CHAPTER XIV.
HUMOROUS AND COMIC.

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—

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:—

Another innkeeper put up the Cow in Boots, (de gelaersden koe,) and wrote beneath:—

A third, in Amsterdam, had the Cock in Boots, (de gelaarsde Haan,) with the following extraordinary rhymes:—

The Jackass in Boots (de gelaarsde ezel) was the sign of a publican, with this inscription:—

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:”—

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:—

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

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:—

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 paartje to paardje, 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:—

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

Or:—

The same in Holland:—

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

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

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:—

A very general inscription is:—

Or:—

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

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):—

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.

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

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

The Maypole, near Hainault Forest, has:—

At Preston, in Lancashire:—

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

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:—

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: