Some ale-houses upon the road I saw, And some with bushes, showing they wine did draw. The following illustrations represent an ancient road-side alehouse and a hostel by night. The former is taken from a manuscript of the early part of the fifteenth century. The latter is from an illumination in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow, and is of about the same date. In one a conventional bush appears above the door; while in the other there is both bush and sign. The absence of any night attire other than night-caps—the usual custom of the period—and the number of persons sleeping in one room, are noticeable. Night-caps were no doubt very necessary in an age when glass windows were little used. [Illustration: Ancient Alehouse.] The next step in the historical development of the signboard was the addition of a carved and painted effigy of a Swan, a Cock, a Hen, or some other bird or beast. The effigy was fixed in a hoop and hung from the end of the ale-pole, and it is suggested that the term “cock-a-hoop,” signifying a rather offensively jubilant demeanour, may be traced to the attitude of Chanticleer upon the ale-house hoop. Hazlitt gives a different origin to the phrase. Quoting from Blount’s Dictionary (1681), he says: “The Cock was the tap and being taken out {218} and laid on the hoop of the vessel, they used to drink up the ale as it ran out without intermission (in Staffordshire now called stunning a barrel of ale) and then they were _cock-on-hoop_ (_i.e._, at the height of mirth and jolity).” Old Heywood seems to support the latter derivation in the lines:— He maketh havok and setteth the cock on hoope; He is so lavies, the stooke beginneth to droope. From the painted effigy to the painted signboard was an easy step, and then began the signboard’s palmy days. If mine host were a man of small imagination, he might still be content with a bush or with the arms of some local magnate, but if he were a man of fancy, his imagination, in quest of a worthy sign, might revel unrestrained through the highways and byways of history ancient and modern, political and natural. The sign was and is usually painted on a board and suspended from the front of the house, or from a sign-post set up in the street in front of the door. In country places signboard ambition went so far as to erect a kind of triumphal arch in front of the house, from the centre of which the signboard swung. [Illustration: Night Scene in a Fifteenth-century Inn.] A good example of a signboard stretching across a street may be seen in the illustration of the Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, which is taken from a print by Ryland of the date 1770. {219}