Many years ago, at Greenwich, there was a public-house with the sign of a Horse. Behind the house was a large grass field, to which referred the following notice, painted under the sign:—“Good Grass for Horses. Long Tails three shillings and sixpence per week.” An inquisitive person passing that way, and not understanding the meaning of the notice, went in and questioned the landlord, who informed him that a difference was made for the bob-tailed horses; “for,” said he, “long-tailed horses can whisk off the flies, and eat at their leisure; but bob-tails have to shake their heads and run about from morning till night, and so do eat much less.”
The Red Horse is now almost extinct; it occurs as the sign of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel lost by the Duke of Grafton.[234] By the term red was not meant vermilion; at that time it was the accepted word for what we now call roan. The Bay Horse is a great favourite in Yorkshire; in 1861 there were, in the West Riding alone, not less than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public-houses, with such a sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the Yorkshire Grey more indigenous to that county. The Dapple Grey is apparently a tribute of gratitude of the publicans to the “Dapple Grey” of the nursery rhyme—
“I had a little bonny nag,
His name was Dapple Grey,
And he would bring me to an ale-house
A mile out of the way.”
Dappled grey, too, was the fashionable colour of horses in the last century; thus Pope’s mercenary Duchess—
“The gods, to curse Pamela with her prayers,
Gave her gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares.”
Of the White Horse innumerable instances occur, and many are connected with names known in history. At the White Horse, near Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the noted Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, spent the last years of his life, and died.
“The Duke of Queensbury being present at his death, knowing the Duke to be a dissenter, and thinking he must be a Catholic, offered to send for a Catholic priest, to which the Duke answered, ‘No,’ said he, ‘those rascals eat God; but if you know of any set of fellows that eat the devil, I should be obliged to you if you would send for one of them!’”
All of a piece! So ended
“That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim.”[235]