Which inscription is certainly as unnecessary as that over the nonformidable-looking lions under the celebrated fountain in the Spanish Alhambra, “O thou who beholdest these lions crouching, fear not, life is wanting to enable them to exhibit their fury.”
Lions occur in numerous combinations with other animals and objects, which in many cases seem simply the union of two signs, as the Lion and Dolphin, Market Place, Leicester; the Lion and Tun, at Congleton: the Lion and Swan in the same locality may owe its joint title to the name of the street in which the public-house is situated, viz., Swanbank. The combination of the Lion and Pheasant, Wylecop, Shrewsbury, seems rather mysterious, unless the Pheasant has been substituted for the Cock, just as in the [Three Pheasants and Sceptre], they were substituted for the Three Pigeons and Sceptre. As for the Cock and Lion, a very common sign, their meeting, if we may believe ancient naturalists, is anything but agreeable to the lion.
“The lyon dreadeth the white cocke, because he breedeth a precious stone called allectricium, like to the stone that hight Calcedonius. And for that the Cocke beareth such a stone, the Lyon specially abhorreth him.”[196]
Some more information about this stone may be gathered from a mediæval treatise on natural history:
“Allectorius est lapis obscuro cristallo sĩlis e vẽtriculo galli castrati trahitur post quartũ añũ. Ultima eius quãtitas ẽ ad magnitudinẽ fabe—quẽ gladiator. hñs in ore penanct̃. ĩvictus ac sine siti.”[197]
The Lion and Ball owes its origin to another mediæval notion:
“Some report that those who rob the tiger of her young use a policy to detaine their damme from following them, by casting sundry looking-glasses in the way, whereat she useth to long to gaze, whether it be to beholde her owne beauty or because when she seeth her shape in the glasse she thinketh she seeth one of her young ones, and so they escape the swiftness of her pursuit.”[198]
The looking-glass thrown to the tiger was spherical, so that she could see her own image reduced as it rolled under her paw, and would therefore be more likely to mistake it for her cub. Lions and tigers being almost synonymous in mediæval zoology, the spherical glass was generally represented with both. In sculpture it could only be represented by a ball, which afterwards became a terrestrial globe, and the lion resting his paw upon it, passed into an emblem of royalty.
In the last century an innkeeper at Goodwood put up as his sign the Centurion’s Lion, the figure-head of the frigate Centurion, in which Admiral Anson made a voyage round the world. Under it was the following inscription:—
“Stay, Traveller, a while and view
One that has travelled more than you,
Quite round the Globe in each Degree,
Anson and I have plow’d the Sea;
Torrid and Frigid Zones have pass’d,
And safe ashore arriv’d at last.
In Ease and Dignity appear
He—in the House of Lords, I—here.”