"Cock and bull story" is an English-language idiom for a far-fetched and fanciful story or tale of highly dubious validity. 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'':

The inns on Watling Street

The Cock and the Bull inns in

Stony Stratford Stony Stratford is a market town in Buckinghamshire and a constituent town of Milton Keynes, England. It is located on Watling Street, historically the Roman road from London to Chester. It is also a civil parish with a town council in the Cit ...

were staging posts for rival coach lines on

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England, running from Dover and London in the southeast, via St Albans to Wroxeter. The road crosses the River Thames at London and was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the M ...

, the LondonBirmingham turnpike road. It is said that local people, regarding the passengers staying at the inns as a source of news, were told fanciful stories; there was even rivalry between the two inns as to who could tell the most outlandish story. These inns are still in existence: the Cock Hotel is documented to have existed n one form or anotheron the current site since at least 1470; the present building dates from 1742. The history of The Bull is less well documented but is certainly older than 1600; the present building is "late eighteenth century". According to another source, the rival inns were in

Fenny Stratford Fenny Stratford is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, a city in Buckinghamshire, England. It is administered by Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, a civil parish under the Milton Keynes City Council. It is located around Watling Street, at the ...

, a nearby town also on Watling Street, but no such hostelries exist there today. There is no reliable support for the Watling Street etymology of the phrase and it is disputed as

folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

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{{reflist English-language idioms Storytelling Tall tales

The inns on Watling Street

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