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. Before I leave this branch of my subject, it will be well to call attention to the Half-Moon sign which projects over a shop numbered 36, about half-way up Holywell Street on the south side. This is the last--still _in situ_--of another class of London house-signs, and will doubtless soon be swept away together with the picturesque old street to which it belongs. The material is wood, boldly carved and gilt, with the conventional face in the centre. One of the horns was damaged, but has lately been repaired. Diprose[25] says it was once the sign of a tradesman who was staymaker to George III. About forty years ago the shop was occupied by a mercer, and the bills made out for the customers were adorned with this sign: since then it has been a bookseller’s. [Illustration] The corner-post of an alley beside it, leading into the Strand, used formerly to be decorated with a carved lion’s head and paws, painted red, and acting as a corbel to support the old timbered house to which it belonged. This may have been associated with the neighbouring Lyons Inn, once a hostelry with the sign of the Lion, demolished about twenty-five years ago, and the site of which is occupied by the Globe and Opera Comique Theatres. The alley remains, and is now called, after the sign, Half-Moon Passage, but might still be described by the unsavoury name given to it in the old maps, as Strype says, ‘in contempt.’ The old house disappeared not long since, and the lion has found a home in the Guildhall Museum. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. ANIMALS REAL AND IMAGINARY. ‘Lions, talbots, bears, The badges of your famous ancestries.’ DRAYTON: _Barons’ Wars_.