twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of children. Let me add that if green ash may burn before a queen, withered willows may be allowed to burn before a lady.”

As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in old plays:—

And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred lover, says to his rival:—

Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in Desdemona’s famous willow song. There is a quaint ballad which an old Northumberland woman used to sing, but which we have never seen in print: it begins as follows:—

Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” says:—This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in Psalm cxxxvii.: “We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof;” or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned: the Agnus castus or vitex was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, “and the willow being of a much like nature,” says an old writer, “it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland.”—Swan’s Speculum Mundi, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.

The frequency of the sign of the Yew Tree is not to be attributed to its association with the churchyard, but to its being the wood from which those famous bows were made that did such execution at Agincourt and Poictiers, and wherever the English armies trod the field before the invention of gunpowder. So great was the patronage our early kings granted to the practice of the bow, that the patten-makers, by an Act of Parliament of 4 Henry V., were forbidden, under a penalty of £5, to use in their craft any kind of wood fit to make arrows of.

The Cotton Tree is a sign generally put up in the neighbourhood of cotton factories, as at Manchester. The Palm Tree is one of the oldest symbols known: it was used as such by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, and by them transmitted to the early Christians. St Ambrosius, in a very forcible image, compares the life of an early and faithful Christian to the palm tree, rough and rugged below, like its stem, but increasing in beauty upwards, where it bears heavenly fruit. It might also illustrate a more homely truth, namely, that business cannot flourish without patronage and custom; thus, Camerarius says:—

“Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum naturalium Palmæ attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hæc arbor non facile crescat, nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nec non humore aliquo conveniente irrigetur.”[355]

The Cocoa Tree was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that beverage was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous was in St James’ Street; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a Tory house:—“A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda’s, [another chocolate-house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St James’.”[356] Deep play was the order of the day in that as in all other fashionable resorts at the end of the last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to one of his friends:—

“Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand pounds. Mr O’Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother’s death. O’Birne said, ‘You can never pay me?’ ‘I can,’ said the youth, ‘my estate will sell for the debt.’ ‘No,’ said O., ‘I will win ten thousand, you shall throw for the odd ninety.’ They did, and Harvey won.”[357]

It afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling seems to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Roger North, attorney-general to James II., says,—

“The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention called Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all the quality, where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of wh—— seldom fails: as if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its professors, as well as his school of discipline.”[358]

Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Rauch wrote a treatise against that beverage and the monks. In England, however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it was advertised as a new drink:—

“IN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates.”[359]

It is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its first introduction. M^me. de Sévigné, in her letters, gives many proofs of it; at one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as a perfect panacea, at other times she is as violently against it, and puts it down as the root of all evil.

The Coffee House is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in Chalton Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this neighbourhood was a delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower gardens. A short distance down the hill was the then famous Bagnigge Wells, and close by were the remains of Totten-Hall, with the Adam and Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John’s Palace. Many foreign Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this suburb, on account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for the small houses. “The Coffee House” was then the popular tea and coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant city. There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at hand, but the specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the traffic increased, it became a posting-house, uniting the business of an inn to the profits of a pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee fell off, and that for malt and spirituous liquors increased. At present the gardens are all built over, and the old gateway forms part of the modern bar; but there are aged persons in the neighbourhood who remember Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic parties from the crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.

The Holly Bush is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among the London trades tokens there is one of the Hand and Holly Bush at Templebar, evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, “on the north side, and about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near the church.”[360] This combination with the hand does not seem to have any very distinct meaning, and apparently arose simply from the manner of representing objects in those days, as being held by a hand issuing from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like some others of our old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the streets also appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that

“Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish churches, were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise garnished.”

Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the signboard, and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the kitchen garden found a place. The Artichoke, above all, used to be a great favourite, and still gives a name to some public-houses. As a seedsman’s sign it was common and rational; not so for a milliner, yet both among the Bagford and Banks’s shopbills there are several instances of its being the sign of that business; thus:—

“Susannah Fordham, att the Hartichoake, in ye Royal Exchange,” in the reign of Queen Anne, sold “all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of millenary wares.”[361]

Probably the novelty of the plant had more than anything else to do with this selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the reign of King Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes:—

“’Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy, improved to this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that they were commonly sold for a crowne a piece.”[362]

The Cabbage is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool, and Cabbage Hall, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic Asylum, Oxford, was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a tailor; but whether he himself had christened it thus, or his customers had a sly suspicion that it owed its origin to cabbaging, history has omitted to record. Another public-house, higher up the hill, was known by the name of Caterpillar Hall, a name clearly selected in compliment to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to draw away the customers from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar would eat the cabbage. The Oxnoble, a kind of potato, is the name of a public-house in Manchester, and the homely mess of Pease and Beans was a sign in Norwich in 1750.[363] The Three Radishes was, in the seventeenth century, a common nursery and market gardener’s sign in Holland. There was one near Haarlem, to which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in the garden, with this rhyme—

Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription:—

The Wheatsheaf is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker’s sign; it is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides that of the brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the vegetable market, is Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which also did a roaring trade in wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages. Indeed, most of the large inns within the liberties of the Fleet served as “marriage shops” between 1734 and 1749; amongst the most famous were the Bull and Garter, the Hoop and Bunch of Grapes, the Bishop Blaize and Two Sawyers, the Fighting Cocks, and numerous others. The gateway entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of wheat ears and lions’ heads intermixed, finished in a manner not unworthy of Grinling Gibbons himself.

The Oatsheaf is very rare; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church Lane, Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a trades token; but this seems the only instance of the sign.

With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all weeds. Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the Tobacco plant, but most usually it occurs in the form of Tobacco rolls, representing coils of the so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the sake of ornament, painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his “Gull’s Hornbook,” mentions Roll Trinidado, leaf, and pudding tobacco, which probably were the three sorts smokers at that day preferred. That it was used mixed may be conjectured from the introduction to “Cinthia’s Revels,” a play by Ben Jonson; one of the interlocutors says,—“I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket.”

CHAPTER VIII.
BIBLICAL AND RELIGIOUS SIGNS.

The earlier signs were frequently representations of the most important article sold in the shops before which they hung. The stocking denoted the hosier, the gridiron the ironmonger, and so on. The early booksellers, whose trade lay chiefly in religious books, delighted in signs of saints, but at the Reformation the Bible amongst those classes, to whom till then it had been a sealed book, became in great request, and was sold in large numbers. Then the booksellers set it up for their sign; it became the popular symbol of the trade, and at the present moment instances of its use still linger with us. There was one day in the year, St Bartholomew’s, the 24th of August, when their shops displayed nothing but Bibles and Prayer-books. It is not impossible that this may have been originally intended for a manifestation against Popery, since it was the anniversary of the dreadful Protestant massacre in Paris in 1572. The following, however, is the only allusion we have met with relating to this custom:—“Like a bookseller’s shop on Bartholomew day at London, the stalls of which are so adorned with Bibles and Prayer-books, that almost nothing is left within but heathen knowledge.”[366]

One of the last Bible signs was about twenty years ago, at a public-house in Shire Lane, Temple Bar. It was an old established house of call for printers.

The Bible being such a common sign, booksellers had to “wear their rue with a difference,” as Ophelia says, and adopt different colours, amongst which the Blue Bible was one of the most common. “Prynne’s Histrio-Mastrix” was “printed for Michael Sparke, and sold at the Blue Bible, in Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey, 1632.” This blue colour, so common on the signboard, was not chosen without meaning, but on account of its symbolic virtue. Blue, from its permanency, being an emblem of truth, hence Lydgate, speaking of Delilah, Samson’s mistress, in his translation from Boccacio, (MS. Harl. 2251,) says—

It also signified piety and sincerity. Randle Holme[367] says—

“This colour, blew, doth represent the sky on a clear, sun-shining day, when all clouds are exiled. Job, speaking to the busy searchers of God’s mysteries, saith (Job xi. 17,) ‘That then shall the residue of their lives be as clear as the noonday.’ Which to the judgment of men (through the pureness of the air) is of azure colour or light blew, and signifieth piety and sincerity.”

Other booksellers chose the Three Bibles, which was a very common sign of the trade on London Bridge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: of one of them, Charles Tyne, trades tokens are extant,—great curiosities to the numismatist, as booksellers were not in the habit of issuing them. The sign of the Three Bibles seems to have originated from the stationers’ arms, which are arg. on a chevron between three bibles, or a falcon volant between two roses, the Holy Ghost in chief. One bookseller, on account of his selling stationery, also added three inkbottles to the favourite three Bibles, as we see from an advertisement, giving the price of playing cards in 1711:—

“SOLD by Henry Parson, Stationer at the Three Bibles and Three Inkbottles, near St Magnus’ Church, on London Bridge, the best principal superfine Picket Cards, at 2s. 6d. a dozen; the best principal Ombro Cards, at 2s. 9d. a dozen; the best principal superfine Basset Cards, at 3s. 6d. a dozen; with all other Cards and Stationery Wares at Reasonable Rates.”[368]

Combinations of the Bible with other objects were very common, some of them symbolic, as the Bible and Crown, which sign originated during the political troubles in the reign of Charles I. It was at this time when the clergy and the court party constantly tried to convince the people of the divine prerogative of the Crown, that the “Bible and Crown” became the standing toast of the Cavaliers and those opposed to the Parliament leaders. As a sign it has been used for a century and a half by the firm of Rivington the publishers. The old wood carving, painted and gilt in the style of the early signs, was taken down from over the shop in Paternoster Row in 1853, when this firm removed westward. It is still in their possession. Cobbett, the political agitator and publisher, in the beginning of this century chose the sign of the Bible, Crown, and Constitution; but the general tenor of his life was such, that his enemies said he put them up merely that he might afterwards be able to say he had pulled them down. A Bible, Sceptre, and Crown, carved in wood, may still be seen on the top of an ale-house of that name in High Holborn. The crown and sceptre in this case are placed on two closed Bibles.

The Bible and Lamb, i.e., the Holy Lamb, we find mentioned in an advertisement in the Publick Advertiser, March 1, 1759—

“TO BE HAD at the Bible and Lamb, near Temple Bar, on the Strand Side, the Skin for Pains in the Limbs, Price 2s.”

Books also were sold here, for in those days booksellers and toyshops were the usual repositories for quack medicines.

The Bible and Dove, i.e., the Holy Ghost, was the sign of John Penn, bookseller, over against St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, 1718; and the Bible and Peacock, the sign of Benjamin Crayle, bookseller, at the west end of St Paul’s, in 1688. If not a combination of two signs, the bird may have been added on account of its being the type of the Resurrection, in which quality it is found represented in the Catacombs, a symbolism arising from the supposed incorruptibility of its flesh.[369] Various other combinations occur, as the Bible and Key. Rowland Hall, a printer of the sixteenth century, had for his sign the Half Eagle and Key, (see Heraldic Signs,) of which the Bible and Key may be a free imitation. It was the sign of B. Dod, bookseller, in Ave Maria Lane, 1761; whilst the Golden Key and Bible was that of L. Stoke, a bookseller at Charing Cross, 1711. The “Bible and Key” is also the name of a certain Coscinomanteia, somewhat similar to the Sortes Virgilianæ. This method of divination was performed in two ways, in the first, (stated by Matthew of Paris to have been frequently practised at the election of bishops,) the Bible was opened on the altar, and the prediction taken from the chapter which first caught the eye on opening the book; the other was by placing two written papers, one negative, the other affirmative, of the matter in question, under the pall of the altar, which, after solemn prayers, was believed would be decided by divine judgment. Gregory of Tours mentions another method by the Psalms.[370]

At the present day “Bible and Key” divinations are often attempted by those who believe in fortune-telling and vaticinations. The method adopted is as follows:—A key is placed, with the bow or handle sticking out, between the leaves of a Bible, on Ruth i. 16:

“AND RUTH said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

The Bible is then firmly tied up, most effectually with a garter, and balanced by the bow of the key on the fore-fingers of the right hands of two persons, the one who wishes to consult the oracle, the other any person standing near. The book is then addressed with these words—“Pray, Mr Bible, be good enough to tell me if —— or not?” If the question be answered in the affirmative the key will swing round, turn off the finger, and the Bible fall down; if in the negative, it will remain steady in its position. Not only upon matrimonial, but upon all sorts of questions, this oracle may be consulted.

Further combinations are the Bible and Sun. The Sun was the sign of Wynkyn de Worde, and the printers that succeeded him in his house. It may, however, in this combination have been an emblem of the Sun of Truth, or the Light of the World. It was the sign of J. Newberry, in St Paul’s Churchyard, the publisher of Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield;” also of C. Bates, near Pie Corner; and of Richard Reynolds, in the Poultry, both ballad printers in the times of Charles II. and William III. Then there is the Bible and Ball, a sign of a bookseller in Ave Maria Lane in 1761, who probably hung up a Globe to indicate the sale of globes and maps; and the Bible and Dial, over against St Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, in 1720, was the sign of the notorious Edmund Curll, who was pilloried at Charing Cross, and pilloried in Pope’s verses. The Dial was, in all likelihood, a sun-dial on the front wall of his house.

Of the Apocryphal Books there is only one example among the signboards, viz., Bel and the Dragon, which was at one time not uncommon, more particularly with apothecaries. It was represented by a Bell and a Dragon, as appears from the Spectator, No. 28. “One Apocryphical Heathen God is also represented by this figure [of a Bell], which, in conjunction with the Dragon, makes a very handsome picture in several of our streets.” Although at the first glance this sign seems taken from the doubtful books of the Old Testament, still there is nothing in the Apocryphal book which could in any way prompt the choice of it for a signboard. After all, it may possibly be only a combination, or corruption, of two other signs. There still remain a few public-houses which employ it,—as in Worship Street; at Cookham, Maidenhead; at Norton in the Moors, &c., whilst in Boss Street, Horsely Down, there is a variation in the form of the Bell and Griffin. From a handbill of Topham, the Strong Man,[371] we see that it was vulgarly called the King Astyages Arms, for no better reason than because King Astyages is the first name in the story: the incident related in the Book of Bel and the Dragon having taken place after his death.

A very common sign of old, as well as at present, is the Adam and Eve. Our first parents were constant dramatis personæ in the mediæval mysteries and pageants, on which occasions, with the naïveté of those times, Eve used to come on the stage exactly in the same costume as she appeared to Adam before the Fall.[372] The sign was adopted by various trades, including the publishers of books, as we may see from the following quaint title:—

“A PROTESTANT Picture of Jesus Christ, drawn in Scripture colours, both for light to sinners and delight to saints. By Tho. Sympson, M.A., Preacher of the Word at London. Sold by Edw. Thomas at the Adam and Eve, in Little Britain. 1662.”

In Newgate Street there yet remains an old stone sign of the Adam and Eve, with the date 1669. Eve is represented handing the apple to Adam, the fatal tree is in the centre, round its stem the serpent winding. It was the arms of the fruiterers’ company.

There is still an Adam and Eve public-house in the High Street, Kensington, where Sheridan, on his way to and from Holland House, used to refresh himself, and in this way managed to run up rather a long bill, which Lord Holland had to pay for him. A still older place of public entertainment was the Adam and Eve Tea-gardens, in Tottenham Court Road, part of which was the last remaining vestige “of the once respectable, if not magnificent, manor-house appertaining to the Lords of Tottenhall.” Richardson, in 1819, said that the place had long been celebrated as a tea-garden; there was an organ in the long room, and the company was generally respectable, till the end of last century, when highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and low women, beginning to take a fancy to it, the magistrates interfered. The organ was banished, and the gardens were dug up for the foundation of Eden Street. In these gardens Lunardi came down after his unsuccessful balloon ascent from the Artillery ground, May 16, 1783. Hogarth has represented the Adam and Eve in the March of the Guards to Finchley. Upon the signboard of the house is inscribed, “Tottenham Court Nursery,” in allusion to Broughton’s Amphitheatre for Boxing, erected in this place. How amusing is this advertisement of the great Professor’s “Nursery:”—

“From the Gymnasium at Tottenham Court
on Thursday next at Twelve o’clock will begin:

A lecture on Manhood or Gymnastic Physiology, wherein the whole Theory and Practice of the Art of Boxing will be fully explained by various Operators on the animal Œconomy and the Principles of Championism, illustrated by proper Experiments on the Solids and Fluids of the Body; together with the True Method of investigating the Nature of all Blows, Stops, Cross Buttocks, etc., incident to Combatants. The whole leading to the most successful Method of beating a Man deaf, dumb, lame, and blind.

by Thomas Smallwood, A.M.,
Gymnasiast of St. Giles,
and
Thomas Dimmock, A.M.,
Athleta of Southwark,
(Both fellows of the Athletic Society.)

^*_*^* The Syllabus or Compendium for the use of students in Athleticks, referring to Matters explained in this Lecture, may be had of Mr Professor Broughton at the Crown in Market Lane, where proper instructions in the Art and Practice of Boxing are delivered without Loss of Eye or Limb to the student.”

The tree with the forbidden fruit, always represented in the sign of Adam and Eve, leads directly to the Flaming Sword, “which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” Being the first sword on record, it was not inappropriately a cutler’s sign, and as such we find it in the Banks Collection, on the shop-bill of a sword cutler in Sweeting’s Alley, Royal Exchange, 1780. It is less appropriate at the door of a public-house in Nottingham, for the landlord evidently cannot desire to keep anybody out, whether saint or sinner. The vessel by which the life of the first planter of the vine was preserved, certainly well deserves to decorate the tavern: hence Noah’s Ark is not an uncommon public-house sign, though it looks very like a sarcastic reflection on the mixed crowd that resort to the house,—not to escape the “heavy wet,” as the animals at the Deluge, but in order to obtain some of it. Toy-shops also constantly use it, since Noah’s Ark is generally the favourite toy of children. Evelyn, in 1644, mentions a shop near the Palais de Justice in Paris:

“Here is a shop called Noah’s Ark, where are sold all curiosities, natural or artificial, Indian or European, for luxury or use, as cabinets, shells, ivory, porcelain, dried fishes, insects, birds, pictures, and a thousand exotic extravagances.”[373]

The Deluge was one of the standard subjects of mediæval dramatic plays. In the third part of the Chester Whitsun plays, for instance, Noah and the Flood make a considerable item; and at a much later period the same subject was exhibited at Bartholomew Fair. A bill of the time of Queen Anne[374] informs us that—

“AT Crawley’s Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little Opera, called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived, with the addition of Noah’s Flood; also several fountains playing water during the time of the play. The last scene presents Noah and his family coming out of the Ark, with all the beasts, two by two, and all the fowls of the air, seen in a prospect, sitting upon trees. Likewise over the Ark is seen the sun rising in a most glorious manner: moreover, a multitude of angels will be seen, in a double rank, which presents a double prospect—one for the sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen 6 angels ringing of bells, etc.”

The Deluge was the mystery performed at Whitsuntide by the company of dyers in London, and from this their sign of the Dove and Rainbow might have originated, unless it were adopted by them on account of the various colours of the rainbow. On the bill of John Edwards, a silk-dyer in Aldersgate Street, the Dove, with an olive branch in her mouth, is represented flying underneath the Rainbow, over a landscape, with villages, fenced fields, and a gentleman in the costume of the reign of Charles II. Besides this there are various other dyers’ bills with the sign of the Dove and Rainbow, both among the Bagford and Banks Collections. A few public-houses at the present day still keep up the memory of the sign; there is one at Nottingham, and another in Leicester.

“Abraham Offering his Son” was the sign of a shop in Norwich in 1750. A stone bas-relief of the same subject (Le Sacrifice d’Abraham) is still remaining in the front of a house in the Rue des Prêtres, Lille, France. A Dutch wood-merchant, in the seventeenth century, also put up this sign, and illustrated its application by the following rhyme:—