Psalm xlii. seems to be very profanely hinted at in the sign of the WHITE HART AND FOUNTAIN, Royal Mint Street, which, if not a combination of two well-known signs, apparently alludes to the words, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” THE PANTING HART (_het dorstige Hert_, or _het Heigent Hert_,) was formerly a very common beer-house sign in Holland. In the seventeenth century there was one with the following inscription at Amsterdam:-- “Gelyk het hert by frisch water sig komt te verblyden, Komt also in myn huys om u van dorst te bevryden.”[384] Another one at Leyden had the following rhyme:-- “Gelyk een hart van jagen moe lust te drinken water rein, Also verkoopt men hier tot versterking van de maag, toebak, bier en Brandewyn.”[385] The wise king Solomon does not appear to have ever been honoured with a signboard portrait, but his enthusiastic admirer, the QUEEN OF SABA, figured before the tavern kept by Dick Tarlton the jester, in Gracechurch Street. This Queen of Saba, or Sheba, was a usual figure in pageants. There is a letter of Secretary Barlow, in “Nugæ Antiquæ,” telling how the Queen of Sheba fell down and upset her casket in the lap of the King of Denmark--when on his drunken visit to James I.--who “got not a little defiled with the presents of the queen; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverages, cakes, spices, and other good matters.” Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” has a very ingenious explanation for the sign of the BELL SAVAGE, as derived from the QUEEN OF SABA, which though _non è vero, ma ben trovato_. He bases his argument on a poem of the fourteenth century, the “Romaunce of Kyng Alisaundre,” wherein the Queen of Saba is thus mentioned:-- “In heore lond is a cité, On of the noblest in Christianté, Hit hotith Sabba in langage, Thence cam _Sibely Savage_. Of all the world the fairest queene, To Jerusalem Salomon to seone. For hire fair head and for hire love, Salomon forsok his God above.”[386] ELISHA’S RAVEN, represented with a chop in his mouth, is the sign of a butcher in the Borough,--a curious conceit, and certainly his own invention; at least we do not remember any other instance of the sign. This tribute is certainly very disinterested in the butcher, for if there were any such ravens now, it is probable that they would sadly interfere with the trade.