Club Life of London Volume Ii Part 27

The Green Man and Still should be a green man (or man who deals in _green herbs_) with a bundle of peppermint or pennyroyal under his arm, which he brings to be distilled.

Upon the modern building of the Bull and Mouth has been conferred the more elegant name of the Queen's Hotel. Now the former is a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, and the sign was put up to commemorate the destruction of the French flotilla at the mouth of Boulogne harbour in the reign of Henry VIII. This absurd corruption has been perpetuated by a carving in stone of a bull and a human face with an enormous mouth. The Bull and Gate, palpably, has the like origin; as at the _Gate_ of Boulogne the treaty of capitulation to the English was signed.

The Spread Eagle, which const.i.tutes the arms of Austria and Russia, originated with Charlemagne, and was in England introduced out of compliment to some German potentate.

The oddest sign we know is now called The Mischief, in Oxford-street, and our remembrance of this dates over half a century, when the street was called Oxford-road, then unpaved, is truly Hogarthian. It was at that time called the Man loaded with Mischief, _i.e._ a wife, two squalling brats, a monkey, a cat, a jackdaw, etc. The perpetrator of this libel on the other s.e.x, we suppose, was some poor henpecked individual.[59]

On the subject of sign combinations, a writer in _Notes and Queries_ says:--"This subject has been taken up by a literary contemporary, and some ingenious but farfetched attempts at explanation have been made, deduced from languages the publican is not likely to have heard of.

The following seem at least to be undoubtedly English: The Sun and Whalebone, c.o.c.k and Bell, Ram and Teazle, Cow and Snuffers, Crow and Horseshoe, Hoop and Pie,--_c.u.m multis aliis_. I have some remembrance of a very simple solution of the cause of the incongruity, which was this: The lease being out of (say) the sign of The Ram, or the tenant had left for some cause, and gone to the sign of The Teazle; wishing to be known, and followed by as many of his old connexion as possible, and also to secure the new, he took his old sign with him, and set it up beside the other, and the house soon became known as The Ram and Teazle. After some time the signs required repainting or renewing, and as one board was more convenient than two, the 'emblems,' as poor d.i.c.k Tinto calls them, were depicted together, and hence rose the puzzle."

There have been some strange guesses. Some have thought the Goat and Compa.s.ses to be a corruption of "G.o.d encompa.s.seth us," but it has been much more directly traced as follows, by Sir Edmund Head, who has communicated the same to Mr. P. Cunningham: "At Cologne, in the church of Santa Maria in Capitolio, is a flat stone on the floor, professing to be the Grabstein der Bruder und Schwester eines ehrbaren Wein- und Fa.s.s-Ampts, Anno 1693; that is, I suppose, a vault belonging to the Wine Coopers' Company. The arms exhibit a shield with a pair of compa.s.ses, an axe, and a dray, or truck, with goats for supporters. In a country, like England, dealing so much at one time in Rhenish wine, a more likely origin for such a sign could hardly be imagined."

The Pig in the Pound might formerly be seen towards the east end of Oxford-street, not far from "The Mischief."

The Magpie and Horseshoe may be seen in Fetter-lane: the ominous import attached to the bird and the shoe may account for this a.s.sociation in the sign: we can imagine ready bibbers going to houses with this sign "for luck."

The George, Snow-hill, is a good specimen of a carved sign-stone of--

"St. George that swing'd the dragon, And sits on horseback at mine hoste's door."

FOOTNOTE:

[59] Communicated to the _Builder_ by Mr. Rhodes.

THE END.