“One ask’d a friend where Captain Shark did lye,
Why, sir, quoth he, at Aldgate at the Pye.
Away, quoth th’ other, he lies not there, I know’t.
No, sayes the other, then he lies in ’s throat.”
Wits’ Recreation, p. 185, vol. ii.
De Foe, in his “History of the Plague,” tells of “a dreadful set of fellows” who used to revel and roar nightly in that inn during the time the plague was at its height, but within a fortnight all of them were buried. The Cock and Pie was once common. At an inn in Ipswich there used to be a rude representation of a cock perched on a pie, which was discovered whilst the house was undergoing some repairs. It was also, about the middle of last century, the sign of a house famed for conviviality, which stood on the site of the present Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, and was the resort of the “fancy” of those days. A row of fine elms connected this house with another, noted for the manufacture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, the latter a dainty now almost obsolete, but which then was so famous, that it was one of the London cries, being sold by a man on horseback. With regard to the origin of the sign Cock and Pie, both the ancient Catholic oath, to swear by Cock and Pie, (by God and the Pie, or Roman Catholic service book,) and the fable of the magpie (Old English pie, or pye) and the peacocks, have each been duly considered by us; but the sign is probably only an abbreviation of the Peacock and Pie. In ancient times the peacock was a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie; the head, with gilt beak, being elevated above the crust, and the beautiful feathers of the tail expanded. As a dainty dish, then, it may have been put up, like the other good things of this world, just mentioned, as a trap to hungry or epicurean passers-by; at last the dish went out of fashion, the name even became a mystery, and was rendered by the sign-painters, according to their own understanding, by a Cock and Magpie, which is still very common. There is a public-house with such a sign in Drury Lane, which was already in existence more than two centuries ago, when the rest of Drury Lane was still occupied by farms and gardens, and the mansions of the Drury family. Hither the youths and maidens of the metropolis, who, on May-day, danced round the Maypole in the Strand, were accustomed to resort for cakes and ale, and other refreshments. This ale-house gave its name to the Cock and Pye Fields, between Drury Lane and St Giles’ Hospital. At Chatsworth, the original name was mutilated by a provincialism into the Cock and Pynot, (Derbyshire, for Magpie.) In this ale-house, still existing, the Revolution of 1688 was plotted, between Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby, William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire, and Mr John d’Arcy. They met by appointment on a heath adjoining the house, but a shower of rain coming on, they adjourned to the inn. The room is still shown in which the conspirators met. In Hone’s “Table Book” there is a woodcut of the inn, showing the wooden construction across the road, by which the signs in villages were generally suspended.
Lastly, we may mention the Pickled Egg, in Clerkenwell. As the origin of this sign, it is said that Charles II. here once partook of the dish, which so flattered the landlord, that he adopted it as his sign, and so it has remained till this day. It has given its name to a lane called Pickled Egg Walk, in which there was a notorious cocking-house, frequently mentioned in advertisements circa 1775.
We may very appropriately terminate the gastronomic signs with the [Cheshire Cheese], which is still very common; there is a famous tavern of this name in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, and numerous public-houses in the country have adopted it as their signs. And as we began with the Salt Horn we will end with the Mustard-pot, which was the sign of a mustard shop in Holland, in the seventeenth century, with these rhymes:—
“Ik lever uyt
Een zeldzaam kruyt
Daar zyn der weinig in de stad
Of ik heb ze by de neus gehad.”[556]
This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, formerly in the Rue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the Musée d’Antiquités of that town, representing a fool stirring mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a tall grinning monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not describe.
Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the Rhenish Wine House, and the Canary House; two taverns of Old London, named after the wines they sold. Barley Broth, Bee’s-wing, and Yorkshire Stingo, are at present all three common: the first applies either to whisky or beer; the second is the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank and back: they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shillibeer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer.
Drinking vessels are very appropriate ale-house signs. Amongst the oldest certainly ranks the [Black Jack], common even in the present day, although the vessel that it represented is long since fallen into disuse: it was a leather bottle, sometimes lined with silver or other metal, and perhaps took its name from a part of the soldiers’ armour. Sometimes it was ornamented with little silver bells “to ring peales of drunkeness,” in which case it was called a “gyngle boy.”[557] This primitive bottle has been celebrated in one of the Roxburghe Ballads, (vol. iii., fol. 433:)—
“God above that made all things,
The heaven, and earth, and all therein,
The ships that on the sea do swim
For to keepe the enemies out that none come in,
And let them all do what they can,
It is for the use and pains of man;
And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell,
Who first devized the leather bottle.”