Toby Jug

Typically the seated figure is a heavy-set, jovial man holding a mug of beer in one hand and a pipe of tobacco in the other and wearing 18th-century attire: a long coat and a tricorn hat.

'[5] Toby Fillpot was also the subject of a popular poem, 'The Brown Jug', by Francis Fawkes: DEAR TOM , this brown jug, that now foams with mild ale, (In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the Vale) Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old soul As e'er drank a bottle or fathomed a bowl; In boosing about 't was his praise to excel, And among jolly topers he bore off the bell.

It chanced, as in dog-days he sat at his ease, In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please, With a friend and a pipe, puffing sorrows away, And with honest old Stingo was soaking his clay, His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut, And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt.

His body when long in the ground it had lain, And time into clay had resolved it again, A potter found out in its covert so snug, And with part of fat Toby he formed this brown jug; Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild ale, So here 's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.

In the book and 1949 film Twelve O'Clock High a Toby Jug depicting Robin Hood is used as a signal in the officer's club, to discreetly warn aircrews that there will be a mission the following day, without revealing this to outsiders who might be visiting.