On Whitsunday the club members used to fasten these small brass imitations of their beloved tavern sign to poles and carry them in solemn procession through the astonished town. At the end of the club walking, it is whispered, many were unable to hold the poles as straight as they wished. The museum of the quiet little town of Taunton possesses a remarkable series of such club signs. It has become quite a fad in England to collect these little polished brass figures, since the public has got tired of the warming-pan craze.
Morris dancers sometimes joined in the club processions, among them the green or wild man, Robin Hood, famous in song and story; they amused the crowd with such charming airs as as—
“‘O, my Billy, my constant Billy,
When shall I see my Billy again?’
‘When the fishes fly over the mountain,
Then you’ll see your Billy again.’”
Our design of two gentlemen saluting each other politely is such a club sign, reproducing in miniature the sign of the “Salutation Inn” in Mangotsfield, and representing the last link in the chain of salutation signs, which began with the old religious scene of Mary saluted by the angel.
SALUTATION INN IN MANGOTSFIELD
Price Collier, in his book “England and the English,” has dedicated a whole chapter to English sport, on which the nation spends every year $223,888,725, more than the cost of her entire military machine, navy and army together. On fox hunting alone she spends $43,790,000. This love of sport is an old English trait, shared by both sexes. One of the first books printed in England was a book on sport, “The Bokys of Haukyng and Huntyng,” supposed to be written by a lady, Juliana Berners, the prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell, and published for the first time in the new black art in 1486. A schoolmaster of the abbey school of St. Albans had arranged the edition, and it is therefore sometimes quoted as “The Book of St. Albans.” No wonder, then, that such a popular subject was readily chosen by the sign painters, and that they love to picture the hunted animals, the white hart and the fox, and not less often the faithful companions of the hunter, dog and horse, hawk and falcon.