Many farmers’ wives and daughters would now think it too fatiguing to
ride on horseback ten miles or more with the marketing in all sorts of
weather. Yet I remember that the inconvenience was little felt half a
century ago; on the contrary, old and young looked with pleasure for
the market-day to come round—the young folks especially, large parties
of whom would always contrive to meet together in rain or shine, and
race along the lanes to the tune of “the devil take the hindmost,”
often jumping over hedges and ditches, to try the springing qualities
of their horses, or galloping off to fair, “three on a horse,” as is
still proverbial for Morvah fair.
Then old folks would often stop to have a chat with people working in
the fields, or with the smiling women looking out of the open doors of
their wayside cottages for the accustomed gossip of the market-day,
when they hail their cronies with something like “Alight, and come in,
my dear; how glad I am to see ’e looking so well. Fasten your horse to
the crook in the wall close by the heaping-stock, and we will soon have
something warm to drink.” Then they would soon have a merry chat, and
often coursey for an hour or two. The dear old souls were never in such
a violent hurry as we all seem to be in now: they didn’t care whether
they had to return by daylight or dark night.
Many used to go to Penzance every Thursday more for the sake of hearing
the news than on any business of importance. Besides, it was a welcome
relief from the wearying monotonous life at the Land’s End and other
remote, lonely places.
It seems to me that the market was more like a fair then, from the
crowd of people in the street, than the fair is like a market now.
Perhaps it is only a fancy; or the reason of the more crowded
appearance of the streets might be owing to the various markets being
more concentrated fifty years ago. So many alterations and improvements
have taken place during the last half century that there are scarcely
any indications remaining to show what Penzance was in the days of our
grandfathers.