An Old English Home and Its Dependencies

by S. Baring-Gould

What is the origin of signs? The earliest signs were certainly heraldic. We have still in many villages the "So-and-so Arms," with the shield of the lord of the manor emblazoned upon it with all its quarterings. Or we have the Red Lion, or the White Hart, or the Swan, all either crests or cognizances of a family, or of a sovereign or queen. The Swan sign is said to date from Anne of Cleves; the White Hart was the badge of Richard II., and inns with this sign probably were erected in that reign, and have retained this cognizance unchanged since. We know of inns under the name of the Rose, which there can be little question came into life as hostelries in the time of the Yorkists and Lancastrians. The Wheatsheaf was the Burleigh badge, the Elephant that of Beaumont, the Bull's Head was a Boleyn cognizance, the Blue Boar the badge of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford; the Green Dragon of the Earls of Pembroke, the Falcon of the Marquis of Winchester.

It does not, however, follow that the inns that have these signs date from the periods when, let us say, Anne Boleyn was queen, because they bear the token of the Bull's Head, or from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Burleigh was in power, because of the Wheatsheaf; for it will not infrequently be found that they take their titles and signs from a much more local origin, the coat or cognizance of the squire who holds the manor.

There was a reason for this: the inn was originally the place where the true landlord, i.e. the lord of the land, received his guests, and every traveller was his guest. In Iceland at the present day there is but one inn at Reykjavik, the capital, and that is kept by a Dane. The traveller in the island goes to any farmhouse or parsonage, and is taken in. Indeed, by law a traveller cannot be refused hospitality. When he leaves he makes a present either of money or of something else that will be valued, but this is a present, and not a payment. In many parts of Tyrol it is much the same. The excursionist is put up at the priest's house. The writer has been thus received, among other places, at Heiligkreutz, in the Oetz Thal. In the evening the room—the curé's parlour—was filled with peasants who asked for wine, and were supplied. When they left they put money in the hand of the pastor's sister, whilst he, smoking his pipe, looked out of the window. When the writer left next morning the same farce was enacted. Further up the same valley is Vent, where again the curé receives travellers, and his sister receives the payment, but there a definite charge is made; but at Heiligkreutz what was given was accepted as a present. The priests who entertain do not of course hang up signs over their doors. The pastor is supposed to be given to hospitality, and would give of his all freely and cheerfully if he could afford it; but of late years, as travellers have become more numerous, his pittance has become smaller, so that his hospitality can no longer be gratuitous.

In the old romances of chivalry we read of travellers always seeking the castle of some knight, and asking, almost demanding, lodging and entertainment.

Hospitality was a duty among the Germanic races. According to Burgundian law, the Roman who received a traveller was not allowed to do so gratis; the poorer Burgundian host was bound to pay the Roman for the keep of the traveller if he was unable to accommodate him in his own house. The honour of receiving a guest freely was too great to be conceded to a conquered people. When Theodoric with his Ostrogoths conquered Italy they were amazed at the Roman tavern system, and at the iniquity of the taverners, who had double measures, a just one for natives and an unjust one for foreigners. Why, the traveller should be treated freely, the Ostrogoth argued; and Cassiodorus, under the orders of the king, drew up laws to enforce at least honesty, if he could not bring about liberality, in the Latin osteria. We are inclined to be overhard in our judgment of the knights and barons of Germany in the Middle Ages, whose castles are perched on every commanding rock by every road and river, but we are scarcely just. It is true that there were robber knights, but so there are at all times rascals among a class, and we are wrong in supposing that every ruined keep was the nest of a robber knight. It was not so. The knights kept the roads in order, and supplied mules and horses to travellers; they also gave them free hospitality when they halted for the night. The travellers paid a small toll for the maintenance of the road, and also for the use of the horses and mules which carried them on to the next stage. On the navigable rivers the barons kept the tow-path and supplied the beasts which would drag the barges up the stream, and for this also they received, and very properly, a toll.

Here and there an ill-conditioned knight exacted more than was his due, but he was speedily reduced to order. It was to the interest of all the knights and barons along the highway to keep the communication open, and not to divert it into another channel; consequently when one member of the confraternity was exacting and troublesome the rest combined against him, or his over-lord reduced him to reason.

As the knights and barons had their castles on heights for purposes of defence, and these heights were considerable, it was not convenient for the wayfarers at the end of a toilsome journey to have to scramble up the side of a mountain to the castle of the lord to enjoy his hospitality. Accordingly they were entertained by him below in the village built on the highway. Moreover, he himself did not always inhabit the castle. It was irksome to him, and his wife and servants, to be perched on a rock like an eagle, consequently in time of peace he lived in his "town house," that is, his mansion at the foot of the hill, where he could get his provisions easily, and see the world as it flowed along the road. In an old German village there is accordingly to be found generally a somewhat stately mansion below as well as the castle above, with the same coat-of-arms carved over their doors, inhabited by the same family in past times, oscillating as circumstances required between the house and the castle.

When roads were maintained and the post-horses found by the knights and barons, they could charge for their toll enough to cover the expense of entertainment; but it is not improbable that the servant, the butler, received a present which he transmitted to his master, and which the traveller reckoned as a fair remuneration for the wine he had drunk and the meat and bread he had eaten.

The lords house could always be recognized by the shield with his arms hung up over his door, and to this day the signboard is in German "Schild." The sign was always armorial. In many a Tyrolean and in some old German inns may still be seen the coat-of-arms of the noble owner, now plain publican, carved in front of the inn, and the schild—the heraldic shield with lion, or eagle, or bear, or swan, or ape, or hare—hanging as well from a richly ornamented iron bar.