The next step was a carved or painted effigy of an animal or bird, such as a swan, which was fixed in a hoop and hung at the end of the ale pole.
1958, Clifford William Dugmore, The Mass and the English Reformers, page 104:
The ale pole is not merely a signification that it is a good thing to drink ale: it is more than a witness to the fact that ale was brewed fifteen hundred years ago.
2002, Kirstin Olsen, All Things Shakespeare: A-I, page 5:
A common kind of alehouse sign — not a "brand name" like the Sun and Moon (which existed in Aldersgate, London, in Shakespeare's day), but a generic sign identifying the type of business conducted within — was an "ale pole."
