There are Two Fighting Cocks that never did crow,
Where men often meet to break God’s holy vow;
There is The New Inn, and the Rodney they say,
Which send men to jail their debts for to pay.
The Hope and The Anchor, The Turk and his Head,
Hundreds they’ve caused for to wander for bread;
There is The White Horse, also The Woolpack,
Take the shoes off your feet, and the clothes off your back.
The Axe and the Cleaver, The Jockey and Horse,
Some they’ve made idle, some they’ve made worse;
The George and the Dragon, and Nelson the brave,
Many lives they’ve shorten’d and brought to the grave.
The Fox and the Goose, and The Guns put across,
But all the craft is to get hold of the brass;
The Bird in the Cage, and the sign of The Thrush,
But one in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
There is an unpleasant musty air about this ballad, a taint of Seven Dials, an odour of the ragged dresscoat, and the broken, ill-used hat. The gay days of signboard poetry, when sparks in feathers and ruffles sang their praises, are no more. Our forefathers were content to buy “at the Golden Frying-pan,” but we must needs go to somebody’s emporium, mart, repository, or make our purchases at such grand places as the Pantocapelleion, Pantometallurgicon, or Panklibanon. The corruptions and misapplications of the old pictorial signboards find a parallel in the modern rendering of our ancient proverbs and sayings. When the primary use and purpose of an article have fallen out of fashion, or become obsolete, there is no knowing how absurdly it may not be treated by succeeding generations. We were once taken many miles over fields and through lanes to see the great stone coffins of some ancient Romans, but the farmer, a sulky man, thought we were impertinent in wishing to see his pig-troughs. In Haarlem, we were once shewn the huge cannon-ball which killed Heemskerk, the discoverer of Nova Zembla. When not required for exhibition, however, the good man in charge found it of great use in grinding his mustard-seed. Amongst the middle classes of to-day, no institution of ancient times has been more corrupted and misapplied than heraldry. The modern “Forrester,” or member of the “Ancient Order of Druids,” is scarcely a greater burlesque upon the original than the beer retailers’ “Arms” of the present hour.
Good wine and beer were formerly to be had at the Boar’s Head, or the Three Tuns; but those emblems will not do now, it must be the “Arms” of somebody or something; whence we find such anomalies as the Angel Arms, (Clapham Road;) Dunstan’s Arms, (City Road;) Digger’s Arms, (Petworth, Surrey;) Farmer’s Arms and Gardener’s Arms, (Lancashire;) Grand Junction Arms, (Praed Street, London;) Griffin’s Arms, (Warrington;) Mount Pleasant Arms, Paragon Arms, (Kingston, Surrey;) St Paul’s Arms, (Newcastle;) Portcullis Arms, (Ludlow;) Puddler’s Arms, (Wellington, Shropshire;) Railway Arms, (Ludlow;) Sol’s Arms, (Hampstead Row;) the Vulcan Arms, (Sheffield;) General’s Arms, (Little Baddon, Essex;) the Waterloo Arms, (High Street, Marylebone,) &c. Besides these, a quantity of newfangled, high-sounding, but unmeaning names seem to be the order of the day with gin-palaces and refreshment-houses, as, Perseverance, Enterprise, Paragon, Criterion.
Notwithstanding these innovations, the majority of the old objects still survive, in name at least, on the signboards of alehouses and taverns. Their use may still be regarded as a rule with publicans and innkeepers, although they have become the exception in other trades. Occasionally, also, we may still come upon a painted signboard, but these are daily becoming scarcer. Not so in France; there the good old tradition of the painted signboard is yet kept up. We get a good glimpse of this subject in the following:[42]—“But it is the signs that so amuse and absolutely arrest a stranger. This is a practice that has grown into a mania at Paris, and is even a subject for the ridicule of the stage, since many a shopkeeper considers his sign as a primary matter, and spends a little capital in this one outfit. Many of them exhibit figures as large as life, painted in no humble or shabby style; while history, sacred and classical, religion, the stage, &c., furnish subjects. You may see the Horatii and Curiatii—a scene from the ‘Fourberies de Scapin’ of Molière—a group of French soldiers, with the inscription, A la Valeur des Soldats Français, or a group of children inscribed à la réunion des Bons Enfants,[43]—or à la Baigneuse, depicting a beautiful nymph just issuing from the bath; or à la Somnambule, a pretty girl walking in her sleep and nightdress, and followed by her gallant.[44]
“In ludicrous things, a barber will write under his sign:—