Good wine needs no bush.
Gude ale needs nae wisp.—Scotch.
A bunch of twigs, or a wisp of hay or straw hung up at a roadside house, is a sign that drink is sold within. This custom, which still lingers in the cider-making counties of the west of England, and prevails more generally in France, is derived from the Romans, among whom a bunch of ivy, the plant sacred to Bacchus, was appropriately used as the sign of a wine-shop. They, too, used to say, "Vendible wine needs no ivy hung up."[674] "Good wine needs no crier" (Spanish).[675] "It sells itself" (Spanish).[676] "Bosky" is one of the innumerable euphemisms for "drunk." Probably the phrase, "he is bosky," originally conveyed an allusion to the symbolical use of the bush, with which all good fellows were familiar in the olden time.
FOOTNOTES:
[645] Apud Bactryanos vulgo usurpabant canem timidum vehementius latrare quam mordere.
[646] Was schadet das Hundes Bellen der nicht beisst?
[647] Cave tibi cane muto et aqua silente.
[648] Schweigender Hund beisst am ersten.
[649] Vive più il minacciato che l'impiccato.
[650] Mas son los amenazados que los acuchillados.
[651] Tambem os ameaçados comem paō.