Old Tavern Signs: An Excursion in the History of Hospitality

by Fritz August Gottfried Endell

ZUR SONNE WINNENDEN

Nobody has admonished us so heartily as Doctor Martinus to hold ourselves as pious guests in this inn of Life, to live honestly and decently in it as it becomes a guest. “If you wish to be a guest, be peaceful and behave yourself as a Christian; otherwise they will soon show you the way to the tower.” It is characteristic for Luther to remind the unruly guest of the tower, i.e., the prison. In other connections too he readily refers to Master John the Hangman who is to his mind a very useful, nay, even charitable man.

Since we did not hesitate to threaten the landlord with the ghastly musician of the “Dance of Death,” it will seem only fair to remind the guests of the tower, which in the old days was used as prison for the peace-breakers. Luther, like all good Germans, was not a prohibitionist; he recognized “a drink in honor,” “einen Trunk in Ehren,” but he was a fierce enemy of all “drunkards and loafers” who lie in taverns Sunday and week-day and pour the beer down their throats as cows gulp water, saying: “What do I care about God, what do I care about death? You miserable hog, you shall get what you are striving for, you shall die too and be swallowed up by the mouth of Hell.” To every decent landlord such guests are a curse. To chase them from his threshold the owner of the “George and Dragon” in Great Budworth (Cheshire) invented the fine rhyme which should stand over every tavern door:—

“As St. George in armed array

Did the fiery dragon slay,

So may’st thou, with might no less,

Slay that dragon drunkenness.”

A decent behavior surely, but no melancholy teetotalism, such is Luther’s standpoint. “Those have not been of the devil who drank a little more as their thirst required and became joyful.”—“It is not the fault of the eating and drinking, that some people degrade themselves to swine.” Just as dancing in itself is no sin: “Why not admit an honorable dance at a marriage feast? Go and dance! The little children dance too without sin; do the same and be like a child whose soul is not injured by dancing.”