An alligator stuff’d, and other skins
Of ill-shap’d fishes.”
The zebra seems to have been known quite early if we are allowed to take “The Striped Donkey” as such. In the inn “L’Ane rayé” at Rheims, the father of Joan of Arc is reported to have lodged when he came to see the coronation in 1429. One of the last comers of the curious and rare animals was the giraffe; it appeared in Paris for the first time in 1827, and was immediately adopted as a tavern sign by a host in Étampes, near the capital. The “enseigne” represented “le dit animal conduit par un Bédouin.”
But the most curious animals of creation did not suffice. The imagination of the people created others still more strange and the landlords put these fabulous beasts on their signs too: the unicorn, the dragon, the siren. “The Siren” tavern in Lyons at the time of the Renaissance was evidently a very attractive place which the traveler found very hard to leave again, because, as a contemporary tells us, “il s’y trouve des Sirènes.” In later days, when the popular stories were forgotten, the sirens were changed to “Six Reines,” the six queens. In another chapter we shall see how Keats in his poem, The Mermaid, has celebrated one of these old Siren taverns.
How deeply rooted in the old days was this belief in “Mörwonder” or ill-shaped fishes and malformations of the human figure will appear at a glance in Schedel’s “Welt Chronik” printed by Koberger in Nuremberg in 1493, where we see them in strange woodcuts before us: the man with ears hanging to the ground and other misshaped creatures.
The same source of popular imagination created “Le Géant,” the sign “Zu den Slaraffen” in Strassburg, 1435, and the sign of “The Little and the Great Sleeper” that during three centuries, from 1400 to 1705, invited the citizens of the Alsatian capital to cross its hospitable threshold. A charming picture, “The Sleeping Giant of the Woods” by Lukas Kranach, in Dresden’s famous Gallery, will help us to imagine how the big sleeper probably looked. Is it the famous “Wild Man” or “Le Grand Hercule” who sleeps here in the shadow of the forest? One thing is sure, he has been drinking deeply and is dead asleep; nothing can wake him up, not even this little army of dwarfs around him who attack him with lances and arrows, nay, even try to saw into his strong limbs.
Since the days of the “Roman du Renard,” the first version of which dates back to the eleventh century, to the days of Goethe’s “Reineke Fuchs,” shrewd master Fox was a favorite of the people. In old miniatures we encounter him as a monk, his pointed nose buried in a prayer-book. His exploits most naturally form good themes for the tavern sign. Dancing before a hen to seduce the foolish creature by his graceful charms, he was represented on an old French sign in Le Mans: “Renard dansant devant une poule.” Preaching to ducks, “Wo der Fuchs den Enten predigt” is the name of a Strassburg tavern, which dates only from 1848. His shrewdness before the royal tribunal of the lion was well known; Montaigne, therefore, warns the tavern-keepers who desire the patronage of advocates against painting him on the signboard: “qui veut avoir la clientèle des procureurs ne doit point mettre renard sur son enseigne.”
Other animals appealed more to the culinary instincts of the passer-by, among them the swan, “l’oiseau de bon augure,” which we do not like to see turned into roasts. But in Chaucer’s times it was evidently considered a fine dish, since he lets the monk in his “Canterbury Tales” say: “A fat swan loved he best of any rost.” A picture by David Teniers in The Hague, called “The Kitchen,” shows how the bird was served in his natural glory, a crown of flowers on his proud head. This custom to serve fowl in full plumage is proved by Montaigne’s description of a dinner in Rome: “On y servit force volaille rôtie, revêtue de sa plume naturelle comme vifve ... oiseaus vifs (enplumés) en paste.”
To this group belongs the peacock, in the old days the official roast for marriage feasts. Its picture on the signboard promised large accommodations for people who wanted to celebrate marriages in true style. “Le Paon blanc” in Paris, Rue de la Mortelleric, now a rather shady region, was once a noble inn. Shortly after his marriage, Rembrandt painted the famous picture in Dresden, where he represents himself, a glass of champagne in hand, happily holding his beloved Saskia on his knees. The richly decorated table in the background still carries the peacock of the marriage feast. Of “The Pheasant” in Worms, before the days of gas and electricity, Victor Hugo has given us this amusing picture: “J’étais installé dans l’auberge du Faisan, qui, je dois le dire, avait le meilleur aspect du monde. Je mangeais un excellent souper dans une salle meublée d’une longue table et de deux hommes occupés à deux pipes. Malheureusement la salle à manger était peu éclairée, ce qui m’attrista. En y entrant on n’aperçevait qu’une chandelle dans un nuage. Les deux hommes dégageaient plus de fumée que dix héros.”
Sometimes a living bird served originally as a sign. The parrot of the pharmacy, “Au Perroquet Vert,” in Lyons, was a real bird, which had learned even some Latin phrases, as “ora pro nobis,” from the passing processions, and naturally attracted many people by its wisdom. He belonged to the living signs to which Balzac refers in “Les scènes de la vie privée”: “Les animaux en cage dont l’adresse émerveillait les passants.” Sometimes the cage itself was adopted as a tavern sign and in Lyons a street was named “Rue de la Cage” for a public-house of this name. A charming little French rhyme from the beginning of the seventeenth century introduces us to such a cage-tavern:—