The George and Thirteen Cantons, kept by the great Bob Travers, is another odd combination, occurring in Church Street, Soho; it is, however, easily explained when we learn that there is another public-house called the Thirteen Cantons, in King Street, also in Soho. This sign was put up in reference to the thirteen Protestant cantons of Switzerland—a compliment to the numerous Swiss who inhabit the neighbourhood.

But the strangest combination of all is that of the George and Vulture. At present there are three public-houses in London with this sign: one in St George-in-the-East, one in Wapping, and one in Haberdasher Street, Hoxton. As in the “Live Vulture,” (see p. 224,) the only obvious explanation for this strange combination seems to be the possibility of a vulture having been exhibited at this house. Vultures were still considered great curiosities as late as the eighteenth century. In 1726, one of the attractions at Peckham Fair was a menagerie, and amongst the animals exhibited the vulture was described in the following terms:—

“The noble Vulture Cock, brought from Archangall, having the finest talons of any bird that seeks her prey; the forepart of his head is covered with hair; the second part resembles the wool of a black; below that is a white ring, having a ruff that he cloaks his head with at night.”

It is a name of some standing. “Near Ball Alley was the George Inn, since the Fire, rebuilt with very good houses, well Inhabited, and warehouses, being a large open yard, and called George Yard, at the farther end of which is the George and Vulture Tavern, which is a large house and of a great trade, having a passage into St Michael’s Alley,” [Cornhill].[417] There was another tavern of this name on the east side of the high road, nearly opposite Bruce Green, Tottenham, in early times much frequented by the citizens of London taking their recreations. It is mentioned in the “Search after Claret” as early as 1691. Several coins of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I. were discovered on pulling down the old house. A coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth was fixed over the front door, but at the demolition of the building it was put up at the back of a house in Hale Lane. After the fashion of the time, the house was duly puffed up in newspaper poems. The following is copied from a newspaper-cutting circa 1761-62, and as it enumerates the attractions of a suburban tea-garden of the period, may be quoted here at full length:—

St Paul, the patron saint of London, was formerly a common sign in the metropolis. One of the trades tokens of a house or tavern in Petty France, Westminster, represents the saint before his conversion, lying on the ground, with his horse standing by him; this house was called “the Saul.” Perhaps this was a monkish pleasantry of the period, (as Westminster was under the patronage of St Peter,) representing an unpleasant event in the history of the great patron, and showing, by simple analogy, the vast superiority of the converted St Peter. The usual way, however, of commemorating the saint on the signboard was the St Paul’s Head. This was the sign of a very old inn in Great Carter Lane, (Doctors’ Commons,) opposite which Bagford lived in 1712. As an inn, it is mentioned by Machyn, in his Diary, in 1562. “The 25 may was a yonge man did hang ymseylff at the Polles Head, the inn in Carterlane.” Trades tokens of this house are extant in the Beaufoy Collection. In the eighteenth century, most of the celebrated libraries were sold at this inn:[419] amongst others that of the bibliomaniac, Tom Rawlinson—the Tom Folio of the Tatler, whose books were brought to the hammer between 1721-33—the sale extending to seventeen or eighteen separate auctions. The disposal of his MSS. alone occupied sixteen days. To this tavern formerly the new sheriffs, after having been sworn in, used to resort to receive the keys of the different jails; that ceremony terminated, they were regaled with sack and walnuts by the keeper of Newgate. The St Paul’s Coffee-house is built on the site of this old inn. About 1820 there was another Paul’s Head in Cateaton Street, where a literary club used to be held “for the cultivation of forensic eloquence.” It was under the patronage of several distinguished characters, and had for a motto the modest words, “Sic itur ad astra.” The vicinity of the cathedral evidently had suggested both these signs, as well as that exhibited by Philip Waterhouse, a bookseller “at the St Paul’s Head in Canning Street near Londonstone” in 1630. On another sign, in the same locality, the two saints were united, viz., the Saint Peter and Saint Paul, St Paul’s Churchyard. Of this house, also, trades tokens are extant.

Although St Peter was, doubtless, as common on the signboard before the Reformation as the other great saints of religious history, yet no instances of this have come down to us. His keys, however—the famous Cross Keys—are very common. At Dawdley, and on the road between Warminster and Salisbury, there is a very curious sign called Peter’s Finger, which is believed to occur nowhere else. In all probability this refers to the benediction of the Pope, the finger of his Holiness being raised whilst bestowing a blessing. St Peter being the first of the Papal line, was doubtless often represented with his finger raised in old pictures and carvings. The following passage from Bishop Hall’s “Satires” alludes to the finger:—

St Dunstan, the patron saint of the parish of that name in London, was godfather to the Devil,—that is to say, to the sign of the famous tavern of the Devil and St Dunstan, within Temple Bar. The legend runs, that one day, when working at his trade of a goldsmith, he was sorely tempted by the devil, and at length got so exasperated that he took the red hot tongs out of the fire and caught his infernal majesty by the nose. The identical pinchers with which this feat was performed are still preserved at Mayfield Palace, in Sussex. They are of a very respectable size, and formidable enough to frighten the arch one himself. This episode in the saint’s life was represented on the signboard of that glorious old tavern. By way of abbreviation, this house was called The Devil, though the landlord seems to have preferred the other saint’s name; for on his token we read: “The D—— (sic) and Dunstan,” probably fearing, with a classic dread, the ill omen of that awful name.

Allusions to this tavern are innumerable in the dramatists; one of the earliest is in 1563, in the play of “Jack Jugeler.” William Rowley thus mentions it in his comedy of a “Match by Midnight,” 1633:—

“Bloodhound. As you come by Temple Bar make a step to the Devil.

Tim. To the Devil, father?

Sim. My master means the sign of the Devil, and he cannot hurt you, fool; there’s a saint holds him by the nose.

Tim. Sniggers, what does the devil and a saint both on a sign?

Sim. What a question is that? What does my master and his prayer-book o’ Sundays both in a pew?”

So fond was Ben Jonson of this tavern, that he lived “without Temple Bar, at a combmaker’s shop,” according to Aubrey, in order to be near his favourite haunt. It must have been, therefore, in a moment of ill-humour, when he found fault with the wine, and made the statement that his play of the “Devil is an Ass,” (which is certainly not amongst his best,) was written “when I and my boys drank bad wine at the Devil.” But surely he would not have established his favourite Apollo Club at a place where they sold bad wine. He himself composed the famous “Leges Conviviales” for this club, which are still preserved, with the respect due to so sacred a relic, in the banking house of Messrs Child & Co., erected in 1788 on the place where the tavern formerly stood. They are twenty-four in number, some of them rather characteristic:—

“4. And the more to exact our delight whilst we stay,
“4. Let none be debarr’d from his choice female mate.

“5. Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.

10. Let our wines without mixture or scum be all fine,
10. Or call up the master and break his dull noddle.

[293]

16. With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude,
16. To regale every sense with delight in excess.

21. For generous lovers let a corner be found,
21. Where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve.”

The last clause was, “Focus perennis esto,” which proves that rare old Ben understood comfort. Latin inscriptions were also in other parts of the house. Over the clock in the kitchen might have been seen, as late as 1731, “Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibis iterum, et erit medicina.”[420] An elegant rendering of the well-known phrase, “A hair of the dog that bit you.” Not only Ben Jonson, but almost all the great poets of two centuries, honoured this house with their presence. “I dined to-day,” says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, “with Dr Garth and Mr Addison, at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, and Garth treated.” Numerous similar quotations might be found, showing the visits to this place of nearly all the great literary stars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Simon Wadloe was one of the most famous landlords of this tavern. Pepys, April 22, 1661,—“Wadlow, the Vintner at the Devil, in Fleet Street, did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely men, in white Doublets” (this was on Charles II. going from the Tower to Whitehall.) Ben Jonson called him the king of skinkers.[421] Among the verses on the door of the Apollo room occurred the lines—

Camden, in his “Remains,” records the following epitaph on this worthy:—

In opposition to this Old Devil a Young Devil Tavern was opened, also in Fleet Street, in 1707, and here the first meetings of the Society of Antiquaries were held, but the “Young Devil” was not a success, and the house was soon closed.

Though the Devil is not a promising name for a public-house, owing to his near connexion with evil spirits, yet there was a third tavern named after—if not devoted to him—the Little Devil, Goodman’s Fields, Whitechapel. Ned Ward, in 1703, highly commends the punch of this house, which he partook of in “a room neat enough to entertain Venus and the graces.” It was a house entirely after jolly Ned’s fancy. “My landlord was good company, my landlady good humoured, her daughter charmingly pretty, and her maid tolerably handsome, who can laugh, cry, say her prayers, sing a song, all in a breath, and can turn in a minute to all sublunary points of a female compass.”[423]

The Devil (le Diable) was also a celebrated tavern in Paris, near the Palais de Justice. It is thus named in the “Ode à tous les Cabarets:”—

In the seventeenth century Paris also had its Petit Diable, (Little Devil,) a tavern of some renown.

The Devil’s House was the name of a favourite Sunday resort in the last century, in the Hornsey Road, Islington. It is said to have been the retreat of Claude Duval (unde Duval’s house, Devil’s house,) the elegant highwayman in the reign of Charles II., who infested the lanes about Islington; but from a survey taken in 1611, it appears that the house bore already at that time the name of “Devil’s House.” From its general appearance it seemed to date from Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It was surrounded by a moat filled with water, and passed by a wooden bridge. Its attractions are held forth in the following laudatory epistle, an example of the florid and poetical advertising in vogue when Richardson wrote novels of six volumes all in letters—compositions too painfully pathetic for our matter-of-fact age:—

“To the Printer of the Publick Advertiser.

“Sir,—Returning yesterday from a rural excursion to Hornsey, I casually stopped for a little refreshment at an house, commonly known by the name of Devil’s House, situated within two fields of Holloway-Turnpike. I own that I was vastly surprised at so charming and delightful a place, so near town, and at the great improvements lately made there. The garden is well laid out, encompassed with a beautiful moat, and a good canal in the orchard. On inquiry, I found the landlord (remarkable for his civil and obliging behaviour) had stocked the same with plenty of tench, carp, and other fish, with free liberty for his customers to angle therein. Tea and hot loaves are ready at a moment’s notice, and new milk from the cows grazing in the pleasant meadows adjoining, with a good larder, and the best wines, &c. In short, I know not a more agreeable place, where persons of both sexes of genteel taste may enjoy a more innocent and delightful amusement. But what surprised me most, was that the landlord, by a peculiar turn of invention, had changed the Devil’s House to the Summer House,—a name I find it is for the future to be distinguished by. I wish, Mr Printer, your readers as much pleasure as myself, and am, sir, your constant reader,

“H. G.

“May 25, 1767.”

At Royston, Herts, there is a public-house known as the Devil’s Head. There is no signboard, but a carved representation of his satanic majesty’s head projects from the building, the name being underneath.

St Patrick is exclusively an Irish sign. He is generally represented in the costume of a bishop, driving a flock of snakes, toads, and other vermin before him, which he is said to have banished from Ireland. His life is more replete with miracles than any of the other saints.

for his father was a noble Roman, who lived at Kirkpatrick, in Scotland. The saint’s life was very active; he founded 365 churches, ordained 365 bishops, and 3000 priests, converted 12,000 persons in one district, baptized seven kings at once, established a purgatory, and with his staff expelled every reptile that stung or croaked. This last feat, however, has been performed by a great many saints in different parts of the world. Not so the feat he performed at his death, when, having been beheaded, he coolly took his head under his arm, (or, according to the best authorities, in his mouth,) and swam over the Shannon. In such cases as the Bishop of Narbonne said about St Denis, (who walked from Montmartre to St Denis with his head under his arm,) “il n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.”[426]

In many instances, no doubt, before the Reformation, the shopkeeper would choose his patron saint for his sign, to act as a sort of lares and penates to his house. An example of this occurs on the following imprint:—“Manual of Prayers, 1539. Imprynted in Bottol [St Botolph’s] Lane, at the sygne of the Whyt Beare, by me, Jhon Mayler, for John Waylande, and be to sell in Powles Churchyarde, by Andrew Hester, at the Whyt Horse, and also by Mychel Lobley, at the sygne of the Saint Mychel;” this last bookseller, therefore, had chosen his own patron saint for his sign. For the same reason another bookseller adopted, in the early part of the sixteenth century, Saint John the Evangelist—“The Doctrynall of Good Servauntes. Imprynted at London, in Flete Strete, at the sygne of Saynt Johan Evangelyste, by me, Johan Butler.” This Butler was a judge of the Common Pleas, as well as a bookseller. About the same period the Evangelist was also the sign of another man of the same profession—“Robert Wyce, dwellinge at the sygne of Seynt Johan Euāgelyst, in Seynt Martyns parysshe, in the filde besyde Charynge Crosse, in the bysshop of Norwytche rentys.” He was the printer of the well-known “Pronostycacion for ever of Erra Pater; a Jewe borne in Jewry, a doctor in Astronomye and Physicke,” which was continued for ages after him. Robert Wyce must have been about the first bookseller and printer in this neighbourhood, as in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the parish contained less than one hundred people liable to be rated.[427] We find the same as one of the oldest printer’s signs in France, on an edition of Merlin’s Prophecies, printed at Paris in 1438, by Abraham Verard, dwelling near the church of Notre Dame, at the sign of St John the Evangelist.

Other saints, again, have a local reputation, and are perpetuated on the signboards in certain localities only, as for instance St Thomas of Canterbury; St Edmund’s Head, at Bury St Edmunds; and St Cuthbert, at Monk’s house, near Sunderland. This saint was the first bishop of Northumberland.

says Sir Walter Scott, alluding to the stalks of the Encrinites, which are called St Cuthbert’s Beads, the saint, as the story goes, amusing himself by stringing them together.

Hugh Singleton, a bookseller in the sixteenth century, lived at the sign of the St Augustine; probably he had chosen this saint from the fact of his being a distinguished writer as well as saint. George Carter, a shopkeeper in the seventeenth century, adopted St Alban, the protomartyr, as his sign, evidently for no other reason but because he lived in “St Alban’s Street, near St James’s Market;” and another, William Ellis of Tooley Street, had the sign of St Clement, perhaps on account of his being a native of the parish of St Clement’s. Trades tokens of both these houses are to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection.

St Laurent was the sign of an inn in Lawrence Lane, Cheapside, but from a border of blossoms or flowers round it, it was commonly called Blossoms, or by corruption, Bosom’s Inn—such at least is the explanation of Stow:—

In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. honoured Henry VIII. with a visit; at first his intention was to come with a retinue of 2044 persons and 1127 horses, but subsequently he reduced them to 2000 persons and 1000 horses. To lodge these visitors, various “inns for horses” were “seen and viewed,” amongst which “St Laurance, otherwise called Bosoms Yn,” is noted down to have “xx beddes and a stable for lx horses.”[428] It is curious, in this list of inns, to observe the proportion of beds as compared with stabling room, showing how most of the followers of a nobleman on a journey had to shift for themselves and sleep in the straw or elsewhere. On the occasion of this imperial visit, the city authorities were evidently afraid of being drunk dry by the many Flemings in the train of the Emperor. To avoid this calamity, a return was made of all the wine to be found at the eleven wine merchants, and the twenty-eight principal taverns then in London, the sum total of which was 809 pipes.[429]

In the sixteenth century the house seems already to have been famous as a carrier’s inn, (which it continued for three centuries,) as appears from the following allusion:—“Yet have I naturally cherisht and hugt it in my bosome, even as a carrier at Bosome’s Inne doth a cheese under his arms.”[430] A satirical tract about Banks and his horse “Marocius Extaticus,” (reprinted by the Percy Society,) gives the names of its authors as “John Dando the wiredrawer of Hadley, and Harrie Hunt, head ostler of Besomes Inne.” Another domestic of this establishment is handed down to posterity in Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Christmass,” presented at Court in 1616, where the following lines occur:—

The Catherine Wheel was formerly a very common sign, most likely adopted from its being the badge of the order of the knights of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai, created anno 1063, for the protection of pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Sepulchre. Hence it was a suggestive, if not eloquent sign for an inn, as it intimated that the host was of the brotherhood, although in a humble way, and would protect the travellers from robbery in his inn,—in the shape of high charges and exactions,—just as the knights of St Catherine protected them on the high road from robbery by brigands. These knights wore a white habit embroidered with a Catherine wheel, (i.e. a wheel armed with spikes,) and traversed with a sword stained with blood.[432] There were also mysteries in which St Catherine played a favourite part, one of which was acted by young ladies on the entry of Queen Catherine of Arragon (queen to our Henry VIII.) in London in 1501; in honour of this queen the sign may occasionally have been put up. The Catherine wheel was also a charge in the Turners’ arms. Flecknoe tells us, in his “Enigmatical Characters,” (1658,) that the Puritans changed it into the Cat and Wheel, under which name it is still to be seen on a public-house at Castle Green, Bristol. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Catherine Wheel was a famous carrier’s inn in Southwark; and at the present day there is still an old public-house in Bishopsgate Street Without, inscribed, “Ye old Catherine Wheel, 1594.”[433]

Besides these, there were other signs expressing a religious idea, such as the Heart in Bible, which occurs under one of the Luttrell Ballads:—“The Citizens’ joys for the Rebuilding of London, printed by P. Lillicross, for Richard Head, at the Heart in Bible, in Little Britain, where you may have Mr Matthews, his approved and universal pills for all diseases, 1667.” Another bookseller on London Bridge, Eliz. Smith, 1691, had the Hand and Bible. Biblical phrases also were employed, as for instance, the Lion and Lamb, which occurs on several seventeenth century trades tokens of Snowhill, Southwark, &c., and is still much in vogue. It is an emblematical representation of the Millennium, when “the lion shall lie down by the kid.” In the last century there was a Lion and Lamb on a signboard at Sheffield, with the following poetical effusion:—

The antithesis to this sign, namely, the Wolf and Lamb, occurs occasionally, as in Charles Street, Leicester, and in a few other places. In Grosvenor Street it was probably once represented by a lion and a kid, but the public, not minding the text, called the sign the Lion and Goat, and that name it still bears. The Lion and Adder, Nottingham, Newark, and various other places, or the Lion and Snake, as at Bailgate, Lincoln, come from Psalm xci. 13, where the godly are reminded:—“Thou shalt tread upon the Lion and Adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” These two signs apparently came in use during the Commonwealth. They have a decided flavour of the time when Scripture language formed the common speech of every day life.

The Lamb and Flag is another sign common all over England, representing originally the holy lamb with the nimbus and banner, but now so little understood by the publicans, that on an alehouse at Swindon, it is pictured with a spear, to which a red-white-and-blue streamer is appended. It may also be of heraldic origin, for it was the coat of arms of the Templars, and the crest of the merchant tailors. The Lamb and Anchor, Milk Street, Bristol, seems to be a mystical representation of hope in Christ; both these last signs date from before the Reformation. From that period also dates the sign of the Bleeding Heart, the emblematical representation of the five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, viz., the heart of the Holy Virgin pierced with five swords. There is still an ale-house of this name in Charles Street, Hatton Garden, and Bleeding Heart Yard, adjoining the public-house, is immortalised in “Little Dorrit.” The Wounded Heart, one of the signs in Norwich in 1750,[434] had the same meaning. The Heart was a constant emblem of the Holy Virgin in the middle ages; thus, on the clog almanacs, all the feasts of St Mary were indicated by a heart. It was not an uncommon sign in former times. The Heart and Ball appears on a trades token as the sign of a house in Little Britain, the Ball being simply some silk mercer’s addition; and the Golden Heart[435] was a sign in Greenwich in 1737, next door to which Dr Johnson used to live when he was newly come to town, and wrote the Parliamentary articles for the Gentleman’s Magazine. At present there are three public-houses with this sign in Bristol, and in other places it may be met with.

Heaven was a house of entertainment near Westminster Hall; the present committee rooms of the House of Commons are erected on its site. Butler alludes to this house in “Hudibras,” p. 3:—

“False Heaven at the end of the Hall.”

Pepys records his dining at this house in the winter of 1660, and with due respect for the place, he put on his best fur cap for the occasion. “I sent a porter to bring my best fur cap, and so I returned and went to Heaven; where Luellin and I dined.”

Paradise was a messuage in the same neighbourhood, and Hell and Purgatory subterranean passages; but in the reign of James I. Hell was the sign of a low public-house frequented by lawyers’ clerks. Heaven and Hell are mentioned, together with a third house called Purgatory, in an old grant dated the first year of Henry VII.[436] The Three Kings is a sign representing the three Eastern magi or kings, who came to do homage to our Saviour. We find it used as early as the sixteenth century by Julyan Notary, in St Paul’s Churchyard, one of the earliest London printers. The Three Kings was formerly a constant mercer’s sign. Bagford gives the following reason for this:—

“Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, besides those of scelckes (silks) as they do nou at this day: but they brought into England fine Leninn thered (linen thread) gurdeles (girdles) finenly worked from Collin[437] (Cologne.) Collin, the city which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these merchāts that vsually traded to that citye, set vp ther singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges of Collin, with the Armes of that Citye, which was the Three Crouens of the former kings in memorye of them, and by those singes the people knew in what wares they deld in.”[438]

There is and was until lately such a sign carved in stone in front of a house in Bucklersbury, which street was once the head quarters of the mercers and perfumers. The three kings stood in a row, all in the same garb and position, with their sceptres shouldered. The history of the Three Kings was a favourite story in the middle ages. Wynkyn de Worde printed, anno 1516, “The Lives of the Three Kinges of Collen.” The same subject had been printed in Paris in 1498 by Tresyrel: “La Vie des Troys Roys, Balchazar, Melchior, et Gaspard.” They also appeared in many of the ancient plays and mysteries. In one of the Chester pageants, acted by the shearmen and tailors, they are called Sir Jasper of Tars; Sir Melchior, king of Araby; Sir Balthazer, king of Saba; they enjoy the same names and kingdoms in the “Comédie de l’Adoration des Trois Roys,” by Marguerite de Valois. Their offerings are recorded in the following charm against falling sickness:—

Another Latin distich has—

Melchior was usually represented as a bearded old man, Jasper as a beardless youth, and Balchazar as a Moor with a large beard.

This sign was as common on the Continent as in England, and at the present day it may often be met with. Eustache Deschamps, in the sixteenth century, thus celebrated the good cheer of one of the taverns in Paris:—

L’Adoration des Trois Rois was, in 1674, the sign of François Muguet, one of the Parisian booksellers.

Not unlikely the sign of the Kings and Keys, a tavern in Fleet Street, is an abbreviation of the Three Kings and Cross Keys. At Weston-super-Mare, and at Chelmsforth, there is another sign which owes its origin to the Three Kings, namely, the Three Queens. When, in 1764, the Paving Act for St James’ was put into execution, the sign of the Three Queens, in Clerkenwell Green, was removed at a cost of upwards of £200; it extended not less than seven feet from the front of the house. Lloyd’s Evening Post, January 12-14, 1761, tells how two sharpers came to this ale-house and stole the silver tankard in which their drink was served them. Each tavern in those days possessed a number of silver tankards, in which the well-dressed customers were served with sack and canary. It may be imagined that the thieves were quietly on the look-out for such a prize. The same paper gives an advertisement about two silver pints stolen from the Jolly Butchers at Bath; in fact, similar advertisements were of almost daily occurrence. “The Praise of Yorkshire Ale,” 1685, also mentions—

One other semi-religious legend has provided a subject for many a signboard, namely, the Man in the Moon. Though this cannot strictly be styled a religious legend, yet it may be included in this class, as the idea is said to have originated from the incident given in Numbers xv. 32, et seq., “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day,” &c. Not content with having him stoned for this desecration of the day, the legend transferred him to the moon. It is, however, a Christian legend, for the Jews had some Talmudical story about Jacob being in the moon; in fact, almost every nation, whether ancient or modern, sees somebody in it. The Man in the Moon occurs on a seventeenth century token of a tavern in Cheapside, represented by a half-naked man within a crescent, holding on by the horns. There is still a sign of this description in Little Vine Street, Regent Street, and in various other places. Generally he is represented with a bundle of sticks, a lanthorn (which, one would think, he did not want in the moon,) and frequently a dog. Thus Chaucer depicts him in “Cresseide,” v. 260:—

Shakespeare also alludes to him:—

“Steph. I was the Man in the Moon when time was.

“Caliban. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee; my mistress showed me thee, thy dog and bush.”—Tempest, ii., sc. 2.

Also—

“Quince. One must come in with a bush of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of moonshine.”—Midsummer Night’s Dream, iii., sc. 1.

This bunch of thorns is alluded to by Dante, “Inferno,” canto xx. 124, where the Man in the Moon is spoken of as Cain—

And again in “Paradiso,” canto ii. 49, speaking of the moon, he asks—

And the annotators of Dante say that Cain was placed in the moon with a bundle of thorns on his back, similar to those he had placed on the altar when he offered to the Lord his unwelcome sacrifice. This Man in the Moon, whether Cain, Jacob, or the Sabbath-breaker, has been celebrated by innumerable songs. Alex. Neckham (recently edited by Mr T. Wright) refers to him from a very ancient ballad, and one of the oldest songs is in the Harl. MSS., 2253, beginning:—

For all this, his life seems to be very merry, for one of the Roxburghe Ballads (i. f., 298) informs us that—