“An honest soldier never is forgot,
Whether he die by musket or by pot.”
The Flitch of Dunmow is a common sign in Essex, and is sometimes seen in other counties. The custom of giving a flitch of bacon, on the well-known conditions, is not peculiar to Dunmow. In the reign of Edward III., the Earl of Lancaster, lord of the honour of Tutbury, granted a manor near Wichnor village, Burton-upon-Trent, to Sir Philip de Sommerville, stipulating that he was to give a flitch of bacon on the same conditions as at Dunmow.[601] At the abbey of St Milaine, near Rennes, in Normandy, the same custom was observed, but the practice was still less successful, for Dunmow at least has six times given the side of bacon away, but—
“A l’abbaye de Saint Milaine près Rennes y a plus de six cents ans ont un costé de lard encore tout frais et non corrompu; et néanmoins ont voué et ordonné aux premiers qui par an et jour ensemble mariez ont vescu sans debat, grondement et sans s’en repentir.”[602]
Our next sign is geographical only in its relationship. At Wansford Bridge, which crosses the river Nen in Northampton, there is the Haycock Inn, deriving its name from a curious incident: the river overflowed its banks and carried away a haycock with a man upon it. Taylor, the Water poet, says of the circumstance:—
“On a haycock sleeping soundly,
The river rose, and took me roundly
Down the current; people cried,
As along the stream I hied.
‘Where away?’ quoth they, ‘From Greenland?’
‘No; from Wansford Bridge, in England.’”
The stone bridge, of thirteen arches, carries the Great North Road across the river, so much traversed in the coaching times; and well known to many a traveller in those days was the Haycock Inn, at one end of the bridge, which has on the signboard a pictorial representation of the scene.
Scotland, which, besides Edinburgh ales and Highland whisky, produces a great many publicans, is honoured in numberless signs. Land o’ Cakes, the name given by Burns to the country of the “brighter Scotch,” is a sign at Middle Hill Gate, near Stockport. And here we may observe the popularity of Burns among the publicans, for not only is the poet himself, and several of his amusing heroes, exalted in innumerable places among the “living dead,” but at Kirby Moor some of his verses are even introduced on the sign:—
“When neebors anger at a plea,
An’ just as wud as wud can be,
How easy can the barley bree
Cement the quarrel?
It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee,
To taste the barrel.”
Very good advice indeed.
Since the Highlander’s love for snuff and whisky was such, that he wished to have “a Benlomond of snuff, and a Loch Lomond of whisky,” nobody could make a better public-house sign than the Highland Laddie, nor a better snuff-shop sign than the kilted Highlander who stands generally at the door of these establishments. Two others of the lares and penates of the tobacconist are the Sailor and the Moor or Oriental. The first presiding over the snuff, the second over the chewing, the third over the smoking “department,”—as the drapers term the divisions of their shop. After the rebellion of 1745, when everything was done by the Government to extinguish the nationality of the Scotch, when Scotch ballads were forbidden, and the names of some clans were deemed more odious than the word raka to the Jews, the kilt was forbidden by the legislature as an abomination. On that occasion the following trifle appeared in the newspapers:—