POPULAR PLACES OF RESORT.--WAKES, STATUTES, AND FAIRS.
Besides the remains of the ancient festivals, the country people find a
great source of amusement in these gatherings. The WAKE is the parochial
feast of the dedication of the church. It has now dwindled into a
village holiday, shorn by the Reformation of all its ecclesiastical and
sacred character. But it furnishes a certain point in every year, in
every individual parish, to which the rural people can look forward as a
point of rest and mutual rejoicing. It is a time which leads them to
clean up their houses, to look forward and prepare for a renewal of
their wardrobe; and which cheers the spirit of many an otherwise
solitary and labouring person with the prospect of a short season of
relaxation, a short pause in the otherwise ever-going machinery of
servitude. The old people--parents, and grand-parents, say--when telling
of their children out at service, in some distant place, or married and
settled far off: “Well, well, we shall see them at the wake. They’ll all
be here, thank God, well and hearty, I hope.” The children, as they
groan at times under the tedium of perpetual labour, suddenly cheer up,
and say,--“Well, but we shall go home at the wake;”--a thing which is
regularly stipulated for at hiring; and the vision of that joyful time,
though but a moment in itself, puts out all the twilight of their weary
waiting. The time comes. The merry bells of the church are ringing on
the anniversary of that church’s completion, perhaps five or seven
hundred years ago. Merrily they ring; and simple and glad creatures,
young maidens, and youths, and comely pairs with a troop of children
round them, hear them, as they come over hill and dale, approaching from
all quarters the place of their nativity, and the place of their
ancestors: the one place, however small and however obscure, tinged all
over with the memories of childhood, and filled with the stories and
legends that were interwoven with the very grain of their minds by their
parents’ recitals in early life--the one place, therefore, which seems
the most important in the universe. They, like the Chinese, always place
in the maps of their simple thoughts their native village in the centre
of the earth. Over hill and dale they are coming, all in their holiday
array; and in many a bright little cottage, basking in the sunshine of
morning, are eager hearts looking out for them; wondering how Grace and
Thomas will look; whether they are much altered; and whether the
children of the married ones will be much grown. The beauty of these
village feasts is, that they do not occur all at one time, so that the
friends and acquaintance of the inhabitants of one place, come pouring
in to see them, and are ready in their turn to receive them at their
feast.
They are times of pleasant exchange of hospitalities and renewals of
simple friendships. Out of doors there are stalls of toys and
sweetmeats, and whirligigs for the children; within, there is, for once,
plum-pudding and roast beef, and an infinity of such talk as best
pleases their tastes. Old notes of by-gone years are compared. Many are
recalled to remembrance who have not been thought of for a long time.
The hearts of the old are warmed by retracing their early exploits, and
early acquaintance, with all the pleasant exaggerations of memory; and
the young listen, and think with wonder on those good old times.
In some old-fashioned places, these feasts are named from and mingled
with the remains of other old church rites. At Ilkeston in Derbyshire,
it is called the Cross-Dressing, and the cross in the village is dressed
up with oaken boughs, with their leaves gilt and spangled. At
Tissington, near Dovedale, the Well-Dressing or Well-Flowering, when
they dress up a beautiful spring with flowers, and have dances and
processions and much merriment, is their great feast, though it may not
happen to fall exactly on the day of the dedication of the church. At
Blidworth, in the old demesnes of Sherwood, it is their Rocking; I
suppose from its happening to fall on the day after Twelfth-day, or St.
Distaff’s-day, the custom of which is described by Herrick:--
Partly work, and partly play,
Ye must on St. Distaff’s-day:
From the plough soone free your teame,
Then come home and fother them.
If the maides a spinning goe,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maides bewash the men:
Give St. Distaff all the right,
Then bid Christmas sport good night.
And next morrow every one,
To his owne vocation.
In different villages, different customs have allied themselves to the
great annual feast, the season of meeting of friends and relatives. Long
may these meetings remain bound up with, at least, one bright day in the
year. I trust, however knowledge and refinement may extend themselves,
they will never refine these rural holidays away. Let them root out
cruelty and rudeness, and drunkenness, as they have done already in a
great degree--for where now are bull-baitings, bear-baitings,
dog-fights, and cock-fights, which twenty years ago were the invariable
accompaniments and great attraction of these wakes? Let Christian
knowledge root out these things, and thus perfect this one white season
of the cottager’s year--making it entirely an occasion for cultivating
the best affections, and knitting together family ties.
STATUTES.
These, which are called provincially STATITZ, or STATICE, are meetings
for hiring of farm and household servants, “according to statutes made
and provided,” and are held in certain central and convenient places.
They are attended merely by farmers, and people who happen to want men
or maid-servants, and by the servants themselves. By the latter they
are looked forward to with much interest. They furnish occasion for a
holiday. They are for the time their own masters, having left, or being
about to leave their places, and either to re-engage themselves, or to
seek new ones. They here meet their old acquaintances, and compare notes
of the past year, of the character of the different places they have
had; of what extraordinary has befallen them; and are full of new
schemes and speculations as to where they shall go; what advance of
wages they shall obtain; in what capacity they shall hire themselves. In
many parts of the country he who offers himself as a shepherd appears
with a lock of wool in his hat, placed under the band; the wagoner has a
bit of whipcord stuck there; the groom a bit of sponge; the milkmaid in
her bonnet a tuft of cow-hair; and the general run of farm-servants are
conspicuous enough as to what they are, by their carters’-frocks, or
slops, hob-nailed ankle boots, and out-of-door, half-waggish,
half-sheepish looks.
It is a true country scene, to see all these rude sons of the soil
collected together from their farm-yards and solitary fields, where, far
from towns, they have gone whistling after the plough, sowing, or
gathering in harvest; and the girls that have been scrubbing, churning,
and milking, and occasionally helping in the hay or corn fields, here
dressed out in their rustic finery, and shewing such robust forms and
rosy faces as might astonish our over-delicate citizens. To see the
farmers going amongst them, inquiring after their accomplishments and
qualities, and cheapening them much as they would cheapen a horse; and
their no less wary wives negotiating with the buxom damsels of the mop
and pail. These matters all satisfactorily disposed of, and the
_Earnest_, or money given on account of future services, or as it is
otherwise called, the _Fastening-penny_, from its formerly being a
penny, though now a shilling, being given, away go the farmers and
farmeresses, and leave the lads and lasses to a day of jollity and fun.
The swains lose no time in selecting each his _chere-amie_ for the day;
and the afternoon is spent in eating, flirting, drinking, and dancing,
and then all separate their several ways, for at least another year.
Some of these STATUTES in agricultural districts bring together a vast
concourse of people. In Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and many other parts
of the country, these statutes are held about Old Michaelmas-day, when
all the servants, men and women, are at liberty from their servitude,
and have a week’s holiday to attend the different neighbouring statutes,
mops, or bull-roastings, as they are called. All work is at an end.
Day-labourers are the only men who can be got to do out-of-doors
offices; charwomen take the place of housemaids within; and good
housewives are often at their wits’ end what to do. As you enter towns
you find them swarming with the country lads and lasses, and oxen
roasting in the streets; booths, shows, eating, treating, and dancing
the order of the day. As you go along the highways you meet the young
country people streaming along in their rustic finery to or from the
towns; and when you arrive at a country inn, probably the door is barred
and bolted, if it be towards evening,--the servants being all gone to be
hired, the master to hire, and the mistress left alone, and no little
afraid of the loose strolling fellows who are abroad at this unsettled
time. I once went, when a boy, with my schoolmaster to Polesworth
Statute, in Warwickshire, and well remember that such was the crowd,
that although I saw a penny on the ground, and made many attempts to
stoop down and pick it up, I found it impossible to do it. In
Northumberland, Durham, and the south of Scotland, similar meetings are
held, where the hinds hire their Bondagers.
FAIRS.
Statutes are places where the working class of the rural districts amuse
themselves, but fairs are great sources of pleasure to all classes of
country people. The farmers, and their wives and daughters; the
villagers of all descriptions; the cottagers from the most secluded
retreats; the squire and his family from the hall--all flock to the fair
of their county town, and find some business to be transacted, and a
world of pleasure to be enjoyed. There are cheese, cattle, horses,
poultry, geese, and a hundred other things, to be sold; and multitudes
of household articles, clothing, and trinkets to be bought; and, besides
all this, a vast of seeing and being seen to be done. I will describe
the great October Fair of Nottingham, called Goose-Fair, as a good
specimen of a country fair on a large scale.
In the country, for many miles round, this fair is looked forward to by
young and old with views of business and recreation for months; and what
was done, and said, and seen at Goose-Fair; who was met there, and what
matches were made, serve for conversation for months afterwards. The
buyers and sellers of cheese, apples, onions, and a variety of other
articles, are making their preparations to be there; some of them from
distant counties; horse-jockeys are getting ready their strings of
horses; young people are putting their wardrobes in order, and expecting
all that such young people do expect on such occasions. In the town, two
or three days before, the signs of the approaching fair increase. Huge
caravans incessantly arrive, with their wild beasts, theatricals,
dwarfs, giants, and other prodigies and wonders. Then come trotting in
those light, neat covered wagons, containing the contents of sundry
bazaars that are speedily to spring up. As you go out of the town at any
end, you meet caravan after caravan, cart after cart, long troops of
horses tied head and tail, and groups of those wild and peculiar-looking
people, that are as necessary to a fair as flowers are to May;--all
kinds of strollers, beggars, gipsies, singers, dancers, players on
harps, Indian jugglers, Punch and Judy exhibitors, and similar wandering
artists and professors.
For some days before the general fair commences, the horse-fair is going
on. You recognise all the knowing-ones in horse-flesh from all the
country round; country gentlemen and smart young farmers, and cunning
jockeys with their long drab great coats, short old boots, and their
jockey whips stuck carelessly under their arm. Horses of all kinds,
light and heavy, full blood, half blood, and no blood at all, are ridden
and driven to shew their action, along the pavement in all directions,
as if the aim of the riders was to run over everybody they could, and
break their own necks into the bargain.
Then on the authentic day of the fair, forth comes the procession of the
corporation to proclaim the fair, and march up the market-place and down
again in their scarlet robes, mayor and aldermen, the mace borne and the
trumpet blown before them, and the beadles with their staves behind.
Having made this procession to the wonder of all children, and
sight-loving adults, they ascend into the Town-Hall, there, oddly
enough, called the Exchange, and the crier proclaims the fair from the
charter, at the prompting of the town-clerk. The fair is proclaimed, and
is already in existence. There is the market-place, an area of six
acres, jammed full of stalls, shows, bazaars, and people. From the
earliest hour of the morning, wagons loaded with cheese have been
arriving, which are now seen on one side of the market-place, pitched
down in piles, and in quantities enough, one would think, to serve all
England for a twelvemonth. There are the farmers, and their wives and
daughters, well wrapped up in good market coats, with numerous capes,
surveying with pride the workmanship of their hands, and the product of
their summer’s dairy; and there are the dealers busy amongst it with
their cheese-tasters, tasting and chaffering, and buying, and sending
off their purchases by wagons to the wharfs. It is incredible in what a
little time those great heaps of cheese vanish from the stones, and nuts
and onions in abundance.
The whole market-place is now one mass of moving people, and
unintermitted din. Wombwell’s Menagerie displays all its gigantic
animals on its scenes; Holloway’s “Travelling Company of Comedians” are
dancing with harlequin and clown in front of their locomotive theatre;
wonderful women, and children, and animals; wonderful machinery,
panoramas, and prodigies are displayed on all sides in pictorial
enormity, and the united sounds of Wombwell’s fine band of musicians in
their beef-eater costume, the band of Holloway, the smaller ones of
other shows, and the bawlings, and invitings, and oratorical declamation
of a dozen different showmen, with bellowing of gongs and clashing of
cymbals, make up a sound enough to drive to distraction more swine than
ran into the sea of Gennesaret, but which seems, notwithstanding,
wonderfully delightful to ears grown weary of country quiet. It is
curious to see the numbers pouring in and out of these places; to see
the dense crowd of upturned faces collected before every show where
there are antics playing, and clowns and fools talking nonsense for
their entertainment. To hear the hearty laughs which follow their
standing jokes, is to feel how cheaply pleasure can be furnished to
hungry spirits.
But the crowd of fair-goers walking round and round this annual Babel!
During the morning, business is the chief engrossment; but from noon
till eleven or twelve o’clock at night, pleasure is the pursuit. The
farmers’ daughters, who stood in their caped coats before their piles of
cheese, are now metamorphosed into most extraordinary belles, and have
found beaus as dashing as themselves. At all the stalls, purchases of
gingerbread, sweetmeats, nuts and oranges, are going on; and through the
bazaars--those modern additions to fairs, goes a perpetual stream of gay
people, admiring the endless variety of things that are there displayed
on either hand. Tea-caddies, workboxes of rosewood and pearl, china,
cut-glass, drums and trumpets, and all kinds of toys; bracelets and
necklaces, and all species of female trinkets; fans, and parlour
bellows, figures in porcelain and painted wood; purses, musical boxes,
and, in short, all the thousand contents of a bazaar.
This afternoon portion of the fair is called the gig-fair, because
people come driving in their gigs to it; _i. e._ it is the
pleasure-fair, where smart people from all quarters come to see, and to
be seen. The second day of the fair, I believe, is the earliest on which
_very genteel_ people make their appearance, and then you may often see
numbers of country families of good standing mingling in the moving mass
of Vanity Fair. It is amusing enough to sit at a window, and look over
all the stirring and motley scene. To see the eternal stream of smart
dresses and fair faces go by. Round and round they move, in one dense
throng, every one apparently driven forward by the weight of the coming
crowd; and, taking into consideration the press, the noise, the
weariness of such thronged and continued walking, one is apt to wonder
how any human beings can find pleasure in it. But that they do find
pleasure, and an intense pleasure, their eager and multitudinous
flocking thither sufficiently denote. They come out of a quietness that
presents a little noise and dissipation as an agreeable contrast. They
come to attractions adapted to their taste. The greater part of them are
full of youth and expectation. There is no occasion on which so many
country flames are struck up as at a fair. And in truth, you see numbers
of fine healthy forms of both sexes in this crowd, and beautiful faces
in numbers sufficient to make you feel with the poet:
The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair.
It is a time, in fact, of universal country jollity, pleasure-taking,
love-making, present-making, treating, and youthful entertainment,
enjoyed to an extent that people of different tastes can form no
conception of. Many an important connexion is dated from the fair; many
a freak, a pleasure, a piece of wit and fun, are thence registered, and
talked of at country firesides to the latest period of life; and these
are all so much part and parcel of our common nature, that there must be
a stony place in the heart which does not strongly sympathise with the
actors and partakers of them. Joy, therefore, to all fair-goers! and
with the growth of greater intelligence and taste, long may the healthy
capacity of being lightly pleased retain its hold on the robust forms
and sweet faces of English Rural Life.
I have often thought that we have artists who go all over the world in
quest of novelties of scene, costume, character, and grouping, many of
whom, if they came to an English fair, with minds capable of entering
into what they saw, might give us scenes and figures of more real
interest than they often bring back after years of absence. The
dancing-scene before Holloway’s; the figures and coquetting of country
belles and their lovers; and the picturesque simplicity of the old men
gazing like children on some wonder-promising showman, and now full of
consternation and amaze at some of them finding their purses clean
vanished from their pockets, would form good subjects for the pencil.
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