which his man Gudgin explains to mean, “the Maggety Pie in the Strand, sir.”
As late as 1654, we find the name “maggoty pie” used in “Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnal,” July 26 to August 3, where the Welshman’s arms are described as a fly, a maggoty pie, &c.[311] The Magpie and Stump represents the magpie sitting on the stump of a tree; it was the sign of one of the Whig pothouses in the Old Bailey during the riots of 1715. There is still an old house with such a sign in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The Magpie and Pewter Platter, in Wood Street, originated from a magpie standing by a dish and picking out of it. The Magpie and Crown, says the author of “Tavern Anecdotes,” (1825,) is a ridiculous association; but when once joined is not to be separated without injury to the concern, as it happened in the case of a Mr Renton, who was originally waiter at a house of this name in Aldgate, famous for its ale, which was sent out in great quantities. The landlord becoming rich, pride followed, and he thought of giving wing to the Magpie, retaining only the royal attribute of the crown. The ale went out for a short time, as usual, but it was not from the Magpie and Crown, and the customers fancied it was not so good as usual; consequently the business fell off. The landlord died, and Renton purchased the concern, caught the Magpie, and restored it to its ancient situation; the ale improved in the opinion of the public, and its consumption increased so much, that Renton, at his death, left behind him property amounting to £600,000, chiefly the profits of the Magpie and Crown ale. This danger of altering a sign is also illustrated by another example. When Joseph II., emperor of Germany, was at Maestricht, in the Netherlands, he stayed at the Gray Ass Inn, (L’Ane Gris,) in honour of which imperial visit the landlord discarded his humble quadruped sign, and put up the Emperor’s Head. The customers seeing the Old Gray Ass gone, thought the business had fallen into other hands, and so went to various inns in the neighbourhood, and particularly to a New Gray Ass, which had just then opened in the same street. The landlord seeing his business falling off, through the change of his sign, yet unwilling to part with his Emperor’s head, after long thinking and pondering, at last hit upon a clever compromise: he kept up the portrait of the Emperor, but wrote under it, “At the Original Gray Ass, (au veritable Ane Gris.)”
The Parrot, or Popinjay, is an old sign now almost out of fashion, the Green Parrot, Swinegate, Leeds, being one of the few remaining. Andrew Maunsell, a bookseller and printer, resided at the Parrot in St Paul’s Churchyard in 1570, and continued to trade under this sign till 1600. Taylor, the water poet, mentions the Popinjay at Ewell, in 1636. It was a very appropriate sign for quacks, and one of these, at all events, had candour enough to adopt it. His handbill begins in a grandiloquent style:—
“Noble or Ignoble, you may be foretold anything that may happen to your Elementary Life: as at what time you may expect prosperity; or if in Adversity the End thereof, or when you may be so happy as to enjoy the Thing desired. Also young Men may foresee their Fortunes as in a Glass, and pretty Maids their Husbands in this Noble, yea, Heavenlie art of Astrologie. At the sign of the Parrot opposite to Ludgate Church within Blackfriars’ Gateway.”[312]
The Parrot and Cage, in St Martin’s Lane, Strand, advertised in 1711 as a “just and substantial office of insurance” on marriages, births, &c. This office, apparently, had chambers in some bird-fancier’s house, at all events to that class of the community the sign belonged more exclusively. In 1787, there was one near the monument, the sign of a cagemaker who sold “likewise parrots and other forring birds.”
The Peacock, in ancient times, was possessed of a mystic character. The fabled incorruptibility of its flesh led to its typifying the Resurrection; and from this incorruptibility, doubtless, originated the first idea of swearing “by the Peacock,” an oath that was to be inviolably kept. Its first introduction on the signboard is lost in the unrecorded wastes of time; but the oath was a common one in early times, especially on occasions of military adventures. Near the Angel in Clerkenwell, there is the Peacock public-house, which bears the date 1564. This was formerly a great house of call for the mail and other coaches travelling on the Great North Road, much the same as the Elephant and Castle was for the southern counties. The Peacock and Feathers was a sign in Cornhill in 1711.
The Ostrich seems more common at present than in ancient times. There is one on a stone-carved sign in Bread Street, probably the sign of a feather shop. Generally, the ostrich is represented with a horseshoe in his mouth, in allusion to its digestive powers; for this reason Cade says to Iden:—
“I’ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin.”—Henry VI., 2d Part, a. iv. sc. 10.
The landlord of an alehouse at Calverley, near Leeds, has put his premises under the protection of Minerva’s bird, the Owl. At St Helens, Lancashire, there is a still more curious sign, viz., the Owl’s Nest, or the Owl in the Ivy Bush. A bush or tod of ivy was formerly supposed to be a favourite place for the owl to make its nest in. The old dramatists abound in allusions to this:
“And, like an owle, by night to go abroad,
Roosted all day within an ivy-tod.”[313]—Drayton.