One of the ballads in Robin Hood’s Garland has given another signboard hero, namely, the Pindar of Wakefield,[92] George a Green.
“In Wakefielde there lives a jolly Pindar,
In Wakefielde all on the greene.
‘There is neither knight nor squire,’ said the Pindar,
‘Nor baron so bold, nor baron so bold,
Dares make a trespass to the town of Wakefielde,
But his pledge goes to the Pinfold.’”
Drunken Barnaby mentions the sign in Wakefield in 1634:—
“Straight at Wakefielde I was seen, a’,
Where I sought for George-a-Green, a’,
But could find not such a creature,
Yet on sign I saw his feature.
Whose strength of ale had so much stirr’d me,
That I grew stouter far than Jordie.”
There was formerly a public-house near St Chad’s Well, Clerkenwell, bearing this sign, which at one period, to judge from the following inscription, would seem to have been more famous than the celebrated Bagnigge Wells hard by. A stone in the garden-wall of Bagnigge House said:—
☩
S. T.
This is Bagnigge
House, neare
the Pindar A
Wakefeilde.
1680.
Among the more uncommon ballad signs, we find the Babes in the Wood at Hanging Heaton, Dewsbury, West Riding. Jane Shore was commemorated in Shoreditch in the seventeenth century, as we see from trades tokens. Valentine and Orson we find mentioned as early as 1711,[93] as the sign of a coffee-house in Long Lane, Bermondsey; and there they remain till the present day.
Other chapbook celebrities are Mother Shipton, Kentish Town, and Low Bridge, Knaresboro’; which latter village disputes with Shipton, near Londesborough, the honour of giving birth to this remarkable character in the month of July 1488. The fact is duly commemorated under her signboard in the former place:—
“Near to this petrifying wall[94]
I first drew breath, as records tell.”