CHAPTER III.
MAMMALIAN SIGNS.
HE next great class of signs to be noticed consists of what may be termed “Mammalian Signs.” In Essex no less than 464 houses, or 34·2 per cent. of the whole, display devices derived from the animal kingdom. There are, however, only 102 distinct signs. These may be classified as follows:—
| No. of signs. | No. of distinct signs. | |
| Mammals | 384 | 81 |
| Birds | 75 | 18 |
| Fish | 1 | 1 |
| Insects | 4 | 2 |
| 464 | 102 |
This calculation is, moreover, made independent of “man and his parts,” as the heralds say. Signs of human origin have been placed in a separate class, and will be treated of hereafter by themselves.
Although many of the signs belonging to this class are, undoubtedly, nothing more than very modern vulgarisms, there can be no doubt whatever that a great number have a truly heraldic origin, as will be seen from what follows.
To commence the list, we find at Buckhurst Hill a Bald-faced Stag, and in the adjoining parish of Chigwell a Bald Hind. These two signs have, doubtless, the same origin, but one which it is not now easy to discover. In Essex a horse is always said to be “bald” when he has a white face.
Possibly the signs commemorate the killing of two deer with white faces in the adjoining forest, which was the last locality in the east or south-east of England in which the aboriginal wild red deer survived, the last having been killed so lately as the year 1817 or thereabouts. Both the Bald Hind and the Bald-faced Stag are among the oldest of the forest inns. The latter is, presumably, the same house marked as the Bald Stag on Cary’s map, published in 1768. It has the same name in Mr. Creed’s list (p. 7). The Rev. Wm. Cole tells us, in his voluminous MSS., that on the morning of October 27, 1774, he “started from the Cock at Epping without eating, and breakfasted at an Inne, called the Bald-faced Stag.” The existing inn is a large square, white-washed building, with a high-pitched roof. It contains a portrait of Queen Anne, and the coffee-room is panelled. From it, according to the author of Nooks and Corners in Essex (p. 21), the famous “Epping Hunt,” so cleverly satirized by Tom Hood, used to start every Easter Monday, when it was no uncommon thing for five hundred mounts to ride off from the ridge on which the house stands. The Easter Monday hunt is said to have originated as far back as the year 1226, in the reign of Henry III. The custom was kept up until so recent a date as 1853, after which it gradually fell off, owing to the rough East End element which marked the annual meeting, and made it little more than a public nuisance. The stag—a tame one—was, on these occasions, taken round in turn to all the neighbouring public-houses before being set at liberty, and the amount of liquor consumed, and riot occasioned, was, in consequence, considerable. Something approaching a celebration of the old custom has, however, been attempted as lately as the last two or three years. There was also a Bald-faced Stag at Hatfield Broad Oak in 1789.