A cock and bull story

One theory ties this directly to Stony Stratford, an English coaching town on the old London-to-Holyhead road, where two rival coaching inns, The Cock and The Bull, were supposedly the source of exaggerated traveller's gossip that grew taller with every retelling between the two. A competing, older theory points to a general folk tradition of fables featuring talking animals, cocks and bulls among them, as a byword for fantastical nonsense long before the Stony Stratford inns existed. Both theories have real supporting evidence, and etymologists remain divided on which came first.