The [Goose and Gridiron] occurs at Woodhall, Lincolnshire, and in a few other localities: it is said to owe its origin to the following circumstances:—The Mitre (see [p. 319]) was a celebrated music-house in London House Yard, at the N.-W. end of St Paul’s. When it ceased to be a music-house, the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its former destiny, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the Swan and Harp, a common sign for the early music-houses. Such an origin does the Tatler give; but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended probably at the door of the Mitre when it was a music-house. These arms are, a swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double tressure might have suggested a gridiron to unsophisticated passers-by. Paddy’s Goose is, at the present day, a nickname for a public-house in Shadwell called the White Swan; but why it was thus travestied non liquet. This tavern acquired some notoriety during the Crimean campaign. When the Government wanted sailors to man the fleet, the landlord of the house used to go among the shipping in the river and enlist numbers of men. His system of recruiting was to go in one of the small steamers, with flags and colours flying and a band playing, the heart-stirring or heart-rending notes of which used to awaken the martial ardour of the merchant sailors, and make them enlist in the Royal Navy. This sign also triumphantly proclaims the presence of British gin and Irish whisky in a low public-house near the harbour of La Valette at Malta.
Not a few signs represent proverbs or proverbial expressions. The Bird in Hand, for instance, with occasionally the Book in Hand,—the former denoting the landlord’s full appreciation of the truth of the proverb, “One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” It is frequently accompanied by the following truthful rather than grammatical distich:—
“A bird in hand far better ’tis
Than two that in the bushes is.”
This sign occurs among the trades tokens, being literally rendered by a hand holding a bird. Innumerable are the jokes resorted to by landlords to intimate that hard truth that no credit is given.[640] Frequently the pill is gilt in the most agreeable manner: a deceptive hope of “better luck to-morrow” is frequently held out, as
“Drink here, and drown all sorrow;
Pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.”
Or:—
“Pay to-day and trust to-morrow,
And so endeth all our sorrow.”
The same in Holland:—
“Vandaag voor geld, morgen voor niet.”[641]