“All sluts behold, take view of me,
Your own good housewifry to see.
[444] It is (methinks) a cleanly care,
My dishclout in this sort to spare,
Whilst Dog, you see, doth lick the pot,
His taile for dishclout I have got,” &c.
One of the Roxburghe Ballads, vol. i., fol. 385, entitled, “Seldome Cleanely,” has the same idea:—
“If otherwise she had
But a dishcloute faile,
She would set them to the dog to licke,
And wipe them with hys tayle.”
In Holland there is a proverb still in use, to the effect that when a person is late for dinner he is said to “find the dog in the pot,” (hy vindt den hond in de pot,) meaning that he has arrived late,—that the empty pot has been given to the dog to lick out, previously to being washed, a custom still daily practised by the peasantry of that country. This sign is sometimes also called the Dog and Crock, as in the Blackfriars’ Road; at Michelmouth, Romsey, Hants, and elsewhere. In the western counties the word “crock” is indiscriminately applied to iron or earthen pots. From the latter application comes the term “crockery ware.”
The Dancing Dogs was a sign at Battlebridge in 1668, as appears from the trades tokens. This kind of canine entertainment was one of the attractions of Bartholomew Fair, where Ben Jonson mentions “dogs that dance the Morris.”
The Laughing Dog (le chien qui rit) was formerly a sign in Rouen, and gave its name to a street, now called Du Guay Troin, from the name of a celebrated admiral. This was one of those quaint signs of which we have some specimens in this country, as the Two Sneezing Cats, which is said to be somewhere in London; the Flying Monkey, Lambeth; the Monkey Island, at Bray, near Maidenhead; the Gaping Goose, at Leeds, Oldham, and various parts of Yorkshire; and the Loving Lamb, two in Dudley. In Paris there was the old sign of the Green Monkey, (le singe vert,) and some fifteen years ago Lille could boast of the Hunchbacked Cats (les chats bossus) in the Rue Sec-Arembault.
Equally absurd is the Cow and Snuffers, at Llandaff, Glamorgan. In a play of George Colman, entitled the “Review, or the Wags of Windsor,” the following lines occur:—
“Judy’s a darling; my kisses she suffers;
She’s an heiress, that’s clear,
[445] For her father sells beer,
He keeps the sign of the Cow and the Snuffers.”
The same song also occurs in the “Irishman in London, or the Happy African.” At Llandaff the sign is represented by a cow standing near a ditch full of reeds and grasses, with a pair of snuffers, placed as if they had fallen from the cow’s mouth. The oddity of the combination in all probability pleased a publican who had heard the song, and adopted it forthwith as his sign, leaving the arrangement of the objects to the taste of the sign-painter.
The Colt and Cradle might have been seen in St Martin’s Lane in 1667. It is still a common sign for houses of evil repute in Holland, as may be seen from two examples in the Zandstraat, Rotterdam, where the cradle is carved above the door, with the colt in it lying on his back: the inscription is, “Het paard in de Wieg,” (the horse in the cradle.) And since, according to Stow, in ancient times “English people disdayned to be bawdes, froes of Flaunders were women for that purpose,” it is more than probable that these “froes” introduced this sign from their own country. In the Dutch language paar means “a couple,” and is constantly used for a man and woman, either united by the bands of lawful marriage or otherwise. The original form of the sign, then, we suppose was “the couple in the cradle,” (het paar in de wieg.) But the Dutch have an inveterate habit of adding diminutives, so that with this appendix it became paartje—from paartje to paardje, a small horse, the transition was easy enough; and, covered with that transparent veil, the indelicate sign has come down to the present day. This seems so much the more probable to be the meaning, since the Cradle in London also was a “bad sign,” (see [p. 394].)