“If the Lyon show’d kill the Lamb,
We’ll kill the Lyon—if we can;
But if the Lamb show’d kill the Lyon,
We’ll kill the Lamb to make a Pye on.”
The antithesis to this sign, namely, the Wolf and Lamb, occurs occasionally, as in Charles Street, Leicester, and in a few other places. In Grosvenor Street it was probably once represented by a lion and a kid, but the public, not minding the text, called the sign the Lion and Goat, and that name it still bears. The Lion and Adder, Nottingham, Newark, and various other places, or the Lion and Snake, as at Bailgate, Lincoln, come from Psalm xci. 13, where the godly are reminded:—“Thou shalt tread upon the Lion and Adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” These two signs apparently came in use during the Commonwealth. They have a decided flavour of the time when Scripture language formed the common speech of every day life.
The Lamb and Flag is another sign common all over England, representing originally the holy lamb with the nimbus and banner, but now so little understood by the publicans, that on an alehouse at Swindon, it is pictured with a spear, to which a red-white-and-blue streamer is appended. It may also be of heraldic origin, for it was the coat of arms of the Templars, and the crest of the merchant tailors. The Lamb and Anchor, Milk Street, Bristol, seems to be a mystical representation of hope in Christ; both these last signs date from before the Reformation. From that period also dates the sign of the Bleeding Heart, the emblematical representation of the five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, viz., the heart of the Holy Virgin pierced with five swords. There is still an ale-house of this name in Charles Street, Hatton Garden, and Bleeding Heart Yard, adjoining the public-house, is immortalised in “Little Dorrit.” The Wounded Heart, one of the signs in Norwich in 1750,[434] had the same meaning. The Heart was a constant emblem of the Holy Virgin in the middle ages; thus, on the clog almanacs, all the feasts of St Mary were indicated by a heart. It was not an uncommon sign in former times. The Heart and Ball appears on a trades token as the sign of a house in Little Britain, the Ball being simply some silk mercer’s addition; and the Golden Heart[435] was a sign in Greenwich in 1737, next door to which Dr Johnson used to live when he was newly come to town, and wrote the Parliamentary articles for the Gentleman’s Magazine. At present there are three public-houses with this sign in Bristol, and in other places it may be met with.
Heaven was a house of entertainment near Westminster Hall; the present committee rooms of the House of Commons are erected on its site. Butler alludes to this house in “Hudibras,” p. 3:—
“False Heaven at the end of the Hall.”
Pepys records his dining at this house in the winter of 1660, and with due respect for the place, he put on his best fur cap for the occasion. “I sent a porter to bring my best fur cap, and so I returned and went to Heaven; where Luellin and I dined.”
Paradise was a messuage in the same neighbourhood, and Hell and Purgatory subterranean passages; but in the reign of James I. Hell was the sign of a low public-house frequented by lawyers’ clerks. Heaven and Hell are mentioned, together with a third house called Purgatory, in an old grant dated the first year of Henry VII.[436] The [Three Kings] is a sign representing the three Eastern magi or kings, who came to do homage to our Saviour. We find it used as early as the sixteenth century by Julyan Notary, in St Paul’s Churchyard, one of the earliest London printers. The Three Kings was formerly a constant mercer’s sign. Bagford gives the following reason for this:—
“Mersers in thouse dayes war Genirall Marchantes and traded in all sortes of Rich Goodes, besides those of scelckes (silks) as they do nou at this day: but they brought into England fine Leninn thered (linen thread) gurdeles (girdles) finenly worked from Collin[437] (Cologne.) Collin, the city which then at that time of day florished much and afforded rayre commodetes, and these merchāts that vsually traded to that citye, set vp ther singes ouer ther dores of ther Houses the three kinges of Collin, with the Armes of that Citye, which was the Three Crouens of the former kings in memorye of them, and by those singes the people knew in what wares they deld in.”[438]
There is and was until lately such a sign carved in stone in front of a house in Bucklersbury, which street was once the head quarters of the mercers and perfumers. The three kings stood in a row, all in the same garb and position, with their sceptres shouldered. The history of the Three Kings was a favourite story in the middle ages. Wynkyn de Worde printed, anno 1516, “The Lives of the Three Kinges of Collen.” The same subject had been printed in Paris in 1498 by Tresyrel: “La Vie des Troys Roys, Balchazar, Melchior, et Gaspard.” They also appeared in many of the ancient plays and mysteries. In one of the Chester pageants, acted by the shearmen and tailors, they are called Sir Jasper of Tars; Sir Melchior, king of Araby; Sir Balthazer, king of Saba; they enjoy the same names and kingdoms in the “Comédie de l’Adoration des Trois Roys,” by Marguerite de Valois. Their offerings are recorded in the following charm against falling sickness:—
“Jaspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Balthazar aurum,
Hæc tria qui secum portabit nomina regum
Solvitur a morbo, Christi pietate, caduco.”[439]