The Three Herrings, the sign of James Moxton, a bookseller in the Strand, near Yorkhouse, in 1675, is evidently but another name for the Three Fishes; at the present day it is the sign of an ale-house in Bell Yard, Temple Bar. Several taverns with this sign are mentioned in the French tales and plays of the 17th century; two of them seem to have been very celebrated, one in the Faubourg St Marceau, the other near the Palais de Justice; this last one seems to have been particularly famous, for it is named as a rival to the celebrated Pomme de Pin. “Si je vay au Palais, tous ces clercs sont alentour de moy; l’un me mène aux Trois Poissons, l’autre à la Pomme de Pin.”—Comédie de la Vefve, ac. iii. s. 3.[325] The Fish and Quart at Leicester must be passed by in silence, as the combination cannot immediately be accounted for. Were it in France a solution would be easier, for in French slang a “poisson,” or fish, means a small measure of wine. The Fish and Eels at Roydon, in Essex; the Fish and Kettle, Southampton; and the White Bait, Bristol, all tell their own tale, and need no comment. The Salmon is seen occasionally near places where it is caught. The Salmon and Ball is the well-known Ball of the silkmercers in former times, added to the sign of the Salmon; whilst the Salmon and Compasses is the masonic emblem that is added to the sign. Both these occur in more than one instance in London. The Fishbone is rarely met with as a public-house sign, though there is an example of it at Netherton in Cheshire, and also amongst the seventeenth century tokens of New Cheapside, Moorfields. But generally it is the sign of a rag and bone shop, or, in the euphonious language of the day, a “miscellaneous repository,” or “bank of commerce.” These shops, as their title of “marine stores” implies, used to buy all the odds and ends of rope, sails, seamen’s old clothes, in short all the rubbish of which a ship is cleared after its return from a long voyage. Bones of large fish would be often amongst the curiosities brought home by the sailors, these also they bought and hung them up outside their doors, and in the end these bones became their distinctive sign. The Sun and Whalebone at Latton, in Essex, may have originated from a whalebone hanging outside the house, or that the landlord had laid the foundation of his fortune as a rag merchant.
Insects are of very rare occurrence. The industrious habits of the bees, however, made their habitation a favourite object to imply a similar industry in the shopkeepers. Many years ago there used to be at Grantham in Lincolnshire, a signpost on which was placed a Beehive in full swarm, with the following lines under it:—
“Two wonders, Grantham, now are thine,
The highest spire and a living sign.”
Though the living bees were gone the following season, yet the sign and inscription remained until very recently. The following is a common inscription under the sign of the Beehive:—
“Within this hive we’re all alive,
Good liquor makes us funny;
If you are dry, step in and try
The flavour of our honey.”
A tea-dealer at the corner of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, in the end of the last century, had for his sign the Walking Leaf, (the Phyllium siccifolium of the naturalists,) an East Indian insect, of an anything but agreeable association, when we consider the remarkable vegetable appearance of this insect, and the possibility that it might be dried among the tea-leaves.
Although the frog cannot be considered either an insect or a fish, yet we may include it in this chapter. Of frogs there are some instances on the signboard; the [Three Frogs], (see under [Heraldic Signs],) and Froghall, formerly a public-house at the south end of Frog Lane, Islington. On the front of this house there was exhibited the ludicrous sign of a plough drawn by frogs. There is at the present day a Froghall Inn at Wolston, near Coventry; and a public-house of that name at Layerthorpe in the West Riding, but the picture of the sign was doubtless unique. The principal inn on the island of Texel is called the Golden Frog, (de Goude kikker.) We may wonder that there are not more examples of this sign in Holland, for there are, without doubt, as many frogs in that country as there are Dutchmen; and even unto this day it is a mooted point, which of the two nations has more right to the possession of the country; both, however, are of a pacific disposition, so that they live on in a perfect entente cordiale.