Locals say the original founder inscribed a brief proverb into the stone of the hearth: 'Light attends honest coin and brave hearts.' The tavern keeps a yearly custom called the Small Lighting where patrons set a single candle on the southwest table to remember lost kin. Though sun imagery fills the room, the establishment venerates refinement and civility, not a deity. A discreet signet known as the Dawnmark is given to favored regulars; it is rumored that a few small households use that mark as a pass-out token when borrowing favors from the Marlowe house.