Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-29
GENESIS OF A PHRASE
WHY WE SAY "GooD WINE NEEDS
NO BUSH"
Boughs Of Holly and Laurel and the
Ivy Were olden Signs of Tip
ping Places.
From the London Globe.

From the London Globe.
Links with the past are preserved IN
many curious, and often unsupported, ways
and things. They may be traced in chill
drens games and in masculine swear
words They linger in matters OF daily
habit and in customs of courtesy. Many
are to be found in the commonest words
and phrases. Few, If any, milliners who
use and speak of "bandboxes," for exam
ple realize that they are using word
which is a survival from Puritan times,
when men wore plain bands instead OF
snowy lace collars; and probably not one
in hundred of the folk who quote glibly
the familiar proverb, Good wine needs no
bush,' gives thought to the ancient lore
and custom suggested by and associated
with the phrase.
In days before the houses in the streets
of towns were numbered shopkeepers OF
all kinds hung out signs by which their
places of business could be identified. Very
many of these were purely arbitrary and
had no necessary relation to the wares
sold. At a shop sporting the sign OF the
Bell, for instance, you might buy DOCKS
or seeds groceries or hardware, or any
thing else. But besides these arbitrary
signs there were few which were always
associated with and only used by partlc-
ular trades. The long striped pole, which
has lasted until our own day. has been Tor
centuries together with, in past times,
the dangling basin) the sign of the barber.
And before inn signs became the hetero-
geneous, unmeaning medley of heroes ana
landowners heads, of blue boars and other
heraldic monStrosities-of signs, in short,
of all kinds and styles as they now are
were the chosen ensigns of the vintner' s
and ale sellers trade. Some used a chess
board pattern on their shutters, and so be-
came known as the "Chequers, name
signs were the red lattice and the ivy
bush 1t is of course from this ancient
winners custom of hanging out green
bush as sign that we get our proverb,
Good wine needs no BUSH.
Bush of Ivy.
The bush was nearly always of Ivy, the
custom thus preserving the association OF
Ivy with Bacchus, which takes us back to
classical times. The jolly god, according
to the legend, was hid by his aunt Inc with
ivy. leaves in his cradle, so that Juno
might not find him. and Horace tells us
that he sat at the feast of Jupiter with his
temples bound with the green ivy wreath.
The use of this symbol of Bacchus is prac-
tically obsolete in this country, but in
many an out-of-the-way village in France
and elsewhere on the continent the dusty
green ivy bush may still be seen over the
door of the humble auberge, or village tav-
ern In France, however, besides ivy, 9TH
er green boughs, such as those of holly,
laurel and broom were and are used as
inn signs. In one of George Sands novels
a miller who has given the heroine and
her attendants a nights lodging, refuses
payment, saying: Mon, puisque, CONNIE je
vous lie dis je ne suis pas t.ubergiste. Voy-
eZ, nous, n avonS nj houX nj genet notre
porte"
Very many references to the bush occur
in our early literature. One satirist re-
marks that IF the winners nose be at the
door it is a sign sufficient, but the absence
of this is supplied by the ivy bush" An
other makes a remarkably conscientious
innkeeper say:
rather will take down my bush and sign
Than live by means of riotous expense.
Dekker describing the rejoicings in Lon
don on the occasion of the proclamation of
King James l, says that mirth was to be
seen in every mans face, the streets were
plumed with gallants, the smokers of to-
bacco filled up whole taverns, and vint-
nerS hung out spick and span new ivy
bushes. because he says, with a sly allu
sion to the proverb, they lacked good wine
Sometimes the bush was not real; the sign
would consist of frame of wood simply
dressed round or wreathed with ivy. A
tavern keeper in Aldersgate street, when
Charles l was beheaded, painted his arti-
fetal bush" black, and his house was long
known as THE Mourning Bush at AlderS-
gate" To beat the ivy BUSH became a
recognized slang phrase for the habit of
tavern freQuenting.
The Red Lattice.
The red lattice was another familiar and
very general alehouse sign. 1t was either
a window of latticework painted red, as a
substitute for glass, or red lattlced pat
tern painted on the shutter or wall in imi-
tation of such window The page, in the
second part of King Henry w. says of
Falstaff to the Prince: He called me even
now my lord, through a red lattice" AL
though both the lattice and the ivy bush
were tavern signs, it seems probable that
there was a real distinction between the
two The red lattice appears to have been
fhn OIL of he
alehouse proper, while the ivy bush was
kept for the houses of a superior degree
where wine could be bought A writer of
1894 remarks that Some alewives, If they
had knowne this receipt = would have
hung out holly bushes at their red latties,
and so they might have beene mistaken for
taverns of many ale-knights.'' Again, in
that curious early example of the plea
rescue novel, THE Unfortunate Traveller"
Nash speaks of a man who kept PLANE
ale-house without welt or garde of anie
Ivibush, and sold syder and cheese by pint
and by pound to all that came" Cheese
and cider seem rather curious combina-
ton, but clearly so humble a place of re-
sort could not venture on the display of a
bush. In Scotland wisp of straw on a
pole used to be the indication of an ale
house.
The lattice lasted as the sign of a hum
BILE tavern till far on in the eighteenth CEN
fury, but is much less often heard of than
the bush The latter. was in use at fairs
in the west country till a much later date.
AT PerSnOTe, IN WoTceSteFSil1Fe, IndHy clll-
Zens maintained for generations an ancient
claim to the right to hang out bush and
sell beer for three days at fair time with
out a license These folk were called
bush house keepers" and the last fair at
which the custom obtained was held so re-
Gently as 1868. In Herefordshire less than
fifty years ago. and at the Gloucester
Michaelmas fair, and at the periodical
"mops," or hiring fairs, many houses not
usually selling liquor hung out bushes on
fair days and supplied drink. But the sign
is now obsolete in every part of the coun-
try. Old customs change; neither pub
licans nor private citizens any longer hang
out ivy bushes, nor do wise men think to
get good wine at the common tavern bar