The Dolphin Inn or Brighton and Hove Albion?
Either way the beer and the team sank without trace.....
Ursa Major. The Bear. The Plough
Or were there just a lot of bears around in the 1700's?
Last edited by Prince_Arthur; 13-09-2017 at 22:43.
Canis Major - Sirius the Dog Star
The greyhound
The black dog
Hare and hounds?
The Talbot?
Red Lion. Leo
Bulls Head. Taurus
The Swan. Cygnus
The Golden Fleece. Aries
The Flying Horse. Pegasus
pubastrology.com
The standard book on the subject is "A History of Signboards" by Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotton, They give an heraldic source for The Dolphin (symbol of the Watermans Company) and also say it could be a corruption of Dauphin (French crown prince). Neither rings true for northern or Pennine counties. They also quote a tale of dolphins swimming up the Thames in the fifteenth century.
A heavily disguised Gay Bar?!
The constellation was created by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 132. According to legend, Hadrian was told by an oracle that only the death of his most beloved person would save him from a great danger.
Antinous (pronounced ‘anti-no-us’) was the boy lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and hence is a real character, not a mythological one, although the story reads like fiction. Antinous was born c. AD 110 in the town of Bythinium (also called Claudiopolis), near present-day Bolu in north-western Turkey. At that time this area was a Roman province, and Hadrian is thought to have met Antinous during an official visit. Hadrian, the first openly gay Roman Emperor, was smitten by the boy and groomed him to become his constant companion.
Hadrian’s happiness did not last long, though. While on a trip up the Nile in AD 130, Antinous drowned near the present-day town of Mallawi in Egypt. Supposedly the oracle had predicted that the Emperor would be saved from danger by the sacrifice of the object he most loved, and Antinous realized that this description applied to him.
Whether the drowning was accident, suicide, or even ritual sacrifice, Hadrian was heartbroken by it. He founded a city called Antinoöpolis near the site of the drowning, declared Antinous a god, and commemorated him in the sky from stars south of Aquila, the Eagle, that had not previously been considered part of any constellation.
One interpretation could therefore be that Aquila the Eagle (representative of the Roman Empire) is a metaphor for Emperor Hadrian.
The constellation’s first known depiction was in 1536 on a celestial globe by the German mathematician and cartographer Caspar Vopel (1511–61); it was shown again in 1551 on a globe by Gerardus Mercator. Tycho Brahe listed it as a separate constellation in his star catalogue of 1602 and it remained widely accepted into the 19th century, when it was eventually remerged with Aquila.
Last edited by Prince_Arthur; 10-09-2017 at 08:31.
Well Larwood & Hotton point out the Eagle and Child is a symbol of the Stanley family who were Earls of Derby and big players in Northern England, similarly the Talbot is heraldic and aristocratic (Earls of Shrewsbury) and greyhounds / white harts are royal badges. A fair few pub signs were there to curry favour with the local gentry, aristocracy or the crown.
Yes there were a few bears around in the 1700's, mostly dancing or being baited, usually in or near a pub.
I think links to astrology/astronomy are a bit fanciful and of course mythology is often the source for the renaming of constellations from the original Arabic names.
I'm inclined to agree.....
Last edited by Prince_Arthur; 13-09-2017 at 22:25.