CHAPTER VII.
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC.
In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have been many reasons for choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their symbolic meaning, as the olive-tree, the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 2. To intimate what was sold within, as the vine, the coffee-plant, &c. 3. The use of some plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of some well-known tree or road-mark, near the place where the sign was displayed. 5. The desire of a landlord to have an unusual sign.
The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the Bush; it was a bush or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to the end of a pole, such as is represented in many of the suttler’s tents in the pictures of Wouverman. The custom came evidently from the Romans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, “Good wine needs no Bush.” (Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus; in Italian, Al buon vino non bisogna frasca; in French, à bon vin point d’enseigne.) Ivy was the plant commonly used: “The Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it,” says the sottish slave in Massinger’s “Virgin Martyr,” (a. iii. s. 3.) It may have been adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, or perhaps simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues green. As late as the reign of King James I. many inns used it as their only sign. Taylor, the water poet, in his perambulation of ten shires around London, notes various places where there is “a taverne with a bush only;” in other parts he mentions “the signe of the Bush.” Even at the present day “the Bush” is a very general sign for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes it assumes the name of the Ivy Bush, or the Ivy Green, (two in Birmingham.) In Gloucester, Warwick, and other counties, where at certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy the privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out bunches of ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. As far away as the western States of North America, at the building of a new village, or station, it is no uncommon thing to see a bunch of hay, or a green bough, hung from above the “grocery,” or bar-room door, until such time as a superior decoration can be provided. The bunch being fixed to a long staff was also called the [Alepole]; thus among the processions of odd characters that came to purchase ale at the Tunnyng of Elinour Rummyng:—
“Another brought her bedes
Of jet or of coale,
To offer to the Alepole.”
How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge and encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our [Introduction], [pp. 16], [17]. The Bunch gradually became a [garland of flowers] of considerable proportions, whence Chaucer, describing the Sompnour, says:—
“A garlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gret as it were for an alestake.”