·THREE·SQUIRRELS·LONDON·
In the old times the streets were not yet numbered, as Macaulay tells us, not even at the end of the seventeenth century. “There would indeed have been little advantage in numbering them; for of the coachmen, chairmen, porters, and errand-boys of London, a very small proportion could read.... The shops were therefore distinguished by painted signs, which gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens’ Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs, which disappeared when they were no longer required for the direction of the common people.” As a useful guide to find one’s way the sign was expressly recognized by the state authorities; so in a privilege granted by Charles I to the inhabitants of London to hang out signs “for the better finding out such citizens’ dwellings, shops, arts, or occupations.” For the landlords, it was even made obligatory so as to facilitate the police in determining if the laws concerning the liquor trade were properly observed. An Act of Parliament in the reign of Henry VI forced the brewers to hang out signs and an ordinance of Louis XIV for Paris distinctly demands: “Pour donner à connoître les lieux où se vendent les vins en détail et si les réglements y sont observez, nul ne pourra tenir taverne en cette dite ville et faubourgs sans mettre enseigne et bouchon.” Similar regulations we find in Switzerland; as, for instance, in Maienfeld where the city fathers punished every one who kept tavern without an “open sign.” Through such restrictions they hoped to stop the competition of the simple burgher, “the temporary landlord,” who tried to sell the surplus product of his own vineyard, and thus to secure the patronage of all thirsty souls for the legal “Schildwirt,” the landlord with a sign, even if he lived only from the “bouchon” or cork and could not accommodate guests overnight.
ZUR GLOCKE WINNENDEN
If they had not a sign out, how could the watchman, after the night-bell—sometimes called “Lumpenglocke” in Germany—had sounded, investigate properly if the tavern-keepers really stopped to furnish the guests with new wine? And was it not the duty of the city fathers to look after the morals of their subjects and to teach them the wisdom of the German saying:—
“Er hat nicht wol getrunken, der sich übertrinket.
Wie ziemet das biderbem Mann, daz ihm die Zunge hinket?”
So the sign was in many ways a useful institution topographically, politically, and morally. Its merits are not yet exhausted: it was a good weather prophet, too. When the old iron things began to moan and to squeak, storm and rain surely were not far, as an English rhyme whimsically says:—
“But when the swinging signs your ears offend