[Nobody] was the singular sign of John Trundell, a ballad-printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century. In one of Ben Jonson’s plays Nobody is introduced, “attyred in a payre of Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face.” This comedy was “printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body.” A unique ballad, preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled “The Well-spoken No-Body,” is accompanied by a woodcut representing a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. Above him is a scroll in black-letter:—
“Nobody . is . my . Name . that . Beyreth . Every . Bodyes . Blame.”
The ballad commences as follows:—
“Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe,
So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe;
But nowe, beholde, here I am,
Whom all the worlde doeth diffame;
Long have they also scorned me,
And locked my mouthe for speking free.
As many a Godly man they have so served
Which unto them God’s truth hath shewed;
Of such they have burned and hanged some,
That unto their ydolatrye wold not come:
The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage,
Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge.
For as much nowe as they name Nobodye
I thinke verilye they speke of me:
Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne—
[458] The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne,
Wrought by no man, but by God’s grace,
Unto whom be prayse in every place,” &c.
In J. O. Halliwell’s “Shakespeare,” vol. i., p. 450, from whence we borrow the above, the subject is still further illustrated by the following quotation:—
“Nobody keeps such a rule in every bodies house that from the mistresse to the basest maide, there is not a shrewde turne done without him: for if the husband finde his study opened and enquire who did it? he shall finde Nobody: if the goodwife see her utensils disordered and demand who displast them, the issue of every servant’s reply will bee, Nobody: if the servants discover the beds towsed and the chambers durtied it will bee, Nobody; when every child is examined; nay, if the children fall and break their noses, or scratch one another’s faces, and either mother or nursse seeme angry and aske, who hurt them, they will quickly answer Nobody toucht them; and their desire of excuse hath brought lying to a custom.”—Rich Cabinet furnished with Variety of Excellent Description, 1616.
At present there is an inn in Plymouth called No Place inn; and formerly there was at Norwich a public-house called Nowhere—a name which would, to the truant husband returning home in the small hours of night, suggest a ready answer to the warm reception of his partner for better and for worse, who, for the last few hours, has been
“Gath’ring her brows, like gath’ring storm—
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.”
Another ancient sign, to which constant allusions are made in the old writers, is the Three Loggerheads, which, old as it is, and stale as the joke may be, has not yet lost its charms for the inhabitants of many of our villages and quiet inland towns. It represents two silly-looking faces, with the inscription—
“We three
Loggerheads be,”