The Old Dog and Duck by Albert Jack

September 3rd 2009

Introduction

And so, at last, welcome to the book I have always wanted to write. If you've read my other books, you'll know that my mission in life is tracking down the hidden meanings and secret stories behind everyday things we take for granted. Previous topics have ranged from colourful phrases (Red Herrings and White Elephants and Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep) to nursery rhymes (Pop Goes the Weasel). This time I'm writing about my favourite subject. I am a huge admirer of the British pub (and the Irish, Australian, American, South African - you name it - varieties). There's something about a good old honest-to-God boozer that can't be beaten, and so I decided to find out more about where they've come from and what their names mean. Have you ever wondered, for instance, why there should be a painting of a headless lady hanging outside the Quiet Woman, or of a knotted bit of rope outside the Turk's Head, or an executioner's axe by the Three Lords? It turns out that behind virtually every inn sign there is a fascinating story. The history of pubs As long as there has been alcohol, people have gathered together to drink it. Many pub names offer helpful signposts to the very long history of communal drinking in the British Isles. Archaeologists have found evidence of brewing in the Middle East dating as far back as the eighth century BC. Although brewing in Europe goes as far back as 3000 BC, sadly they haven't yet found any Druid watering holes (the Standing Stone?).

So, officially, it was the industrious Romans, after they invaded in 45 BC, who first began to establish tabernae ('huts' or 'shops' - the origin of our word 'tavern') along their new road networks. These provided food, drink and accommodation for workers, soldiers and travellers alike. They were the alcoholic equivalent of today's motorway service stations. The Romans traditionally despised beer as the drink of the conquered indigenous peoples of Britain: their tipple of choice was wine. The weather in Britain was much warmer then and vines and wine-making flourished, even if the locals preferred their own homebrew. When the taberna was fully stocked with wine, some grapes would be displayed outside the building by way of an advert (the Bunch of Grapes - or Crooked Billet if the birds got there first).

After their empire began to crumble early in the fifth century and the Romans had decamped back to Italy, the Anglo-Saxons then took charge. Many of the larger Roman-established towns were abandoned and people moved into much smaller villages and settlements. Unlike their Mediterranean predecessors, the new settlers came from colder, more northerly climes and their drink of choice was ale. (Ale, incidentally, before the importation of hops in the fifteenth century, was the English term for beer.) The oldest alcoholic drink on the planet, beer has historically been seen in a much more positive light than it is today. For instance, the Mesopotamian story explaining how man evolved from the beasts and became civilized involved his being given lots of beer by a god. Ale was central to the Anglo-Saxon sense of community. One person in the village would brew it and his home would become the local drinking spot, mustering place and centre for gossip. In a precursor of the modern pub sign, the Saxon brewer would fix a bush (also the source of berries for flavouring the beer) outside his house to show the ale was ready for drinking (the Bush). These alehouses became so popular that in 965 King Edgar decreed that they should be restricted to one per village.

When the Normans took over in 1066, they were keen to impose order on their new domain, mainly so they could work out just how much tax they could get away with demanding (the point behind the Domesday Book) and for a couple of hundred years at least they ignored alehouses. The kings concentrated on building new towns and castles; it was the Church that redeveloped the idea of the Roman tabernae. A network of monasteries all over the British Isles created guest-houses to offer lodging and refreshment to travellers. Many monasteries were renowned for the ale they brewed and for the quality of their entertainment. Contemporary depictions of monks (think of Friar Tuck) often showed them bingeing on food and drink. The Dove (the biblical symbol of peace - the bird returning to the ark with the first green shoot, marking the end of the flood and God's anger with mankind) was commonly used as a sign for a monastic guest-house.

As the Middle Ages continued and Crusades and pilgrimages became increasingly popular (Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem), the monasteries couldn't cope with the demand and enterprising locals set up inns nearby. Their signs (to draw in a largely illiterate clientele of pilgrims and travellers) may well have mimicked easily recognizable images from the decorations inside churches, such as the Lamb, the Ark and various martyred saints (the Crown and Arrows). These hostelries were a large step up from scruffy local alehouses and some became celebrated landmarks. There is an area of north London named after a famous medieval pub, the Angel.

In 1393 a law was passed that all landlords must identify their premises with a sign: 'Whoever shall brew ale in town with the intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.' The principal reason for the legislation was so that the royal ale-tasters could easily identify inns when they arrived in a village or hamlet in order to inspect the quality of the ale and to collect any taxes due. It made sense for a landlord to display a popular image that could easily be remembered, and many early pub names can be identified from this period, such as the Plough, the Star and the Tabard (a tabard was a sleeveless jacket - a loose-fitting medieval bodywarmer - which was worn by everyone, from ploughmen to knights). The Tabard in Southwark was the famous inn (sadly burned down in 1669) where Chaucer's pilgrims set off on their journey in The Canterbury Tales.

The Crusades and the popularity of chivalry had triggered huge interest in the legends of St George and King Arthur. Following his father's disastrous reign, Edward III looked to these old stories for inspiration in his re-branding of the monarchy (and the ruling classes). He gathered together a band of special knights (the Star and Garter), much in the manner of King Arthur, and chose a patron saint for England who embodied the knightly virtues he so admired (the George and Dragon). He also encouraged the use of heraldry, which had a knock-on effect on the names of pubs. Every noble family had its own coat of arms, and alehouses and inns on their lands were often named after them, such as the Red Lion, the White Hart and the Bear and Ragged Staff.

But things were far from that simple. These were turbulent times: feudalism had been destroyed by the Black Death and, much to the horror of the ruling classes, working men were demanding a better life. Alehouses were the places they gathered to complain of their lot and plot their uprisings. Although the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was soon squashed, the changes it set in motion couldn't be suppressed as easily. The English hero the working classes chose as their favourite symbol was very different from King Arthur. Robin Hood was an outlaw who robbed from the rich and gave it all to the poor. To call your hostelry after him was thumbing your nose at the noble families who owned most of England and consequently most of England's pubs. To this day, the pubs named after Robin Hood outnumber those named after King Arthur ten to one.

When Henry VIII divorced his first wife in 1533 and started dissolving the monasteries, some innkeepers (canny businessmen) rushed to change the names of their inns if they seemed a little too religious to something ostensibly more loyal, such as the King's Arms. Meanwhile others started spinning different stories to account for their pub's name. But with the loss of the monasteries, supply was soon outstripped by demand and there was an explosion of new pubs of all different kinds and with all different kinds of name.

At the same time, Dutch and Flemish immigrants introduced hops into the brewing process and brought a new drink on to the market - 'beer'. The addition of hops gave it a distinctively bitter taste and helped it keep much longer. However, not everyone welcomed this new-age drink, regarding the addition of hoppes as a bad thing. Imagine how they'd have reacted to lager. Hop gardens (the Hop Pole) sprang up throughout southern counties such as Kent and Sussex. Henry VIII tried to stop the brewing of this new type of ale through heavy taxation but that didn't work, and so, like governments ever since, he simply pocketed the money and left things alone.

Different pubs for different purposes

With pubs cropping up everywhere, things became much more complicated. Luckily that's something that can be explained by the choice of suffix. 'Tavern', 'Inn', 'Hotel' and 'Public House' each indicated a specific type of drinking hole. The early taverns in England were privately owned and thus open only to certain guests or 'members', unlike the public houses. They are perhaps the forefather of the gentleman's (or working man's) club. An inn differed from a tavern in that it was usually located along the ever-growing road network, providing overnight accommodation, food and shelter for the travellers' horses (Coach and Horses). These were rather grander establishments, often found in remote locations, in which the local community actually grew up around the inn. The public house, as its name suggests, grew out of the alehouses. These were local hostelries that had all the homely welcome of a private house but were open to all customers. Hotels primarily provided accommodation and were granted longer licensing hours, including on a Sunday, by catering for the long-distance traveller who would be arriving and departing at all hours of the day and night. Many early pubs labelled themselves hotels simply to benefit from the more lenient laws. Calling itself a hotel gave a pub the legal right to open for business on the Sabbath, even when the only real place it provided for sleeping was face down in the beer garden.

The Church and the pub had by now very much parted company as it became harder and harder to stop people from skipping church to spend as much time as possible drunkenly socializing. The spirit of Oliver Cromwell, who banned football, alcohol and Christmas after winning the English Civil War in 1651, held sway in Scotland until as recently as 1976 when the law finally allowed the nation, known to enjoy a wee dram, to open its public houses on the day of the Lord. Apparently it has always been fine to cut one another to pieces in the name of religion, but to have a beer or two on the prescribed day of rest was regarded as a sin. Considering that Christ's best friends were fishermen and sailors (equally famous for their love of a drink) and that his legendary ability to turn water into wine would have stood him in good stead behind any bar, I reckon he would have been happy with mankind drinking alcohol on any day it chose.

Popular history

Pub names are often celebrations of the most colourful characters and moments from our past. The Royal Oak, for example, is a reminder of Charles II hiding in an oak tree while escaping Cromwell's forces after the Battle of Worcester in September 1651. The Balaclava was not named after the woolly headgear favoured by bank robbers but a crucial battle that proved a turning point in the Crimean War. Jack Straw's Castle tells the story of the now forgotten joint leader of the Peasants' Revolt, which almost brought communism to England in the fourteenth century. And there are many, many more.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of pubs all over the world are named in honour of famous figures from the past. Some, such as the Nelson and the Duke of Wellington (or Iron Duke), remain well known today, while others have all but faded into obscurity. I'd need several volumes to cover every historical figure who ever inspired a pub name, but I wanted to give you some interesting examples of some of the men, respected enough during their own century, for their names to be still be written in big letters on a building in many of our towns and cities. And yet most of us today have no real idea who they are. Pubs like the Admiral Collingwood and the Prince Blucher are named after forgotten military heroes without whom Nelson and Wellington would not have won the Napoleonic Wars, despite what your history teacher told you.

Sporting connections

Alcohol and gambling have always gone hand in hand, but the connection between sport and pubs goes much deeper than a group of peasants gathering to bet on a cockfight (the Cock) or throw sticks at a ball (the Aunt Sally). Like the Angel at Islington, some pubs have become local landmarks. For example, there was once a Mr Ball, again over Islington way, who ran an establishment with a pond at the back filled with ducks. For a fee, drinkers could go outside and take a shot at the birds, and Balls Pond became a regular retreat for gun enthusiasts. His drinking house, no doubt named the Old Dog and Duck, no longer exists, but Balls Pond Road remains a busy thoroughfare in that part of London, thanks to the pub.

Many British sports evolved out of their connections with pubs. The rules of cricket were thrashed out by the Hambledon Club in the 1760s at the Bat and Ball Inn, where their team captain, Richard Nyren, was the landlord. The split between rugby and football (once the same game) was agreed in the Freemasons Arms in Covent Garden in 1863. One thing that has surprised me in my researches is just how many pubs are named after racehorses: I've added a list of my ten favourites to entertain you at the back of the book.

Terrible jokes

Pubs are also the focus of terrible joke-telling, as many names bear testament (see the Drunken Duck and the Quiet Woman, for starters). I started writing an entry about the Dew Drop Inn - it's a pun on 'do drop in' - but found I was losing the will to work and had to stop. It just isn't funny now, proving that joke names like this don't always stand up to the test of time. It shows too how the spirit that lies behind the modern chain pub names that make jokes about firkins (a measure of beer) and tups (sheep) is far from new.

There are often several theories behind the name of a pub and I've included those that seem to hold water or are particularly entertaining. Yet the same name can have confusingly different origins: of two pubs called the Case is Altered one might be referring to a famous legal battle, while the other could be a corruption of a Spanish term for 'house of dancing' (casa de saltar), but that's all part of the joy of the hunt.

My only regret is that there are so many names and stories I can't include simply because I haven't got the space here to cover them. If you know a great story like the one behind the Bucket of Blood, the Flying Dutchman or Molly Malone's, then do please let me know (at www.albertjack.com). I'm always keen to hear the story of a local that I have yet to stumble upon, or out of. And I'm already looking forward to embarking on another six-month pub crawl (I mean research study).

The pub was once described by seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys as the 'heart of England while the church is its soul'. These days I would say he is only half right. There remain over 56,000 pubs in Great Britain, half of which are filled with youngsters who play loud music on a jukebox that sounds like somebody is hitting his lawnmower with a hammer, while the next-door neighbour shouts at him over the fence. The other half, however, are the perfect place to while away an afternoon with a pint and fine conversation while quietly contemplating what to do next. Well, that's what I do.

So take a seat in your favourite armchair by the fireside and join me on a pub crawl along memory lane and around history corner. We may be some time and your enjoyment makes every page worthwhile for both of us. Thank you.

Albert Jack
Cape Town
June 2009