More business-like is the sign of the Shepherd and Dog; he, too, wears patches, but not on his face; so with the Shepherd and Crook, and the Crook and Shears. All these may be found in most villages, and refer to the inferior farm-labourer, to whom the care of the flock is intrusted, and not the elegant Corydon or Alexis.
The merry, thirsty time of haymaking is commemorated in the usual signs of a Load of Hay and the Cross Scythes. There is a Load of Hay tavern on Haverstock Hill, a favourite place for Sunday afternoon excursionists in the summer time. Many years ago the eccentricity of Davies the landlord was one of the attractions of the place. Lately the house has been re-built, and it is now only a suburban gin-palace. The Mattock and Spade, and the Spade and Becket, refer to field labour; the first is very general, the second less so; but an example occurs at Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. The Peat Spade, Longstock, Hants, tells its own tale. The Dairy Maid was in great favour with the London cheesemongers of the seventeenth century. Akerman gives a trades token of such a sign in Catherine Street, in 1653, which is an amusing specimen of the liberties the token engravers took with the king’s English, the country Phillis being transformed into a “Deary Made.” The Dutch in the seventeenth century used the sign for a rather heterogenous trade: it seems that the process of sucking or inhaling the tobacco smoke carried back their ideas to tender years of innocence and milk diet, and so the Dairy Maid became the sign, par excellence, of tobacco shops. Even at the present day that idea is not quite forgotten; tobacco boxes or other smoking implements are sometimes seen amongst that nation, with the words, “Troost voor Zuigelingen,” “consolation for sucklings.” The inscriptions under these signs were occasionally very curious:—
“Toebak dat edel kruyt soveel daarvan getuygen
Al die lang zyn gespeent beginnen weer te zuygen.”[513]
On the Goudsche Melkmeid in Amsterdam:—
“Goede Waar en goed bescheid
Krygt gy hier in de Goudsche Melkmeid
Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac
Kunt gy hier rooken op uw gemak.”[514]
Another had:—
“Leckere Neusen, eele baasen,
Die by ’t klinken van de glaasen
Tot het smooken zyt bereyt;
Zoek je ’t beste van den acker
Puyk verynis? komt dan wacker
By de walsse mellik-meid.”[515]
Harvest-home, the pleasant time of congratulation and feasting, must be an alluring sign for the villagers, calling up recollections of all the festivities yearly celebrated on that grand occasion, when—
“the harvest treasures all
Are gather’d in beyond the rage of storms,
Sure to the swain.”—Thomson.