Cock and bull story

It is often used to describe a description of events told by someone who is being deceitful or giving an excuse, perhaps unconvincingly.

The first recorded use of the phrase in English was in John Day's 1608 play Law-trickes or Who Would Have Thought It:[1] What a tale of a cock and a bull he told my father.

[2]The Cock and the Bull inns in Stony Stratford were staging posts for rival coach lines on Watling Street, the London–Birmingham turnpike road.

[3] The history of The Bull is less well documented but is certainly older than 1600; the present building is "late eighteenth century".

[5] According to another source, the rival inns were in Fenny Stratford, a nearby town also on Watling Street,[6] but no such hostelries exist there today.