What is meant by the whimsical combination of the ELEPHANT AND FISH, at Sandhill, Newcastle, is hard to say, unless we assume the fish originally to have been a dragon. Between elephants and dragons there was supposed to be a deadly strife, and their battles are recorded by Strabo, Pliny, Ælianus, and their mediæval followers. The fight always ended in the death of both, the dragon strangling the elephant in the windings of his tail, when the elephant, falling down dead, crushed the dragon by his weight. The ELEPHANT AND FRIAR, in Bristol, may possibly have originated from the representation of an elephant accompanied by a man in Eastern costume, whose flowing garment might be mistaken for the gown of a friar. That sign would have admirably suited the fancy of the landlord of the Elephant and Castle, formerly in Leeds; his name happening to be Priest, he had the following inscription above his door: “He is a priest who lives within, Gives advice gratis, and administers gin.” In the seventeenth century, the REINDEER began to make its appearance on the signboard, where it has kept its place to the present day. At first it was called _Rained Deer_, as we see from the newspapers of that period:--“Mr John Chapman, York carrier in Hull, at the sign of the Rained Deer.” This led to the answer of a sailor who had made a voyage to Lapland, and on his return, being asked if he had seen any rained deer? “No,” answered Jack, “I have seen it rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks, but I never saw it rain deer.” The first instance we find of this animal on the signboards of London, is in 1682, when there was “Right Irish Usquebaugh to be sold at the Reindeer in Tuttle Street, Westminster, in greater or smaller quantities, by one from Ireland.”--_London Gazette_, Nov. 23-27, 1682. Pepys mentions it as early as October 7, 1667, at Bishop Stortford, as the sign of a tavern kept by a Mrs Elizabeth Aynsworth. Of this woman a good story is told:--Mrs A. had been a noted procuress at Cambridge, for which reason she was expelled the town by the University authorities. Subsequently keeping the Reindeer at Bishop Stortford, the Vice-chancellor and some of the heads of colleges, on their way to London, had occasion to sleep at her house, little thinking under whose roof they were. She received them nobly, served the supper up in plate, and brought forth the best wine; but, when the hour of reckoning came, would receive no money, “for,” said she, “I am too much indebted to the Vice-chancellor for expelling me from Cambridge, which has been the means of making my fortune.” For all this, however, she does not seem to have mended her evil courses, for, shortly after, she was implicated in the murder of a Captain Wood in Essex, for which one man was executed, whilst Mrs Aynsworth was only acquitted by some flaw in the evidence.