“Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish churches, were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise garnished.”
Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the signboard, and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the kitchen garden found a place. The Artichoke, above all, used to be a great favourite, and still gives a name to some public-houses. As a seedsman’s sign it was common and rational; not so for a milliner, yet both among the Bagford and Banks’s shopbills there are several instances of its being the sign of that business; thus:—
“Susannah Fordham, att the Hartichoake, in ye Royal Exchange,” in the reign of Queen Anne, sold “all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of millenary wares.”[361]
Probably the novelty of the plant had more than anything else to do with this selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the reign of King Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes:—
“’Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy, improved to this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that they were commonly sold for a crowne a piece.”[362]
The Cabbage is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool, and Cabbage Hall, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic Asylum, Oxford, was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a tailor; but whether he himself had christened it thus, or his customers had a sly suspicion that it owed its origin to cabbaging, history has omitted to record. Another public-house, higher up the hill, was known by the name of Caterpillar Hall, a name clearly selected in compliment to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to draw away the customers from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar would eat the cabbage. The Oxnoble, a kind of potato, is the name of a public-house in Manchester, and the homely mess of Pease and Beans was a sign in Norwich in 1750.[363] The Three Radishes was, in the seventeenth century, a common nursery and market gardener’s sign in Holland. There was one near Haarlem, to which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in the garden, with this rhyme—
“Christus vertoont men hier
Na zyn dood in verryzen,
Als een groot hovenier
Die ieder een moet pryzen.
Dit ’s in de drie Radyzen.”[364]
Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription:—
“Adam en Eva leefden in den Paradyze
Zelden aten zy stokvisch maar veel warmoes, kropsla en radyzen.
Hier vindt gy allerley aardgewas om menschen mêe te spyzen.”[365]