The Two Brewers, or the Two Jolly Brewers, used to be very common, but is now gradually becoming obsolete. It represented two brewers’ men carrying a barrel of beer slung between them on a pole; it was also frequently called the Two Draymen. In the bar of the Queen’s Head Tavern, Great Queen Street, is preserved a carved wooden sign, which formerly hung before this house, representing two men standing near a large tun. The Dray and Horses, meaning of course the brewer’s dray, has now in some instances superseded the Two Jolly Brewers. The Still, the chief implement in the manufacture of spirits, is very appropriate before the houses where the produce of the still is sold: frequently it is combined with other objects.
The Boy and Barrel, to be seen in Dagger Lane, London, and in many country places, is all that remains of the little Bacchus on a tun, formerly in almost every ale-house:—
“A little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron’d upon
What’s called (in Miniature) a Tun.”
Compleat Vintner. London, 1720, p. 86.
The Boy and Cup at Norwich, in 1750, was a variation of this sign. Other brewers and distillers’ measures also are exhibited, as the Barrel; the Porter Butt, (three in Bath;) the Brandy Casks, (three in Bristol;) the Rum Puncheon, at Boston, Lincoln, and such like. Promises of fair dealing are held out in the sign of the Full Measure, (four in Hull;) the Golden Measure, Lowgate, Hull; and the Foaming Tankard; or, an appeal is made to public joviality by such a sign as the Parting Pot, at Stamford, Lincoln.
Shoemakers generally follow the advice of the proverb, ne sutor ultra crepidam, and confine themselves to the sign of the Last, which, for variety’s sake, they paint red, blue, gold, &c. But since “cobblers and tinkers are the best ale drinkers,” many alehouses have adopted this sign also. A Crispin who keeps an ale-house near Liscard, Chester, has shown himself “true to the last,” by putting under his sign of a Wooden Shoe or Last:—
“All day long I have sought good beer,
And, at the last, I have found it here.”
The Shears was originally a tailor’s sign, though like most other trade emblems it had become common in the seventeenth century.
“Snip, snap, quoth the tailor’s shears;
Alas, poor Louse, beware thy ears.”
This elegant little verse is quoted by Randle Holme, and seems to have been thought such a good joke, that a canny Scotchman, buried in Paisley Abbey, had a pictorial representation of it on his headstone. Charles Mackie, who wrote the history of that Abbey, says it is an obliterated cross; more probably, however, it is a fleur de luce: this would also agree with the Scottish pronunciation of the name of the insect, which is exactly the same as the last part of that heraldic charge.