Balfour.
_Loggerheads_ (Vol. v., p. 338.).--As I do not find that any correspondent
of "N. & Q." on the subject of the sign of "We Three" has mentioned the
existence of a similar sign in a small village in Denbighshire, on the
border of Flintshire, to which a curious tradition is attached, I am
induced to forward the account of it. The last years of Wilson, the
landscape painter (who died in 1782), were passed at a house called
Clomendu, the dove-cote, situated on a property to which he had succeeded
in the little village of Llanoerris, through which the high road from Mold,
his burial-place, to Ruthin passes. Wilson was fond of ale, and is {193}
traditionally said to have frequented a small inn close by the roadside (on
the right hand as you pass through the village from Mold towards the vale
of Clwyd), and to have spent many an hour upon the bench under a tree which
was lately, and is perhaps still standing opposite. His friend the
landlord, wanting a new sign, or more probably a restoration of the old
established one, Wilson painted for him the heads of two very merry
red-faced men, who are looking hard, with a broad grin, towards the
spectator. Long exposure to the wind and weather had, when I saw them,
nearly obliterated the original colouring of the heads, and I have heard
that some Dick Tinto has of late years restored the rubicund hue to their
cheeks: but the words "We Three Loggerheads Be" were quite legible ten
years ago. The innkeeper, who sets a very high value on this sign, is, I
believe, a son of the man for whom Wilson painted it. It is not attached to
a pole, but fastened against the front of the inn: and a few years ago, an
idea prevailing that "The Loggerheads" had been painted on the back of an
unfinished landscape, an artist offered the innkeeper a sum of money to be
allowed to take it down, and ascertain the fact. But it was indignantly
refused, with a protest that the sign which Wilson had painted should never
be removed from its place, as long as he lived.