Another Latin distich has—

“Tres Reges Regi Regum tria dona firebant
Myrrham Homini, uncto aurum, thura dedere Deo.”[440]

Melchior was usually represented as a bearded old man, Jasper as a beardless youth, and Balchazar as a Moor with a large beard.

This sign was as common on the Continent as in England, and at the present day it may often be met with. Eustache Deschamps, in the sixteenth century, thus celebrated the good cheer of one of the taverns in Paris:—

“Prince, par la Vierge Marie,
On est à la Cossonerie,
Aux Caunettes ou aux Trois Rois.”

L’Adoration des Trois Rois was, in 1674, the sign of François Muguet, one of the Parisian booksellers.

Not unlikely the sign of the Kings and Keys, a tavern in Fleet Street, is an abbreviation of the Three Kings and Cross Keys. At Weston-super-Mare, and at Chelmsforth, there is another sign which owes its origin to the Three Kings, namely, the Three Queens. When, in 1764, the Paving Act for St James’ was put into execution, the sign of the Three Queens, in Clerkenwell Green, was removed at a cost of upwards of £200; it extended not less than seven feet from the front of the house. Lloyd’s Evening Post, January 12-14, 1761, tells how two sharpers came to this ale-house and stole the silver tankard in which their drink was served them. Each tavern in those days possessed a number of silver tankards, in which the well-dressed customers were served with sack and canary. It may be imagined that the thieves were quietly on the look-out for such a prize. The same paper gives an advertisement about two silver pints stolen from the Jolly Butchers at Bath; in fact, similar advertisements were of almost daily occurrence. “The Praise of Yorkshire Ale,” 1685, also mentions—

“Selling of Ale, in Muggs,
Silver Tankards, Black Pots, and Little Juggs.”

One other semi-religious legend has provided a subject for many a signboard, namely, the [Man in] [the Moon]. Though this cannot strictly be styled a religious legend, yet it may be included in this class, as the idea is said to have originated from the incident given in Numbers xv. 32, et seq., “And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day,” &c. Not content with having him stoned for this desecration of the day, the legend transferred him to the moon. It is, however, a Christian legend, for the Jews had some Talmudical story about Jacob being in the moon; in fact, almost every nation, whether ancient or modern, sees somebody in it. The Man in the Moon occurs on a seventeenth century token of a tavern in Cheapside, represented by a half-naked man within a crescent, holding on by the horns. There is still a sign of this description in Little Vine Street, Regent Street, and in various other places. Generally he is represented with a bundle of sticks, a lanthorn (which, one would think, he did not want in the moon,) and frequently a dog. Thus Chaucer depicts him in “Cresseide,” v. 260:—

“Her gite was gray and full of spottes blacke,
And on her breast a chorl painted full even,
Bearing a bush of thorns on his backe,
Which for his theft might clime no ner ye heven.”