by Albert Jack
But it was during the twentieth century that the influence of Oddfellow principles and administration upon the lives of the British people really came into its own. By 1911 the Oddfellows incorporated so many ordinary members of the public that prime minister Herbert Asquith used the the society’s actuarial tables to calculate contributions and payments when introducing the National Insurance Act, and after the Second World War many Oddfellows administrators were employed to run the new welfare state and National Health Service. To this day, Oddfellows are active throughout Britain as one of the largest friendly and yet secret societies in the world. Well, secret until I just told you all about them, that is.
The Old Dog and Duck
HUNTING, SHOOTING AND… LISTENING
There was a time, centuries ago, and well before the advent of the shotgun, when duck hunting was a wildly popular pursuit. In villages all over the land, duck hunting, a favourite pastime of King Charles II, consisted of catching a duck, clipping its wings so it could not fly away, throwing it into the village pond and sending the dogs in after it. Ducks diving under water for safety with dogs splashing around trying to bite them in half provided endless hours of fun for the king and his court although, fortunately for the ducks, later kings had rather kinder hobbies.
Although pubs called the Dog and Duck (old or otherwise) were primarily located in small villages in the countryside, the popularity of the name has caused them to spread to more urban communities and across the world, as far afield as Texas in America and Adelaide in Australia. Duck hunting is no longer carried out in its traditional form, of course, as dogs are no longer used to actually hunt and kill, but just to retrieve the birds for the hunter. At least that’s what they claim down at the new Duck and Shotgun.
Dogs, the Englishman’s best friend, have long been associated with pubs, giving rise to a host of ‘dog’-related names. The Dog and Bear, for instance, harks back to the time when bear baiting was popular. The poor animal would be chained to a stake while people set their dogs on it. Bets would then be placed as to how many dogs a bear would kill with its giant paws, or on how many dogs it would take to kill the beast. Like cockfighting (see THE COCK), the ‘sport’ was outlawed in 1835. Then there is the Dog and Dart, referring to how game would at one time be shot by arrows instead of guns, dogs being used to bring back the slaughtered animals or, for a larger creature like a deer, help bring it down. No doubt I could track down a tale of a dog who played darts (these days probably captured in a video on YouTube), but it wouldn’t be true.
Other variations include the Black Dog, Red Dog, Spotted Dog, the Dog and Hedgehog and even the Dog and Muff (a joking reference to how elegant ladies, hundreds of years before Paris Hilton, used to carry their tiny pets around). According to local legend, the Dog and Pot at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire acquired its name because the landlord’s lazy wife allowed the pub dog to lick the pots clean and then dry them with his tail – which sounds like a pretty tall (or shaggy dog) tale to me. And then there is the Dog and Trumpet: no trumpet-playing dog, this, but a trumpet-listening one, you might say. Pubs bearing this name are relatively recent, going back to 1973, when the HMV record company celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. Formed as the Gramophone Company in 1898, it traded under that name until 1909 when it first used the iconic picture of a fox terrier seated next to a gramophone listening to its owner talking to it through the horn (trumpet). The picture, and from that point the company, was entitled His Master’s Voice (HMV). The original painting now hangs in the boardroom of EMI records.
The Pickled Parson
THE TRUE TALE OF A RECTOR WHO TURNED TO DRINK – AFTER HIS DEATH
Now for a story that has never inspired a pub name, but if you are looking for something to call your pub or hotel, you can have this one on me. The rector of Sedgefield, in Country Durham, the Reverend John Garnage, died in December 1747, a week before the tithes were due from the local landowners. Tithes, a tax of one-tenth of the value of the crop produced by a landowner or farmer, were payable to the parish church. Initially this was a voluntary payment but it became compulsory towards the end of the eighth century, making the Church in general fabulously wealthy.
The untimely death of the reverend would have spelled financial disaster for his wife and family as the tithes for the year would have gone instead direct to the Bishop of Durham, in which case, as history records in so many similar instances, the parson’s widow and children would have probably starved. Instead, the good lady acted quickly and kept news of her husband’s death to herself, even going to the lengths of preserving his body in brandy until after the 20th of the month when all tithes had been paid. She then dried out the pickled parson and called in the local doctor, who, apparently unaware of her deception but knowing that her husband had liked a drink (or sixteen, judging by the smell), pronounced him dead, dating the death certificate to after 20 December. Legend has it, however, that the reverend, none too pleased at his wife delaying his assent to heaven, returned to haunt the parsonage and disturb the neighbourhood, which he did every evening for over fifty years until a devastating fire finally smoked out his vengeful spirit and he was never heard from again.
Sedgefield was also the parliamentary seat of a certain Tony Blair throughout his political career, including his spell as prime minister of Great Britain. The Pickled Parson or the Pickled Prime Minister. You can take your pick; it’s only a matter of time.
The Pig and Whistle
CELEBRATORY FARE OR SOMEWHERE TO DROWN YOUR TROUBLES?
There are three theories behind the pub name the Pig and Whistle: none of them explain the pennywhistle-playing pig pictured on most inn signs. One story has it that in days gone by innkeepers would insist their young employees whistled continuously while down in the cellar, to prove they were not drinking the stock. A ‘pig’ was a common name for an earthenware pot used to store ale. So the ‘pig and whistle’ could be an everyday picture of fifteenth-century pub life…
Others have pointed out that it is more likely to have something to do with celebration and good times. Hence the ‘pig’ might be the actual animal, nicely fattened, while the ‘whistle’ could be a corruption of the old English word ‘wassail’, a celebratory drink used to toast someone’s health. A cup of the spiced ale was passed around at Christmas and New Year in a wassail bowl, as described in 1801 by Joseph Strutt in his Sports and Pastimes of the People of England: ‘A Wassail Bowl is a bowl of spiced ale formerly carried around by young women on New Year’s Eve who went from door to door in their several parishes singing a few couplets of homely verses composed for the purpose and presented the liquor to the inhabitants of the house expecting a small gratuity in return.’ I’m not convinced drunken girls and wassail bowls are necessarily the origin of the Pig and Whistle, although I can see why some might think that.
In my view the name is far more likely to be connected with the old English expression ‘to go to pigs and whistles’, in use around the 1680s and meaning ‘to go to rack and ruin’. You can see how ‘Pig and Whistle’ could easily have become a nickname for a tavern where customers went to drown their troubles, going to rack and ruin if they weren’t there already. It’s got a similar ring to the popular tavern name THE WORLD’S END – the place to go when the whole world has gone to pot (or pig). There’s also the phrase ‘to wet your whistle’, meaning ‘to have a drink’, so there could be a connection there, too.
The Prince Blucher
THE TURNCOAT WHO STOPPED NAPOLEON OR HOW BRANDY WAS USED TO ACHIEVE A FAMOUS VICTORY
There are many Prince Blucher pubs around England, the most famous being in Twickenham near London, while others can be found in the north and as far south as Cornwall.
Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, later Fürst (Prince) of Wahlstatt (1742–1819), was born in Rostock, a port on the Baltic Sea and the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg, where his family had been prominent landowners since the thirteenth century. At just fourteen years of age, Bl
ücher joined the Swedish army as a hussar (cavalry soldier – see also THE BRIGADIER GERARD). At the time, Sweden was at war with Prussia, a major European power and leading state of the German Empire ruled over by Frederick the Great, in a conflict that became known as the Seven Years’ War (see THE MARQUIS OF GRANBY).
During the Pomeranian campaign in 1760, the eighteen-year-old was captured by the Prussian army who were so impressed with his fighting spirit that the colonel in charge invited Blücher to join their ranks as a cavalry officer, and he thus served with distinction for the remaining three years of the war on the opposite side from which he had started. In peacetime, however, his boorish behaviour and ill-discipline – included drinking, petty violence and the abuse of prisoners, such as the staging, in one instance, of a mock execution – meant he was passed over for promotion. Blücher responded to this by sending an insolent letter of resignation in 1773 to Frederick the Great, his commander-in-chief. Unmoved, Frederick, later regarded by Napoleon as the greatest tactical soldier of all time, casually replied: ‘Blücher can go to hell.’
Blücher took his commander at his word and, although he didn’t literally go to hell, he became a farmer in northern Germany instead, which some might say is close enough. For fifteen long years he farmed the land and adapted to his new peaceful way of life, finding the time to marry and father seven children. Then, on Frederick’s death in 1786, the former soldier was invited back and reinstated as major of his old regiment, the Red Hussars. For the next fourteen years Blücher once again fought with distinction and in 1801 was promoted to lieutenant general in recognition of his services.
But it was during the Napoleonic Wars – beginning in 1803 when the eponymous Frenchman started annoying all his European neighbours by invading their lands – that Blücher found worldwide fame and even heroic status. The doughty lieutenant general led the Prussian army on many campaigns against the French, but a crushing defeat for his army and personal humiliation at Ratekau in northern Germany in November 1806 led to a crusade for revenge Napoleon Bonaparte would later live to regret.
After being released in a high-level prisoner exchange, Blücher was promoted to general in charge of the Prussian cavalry and soon had nearly 100,000 men under his command. On 16 October 1813, Blücher (now promoted to field marshal) and his army defeated the French at Möckern, pursuing them all the way back to the French capital throughout the winter of 1813–14. Blücher’s actions directly encouraged other European commanders to carry the war into France itself, while his troops won several significant victories, including the vital battle at Laon on 10 March that effectively broke Napoleon’s army apart. Still unsatisfied, Blücher pressed on, intending to take revenge on the people of Paris and threatening to sack the city, which he probably would have done had the British not persuaded him otherwise.
On 13 June 1814, Blücher was made a prince in recognition of his achievements and received a welcome fit for a hero everywhere he travelled, especially in Britain. When Napoleon went into exile on the island of Elba, Blücher returned to his farm, but he was re-called to active service within a matter of months.
Napoleon, using his time well, had cunningly planned his revenge. His newly gathered French army shattered Blücher’s regiment at Ligny on 16 June 1815, in the course of which the old field marshal was seriously wounded. Lying trapped under his dead horse for several hours, he was repeatedly ridden over by cavalry.
As Napoleon’s confident new army turned towards Waterloo and an engagement with the British under the command of the Duke of Wellington (see THE IRON DUKE), Blücher refused to consider the idea of withdrawing his depleted troops. Instead he bathed his wounds with brandy, drank the rest of it and, driven by his now blazing hatred of the French, led his men in pursuit of Napoleon, finally arriving at Waterloo as the battle had already started and the outcome hung in the balance. But Blücher’s intervention proved decisive and between them the Prussian prince and the British duke devastated Bonaparte’s army in a crushing defeat.
After the battle, Blücher is believed to have turned to Wellington and commented, in what was probably the understatement of the century, ‘My dear comrade, what an affair.’
Wellington returned to England a national hero, while Blücher retired to Poland, where he died peacefully four years later, in 1819. To this day, Germans use the expression ran wie Blücher (‘on it like Blücher’) to describe approaching a task with aggressive determination. Statues in his honour have been erected in many German towns and, nearly two hundred years after his death, pubs in Britain still bear the name of the war hero, whose courage and tenacity turned the Battle of Waterloo in Britain’s favour, putting an end, once and for all, to the Napoleonic threat.
The Prospect of Whitby (Wapping, London)
THE PLACE TO GO FOR A RINGSIDE VIEW OF EXECUTION DOCK
Situated on the banks of the Thames at Wapping, the Prospect is one of London’s most famous pubs. It also claims to be one of its oldest: a tavern has served ale on the site since 1520. During the seventeenth century the pub had a reputation as a den of thieves and smugglers and became known as the Devil’s Tavern. During the same century the famous diarist Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) became a regular customer when he was attending naval business in Wapping. The notorious ‘Hanging’ Judge Jeffreys (1645–89) – who earned his harsh reputation during the trials following the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 – was also a regular and would watch the hangings at nearby Execution Dock (see also THE CAPTAIN KIDD) from the pub balcony. Common criminals were tied to posts here and left to drown as the tide came in. During the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century a fire destroyed the Devil’s Tavern. Once the pub had been rebuilt, the landlord clearly thought its image could do with a boost. Hence it was renamed after a three-masted collier from the north-east that regularly moored alongside, the Prospect of Whitby.
The Quiet Woman
HOW HOLDING YOUR TONGUE CAN HELP YOU KEEP YOUR HEAD
The Quiet Woman is one name I simply had to investigate, having never encountered one myself. (I mean the pub, of course.) The Quiet Woman in East Sterndale, near Buxton in Derbyshire is over four hundred years old, owned by the same family for over three hundred. The pub sign bears the picture of a headless woman with the legend: ‘Soft words turneth away wrath.’ The story goes that there was once an innkeeper’s wife in Earl Sterndale who was so talkative that her head was cut off in a final attempt to silence her. Either more than one chatty woman met a similar grisly fate or the variations on the theme – including the Good Woman and the Headless Woman – all refer to the same legend, reinforced by the rhyme: ‘Here is a woman who has lost her head / She is all quiet now – you see she is dead.’
The Quiet Woman in Leek, Staffordshire, has a similar sign – a woman carrying her head in one hand and a candelabrum in the other. The story goes that she was a treacherous barmaid who was punished for spreading her customers’ secrets. Meanwhile, in Wareham Forest, Dorset, the Silent Woman Inn is said to have been a den of smugglers who discovered the landlady had been gossiping about their activities in the local market place. The smugglers silenced her by cutting out her tongue, thereby creating the ‘unique phenomenon’ of the silent woman.
So, overall, it would appear these pub names have all evolved from the perceived belief that women, in general, talk too much. Pubs are places where men have traditionally sought refuge from the intrusive chatter of their wives (see also THE NAG’S HEAD). To call your pub the Quiet Woman and to hang a picture of a headless woman outside nails your misogynistic colours firmly to the mast: women are not welcome here. It certainly goes to show that humour has got subtler over the centuries. Come back, Bernard Manning – all is forgiven.
The Ram Jam
A DRINK, A CON-TRICK OR THE MOST CROWDED PUB IN TOWN?
The Ram Jam is a common enough name for a pub, club or hotel, but explanations of its origin vary. One tells the tale of an innkeeper who returned from India with the recipe for a new drink that becam
e instantly popular with his regulars, but as it was so easy to make he kept the recipe secret, insisting only his Indian manservant, Ram Jam, knew what it was. He died with the secret intact and locals renamed the pub in honour of their favourite, if no longer available, tipple.
Another, rather more anecdotal theory, from the Ram Jam Inn at Oakham in Leicestershire, apparently accounts for how the pub acquired its unusual name. Many years ago a traveller once claimed he could show the innkeeper’s wife how to draw both mild ale and bitter from the same barrel. When she asked for proof, the traveller drilled a hole in one side of the barrel and asked her to ram her thumb into it to prevent the ale from leaking out. Then he made a hole on the other side and insisted she jam her thumb into that while he went to find some spiles (wooden pegs used to control the flow of carbon dioxide from a barrel of beer). But instead, and I think we all saw this one coming, he skipped town without paying his bill, leaving the red-faced wife over the barrel where her husband later found her. The problem with this ‘official’ version is that I have heard this story told several times as an urban legend, and the pub in question is not always called the Ram Jam.
The final theory is rather duller, if somewhat more likely. The expression ‘ram jam’ was already well known by the early 1800s and understood to mean either a public place full of people or a mouth full of food. More recently the name Ram Jam has acquired a musical connotation. During the 1960s the Ram Jam Club in Brixton became famous for its mixture of ska, reggae and soul music that became popular with the original mods. Ram Jam was also the name of an American rock band that had a worldwide hit in 1977 with a song called ‘Black Betty’.
