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Taylor's Penniless Pilgrimage.

5

There's as good beer and ale as ever twang'd,
And in that street kind No-body^[1] is hanged.
But leaving him unto his matchless fame,
I to St. Albans in the evening came,
Where Master Taylor, at the Saracen's Head,
Unasked (unpaid for) me both lodged and fed.

↑ No-Body was the singular sign of John Trundle, a ballad-printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century [and who seems to have accompanied our author as far as Whetstone on his "Penniless Pilgrimage"—and, certainly up to this point a very "wet" one!] In one of Ben Jonson's plays Nobody is introduced, "attyred in a payre of Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face." This comedy was "printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body." A unique ballad, preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled "The Well-spoken No-body," is accompanied by a woodcut representing a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. Above him is a scroll in black-letter:—

"Nobody . is . my . name . that . Beyreth . Every . Bodyes . Blame."

The ballad commences as follows:—
"Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe,
So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe;
But nowe, beholde, here I am,
Whom all the worlde doeth diffame;
Long have they also scorned me,
And locked my mouthe for speking free.
As many a Godly man they have so served
Which unto them God's truth hath shewed;
Of such they have burned and hanged some.
That unto their ydolatrye wold not come:
The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage,
Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge.
For as much nowe as they name Nobodye
I thinke verilye they speke of me:
Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne—
The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne,
Wrought by no man, but by God's grace,
Unto whom he prayse in every place," &c.
Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards.

[1] No-Body was the singular sign of John Trundle, a ballad-printer in Barbican in the seventeenth century [and who seems to have accompanied our author as far as Whetstone on his "Penniless Pilgrimage"—and, certainly up to this point a very "wet" one!] In one of Ben Jonson's plays Nobody is introduced, "attyred in a payre of Breeches, which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out at his pockets and cap drowning his face." This comedy was "printed for John Trundle and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican at the sygne of No-Body." A unique ballad, preserved in the Miller Collection at Britwell House, entitled "The Well-spoken No-body," is accompanied by a woodcut representing a ragged barefooted fool on pattens, with a torn money-bag under his arm, walking through a chaos of broken pots, pans, bellows, candlesticks, tongs, tools, windows, &c. Above him is a scroll in black-letter:—

"Nobody . is . my . name . that . Beyreth . Every . Bodyes . Blame."

The ballad commences as follows:—
"Many speke of Robin Hoode that never shott in his bowe,
So many have layed faultes to me, which I did never knowe;
But nowe, beholde, here I am,
Whom all the worlde doeth diffame;
Long have they also scorned me,
And locked my mouthe for speking free.
As many a Godly man they have so served
Which unto them God's truth hath shewed;
Of such they have burned and hanged some.
That unto their ydolatrye wold not come:
The Ladye Truthe they have locked in cage,
Saying of her Nobodye had knowledge.
For as much nowe as they name Nobodye
I thinke verilye they speke of me:
Whereffore to answere I nowe beginne—
The locke of my mouthe is opened with ginne,
Wrought by no man, but by God's grace,
Unto whom he prayse in every place," &c.
Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards.

[1]