Hogarth introduced a hanging sign of the Half-Moon into his celebrated picture of Southwark Fair, which represents the High Street looking towards old St. George’s Church, just before its demolition. The foundation-stone of the present church was laid April 23, 1734, this picture having been painted in the previous year. In a quaint little book of 1815, called the ‘Epicure’s Almanack,’ the Half-Moon is described as ‘a large establishment; its convenient accommodations for entertaining and lodging guests extend on either side the inn yard, and are connected by a well-contrived bridge from gallery to gallery,’ which still exists.
Sir Thomas Browne was of opinion that the human face on alehouse signs, on coats of arms, etc., for the sun and moon, are relics of paganism, and that their visages originally implied Apollo and Diana. Butler in ‘Hudibras’ asks a shrewd question, as yet not effectually answered:
‘Tell me but what’s the nat’ral cause
Why on a sign no painter draws
The full moon ever, but the half?’
The crescent moon, as we have seen, appears among the armorial bearings of the Three Kings of Cologne. It was also a badge of the Percy family; Drayton in his ‘Barons’ Wars’ alludes to one of them thus:
‘The noble Piercy, in this dreedful day,
With a bright crescent in his guidon came.’
Retainers of the Percies no doubt often adopted it as a sign on this account.
According to Burn, a mark shaped like a half-moon represented sixpence in the alewife’s uncancelled score. He points out that in ‘Master W. H., his Song to his Wife at Windsor,’ printed in Captain Llewellyn’s ‘Men-miracles, and other Poems,’ 1656, duod., p. 40, mention is made of ‘the fat harlot of the tap,’ who
‘Writes at night and at noon,
For tester, half a moon;
And great round O, for a shilling.’
The woodcut attached to the ballad of ‘My Wife will be my Master,’ printed in J. P. Collier’s ‘Booke of Roxburghe Ballads,’ 1847, p. 89, clearly indicates such an alewife’s score.