In consequence, it is alleged, of this facetious praise of his own house at the expense of his rivals, mine host got a good deal of their custom. On one of the windows of the same White Horse was written:— { 225}
His liquor’s good, his pot is just, The Landlord’s poor, and cannot trust; For he has trusted to his sorrow, So pay to-day, he’ll trust to-morrow.
These lines occur on the signboard of the Waggon and Horses, Brighton:—
Long have I travelled far and near, On purpose to find out good beer, And at last I’ve found it here.
The couplet, written on a signboard at Chadderton, near Manchester, seems, at any rate from the outside of the Inn, to be what a logician might call a _non sequitur_:—
Although the engine’s smoke be black, If you walk in I’ve ale like sack.
The following doggerel inscription is said in the _Year Book_ to have been written over the door of an ale house between Sutton and Potton, in Bedfordshire:—
Butte Beere, Solde Hear, by Timothy Dear. Cum. tak. a. mugg of mye. trinker. cum trink. Thin. a. ful. Kart. of mye. verry. stron. drink Harter, that. trye. a. cann. of mye. titter, cum. tatter And. wynde. hup. withe, mye. sivinty-tymes weaker, thin, water.
At Creggin, Montgomeryshire, the Rodney Pillar Inn is distinguished by a double signboard, on one side of which is the following verse:—
Under these trees, in sunny weather, Just try a cup of ale, however; And if in tempest, or in storm, A couple then to make you warm: But when the day is very cold. Then taste a mug a twelvemonth old.
Rest and regale yourself, ’tis pleasant, Enough is all the present need, That’s the due of the hardy peasant, Who toils all sorts of men to feed. { 226} Then muzzle not the ox when he treads out the corn, Nor grudge honest labour its pipe and its horn.
Another queer old inscription is the following:—
John Uff Sells good ale and that’s enough; A mistake here, Sells foreign spirits as well as beer.
At a public-house in Devonshire the landlord has painted outside his door, “Good beer sold here, but don’t take my word for it;” and at the Bell Inn, Oxford, kept by John Good, are these lines:—
My name, likewise my ale, is Good, Walk in and taste my own home brew’d, For all that know John Good can tell That like my sign it bears the Bell.