Chapter 21

Weyhill Fair, which brought Cobbett and the people he harangued into Andover, is a thoroughly old English institution, and although the old custom of fairs is gradually dying out, and this, the Largest Fair in England, is not so important as it was a hundred years ago, it is still a place where much money changes hands once a year. Weyhill is supposed to{146} be one of the places mentioned in Piers Plowman’s Vision, in the line:—
At Wy and at Wynchestre I went to ye fair,

and it is the ‘Weydon Priors’ of the Mayor of Casterbridge, where Henchard sells his wife.

Weyhill Fair was once—in the fine fat days of agricultural prosperity, when England was always at war with France, and corn was dear—a six-days fair. As the ‘oldest inhabitant’ to be discovered nowadays at Weyhill will complain, shaking his head sadly the while, ‘There warn’t none o’ them ’ere ’sheenery fal-lals about in them days to do the wark o’ men and harses so’s no-one can’t get no decent living like, d’ye see?’ If by ‘’sheenery,’ you understand mechanical appliances—‘machinery,’ in fact—to be meant, you will see how distrustfully the agricultural mind still marches to the modern quick-step of progress. There is always plenty of machinery on view at Weyhill Fair: ploughs and harrows, and such like inanimate things, and machinery in motion; steam threshers, winnowers, binders, and the like, threshing, and winnowing, and binding the empty air.
‘JOHNNY’S SO LONG AT THE FAIR’

There are special days set apart—and more or less rigorously observed—for Hiring, for Pleasure, for the Hop Fair, and for the sale of sheep. This great annual fixture begins on Old Michaelmas Eve, 10th October, and lasts four days, as against the six days, that were all too short in which to do the business, up to fifty years ago. Railways have dealt the old English institution of fairs a deadly blow all over the country, and before many more years have gone the majority{147} of them will be things of the past. Their reason for existing will then be quite gone, even as it is now going. Before railways came into being the farmer travelled little, and his men not at all. From one year’s end to the other they probably never saw a town beyond their nearest marketing centre, and they certainly never made the acquaintance of London. So, since the farmer and his men, the mistress and her maids, could not get about to buy, it follows that those who had goods to sell had need to take all the advantage possible of that great and glorious institution, the Fair.

Bitterly disappointed in the old days were those who, from some reason or another, were prevented from coming to this Promised Land of gay and glittering stalls and booths. Jolly and convivial, on the other hand, were those who had the luck to be able to come. ‘Oh, dear! what can the matter be? Johnny’s so long at the Fair,’ commences an old country song. We can guess pretty well what the matter was, just as certainly as if we had been there ourselves. Johnny, of course, had got too much cider, or strong, home-brewed October ‘humming ale’ into him, and, as the rustics would put it, ‘couldn’t stir a peg, were’t ever so.’ And so the girl he left behind him at the farmhouse had need of all the patience at her command while she waited for his return. She probably didn’t much care—for Johnny’s sake; rather for another reason. As thus:—
He promised he’d buy me a fairing to please me;
A bunch of blue ribbons to tie up my bonny brown hair.

{148}

It was the blue ribbons she wanted, you see. Let us, dear friends, hope she got them.

Many dangers threatened the Johnnies—the Colin Clouts of that time. The fair was the happy hunting-ground of Sergeant Kite, who used to treat the dull-witted fellows until they were stupid as owls, when, hey presto! the Queen’s Shilling was clapped into their nerveless palms, and they woke the next morning to find themselves duly enlisted, with a bunch of parti-coloured ribbons fixed in their hats as a token and badge of their military servitude. Then ‘what price’ those blue ribbons lying forgotten in the pocket for the disconsolate fair one? Nothing under a fine of twenty pounds sterling sufficed to release a recruit in those days, and as few families could then afford that ransom, the fair was a turning-point in the career of many a lusty fellow.

The recruiting sergeant still does a little business at Weyhill, but his claws are nowadays cut very close.

Weyhill, as you approach it, is situated, much to your surprise, not on a hill at all, but rather on the flat. It is a mere nothing of a village, and beyond the parish church, the inevitable inn, and the equally inevitable farmhouse, houses are very much to seek.
THE HORSE FAIR

The stranger who happens upon the place at any other than fair time is astonished by the large numbers of open sheds and the numerous clusters of long, low, thatched, and white-washed cottages, situated on a wide, open, grassy common beside the road, all empty, and every one bearing boldly-painted announcements, in black paint, of ‘Hot Dinners,’{149}

‘Refreshments,’ and the like. The stranger might be excused if he thought this some bankrupt settlement whose vanished inhabitants, like the people of that mythical place who ‘eked out a precarious existence by taking in one another’s washing,’ had lived on selling refreshments to each other until they had finally all died of indigestion. He would be very much mistaken, however, in his surmise, for this is Weyhill Fair-ground in undress. If you wish to see it in full swing, you must visit the spot between 10th and 13th October, when it is lively enough.

The first day is the Sheep Fair. As many as 150,000 sheep have been sold here on this day. The Horse Fair is held every day; and an astonishing number and variety of horses there are too. Irish horses, brought all the way from Cork, Scotch horses, Welsh horses; every kind of horse, from the Suffolk Punch to the New Forest Pony. Great lumbering young cart-horses stand behind their pens with manes and tails plaited to wonderment with straw, for all the world like beauties dressed for the County Ball, and just as proud and self-conscious. Do you want to buy a horse of any kind at the Fair? Then don’t!—unless, indeed, you know all that is to be known about horses, and a bit over; otherwise the dealer will ‘have’ you, for a dead certainty. To see them showing off a horse’s good qualities and hiding his bad ones is a liberal education, but see that you acquire your knowledge at some one else’s expense. With this determination you can afford to be well amused with the waving of coloured flags on long sticks, by which the horses are made to pirouette{150} before the eyes of likely purchasers, and can safely smile at the wily dealer’s exclamations of ‘There’s blood!’ ‘Get up, my beauty!’ and ‘Here’s the quality!’

The very pick of the horseflesh, however, does not reach Weyhill. The dealers bring their stock with them by road from Milford, Holyhead, Scotland, at the rate of ten miles a day, and as they thus have to come a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, the journey takes from ten days to a fortnight. This would be a serious expense and loss of time were it not for the fact that dealers always look to make sales along the road.

The second day of the Fair is known as Mop Fair, or Molls’ and Johns’ Day. Its official title is the Hiring, or Statute Fair. At twelve o’clock, mid-day, farm-servants, men or women, ‘Molls’ or ‘Johns,’ leave their employ, and, drawing their wages, offer themselves to be hired for the coming twelvemonth. They stand in long lines, the carters with a length of plaited whipcord in their hats, the shepherds with a lock of wool, and wait while the farmers come and bargain with them. When they have struck up an agreement, the men proceed to fix coloured ribbons in their hats, and do their best to have a merry time with the wages they have just received.
MINOR TRADES

There is certainly every opportunity of spending money on the spot. Steam merry-go-rounds keep up a continual screeching and bellowing; stalls with all manner of toys and nick-nacks of the most grotesque shapes and hideous colouring; cake and sweetmeat stalls, loaded, as Weyhill stalls have been from time immemorial, with Salisbury gingerbread; Aunt{151} Sallies; try-your-strength machines, and a hundred others compete for the rustic’s coin. Then, if he wants a new suit of clothes, here is the clothier’s stall, where Hodge can bespeak a suit, wear it during the next twelve months, and pay for it next Fair, just as his father and grandfather used to do before him. All the booths visited, the horse medicines stall inspected, the latest improvements in agricultural machinery gaped at, Hodge repairs to the refreshment hovels, wherein certain crafty men who have come down for the occasion from London are awaiting him, to treat the unsuspecting yokel to drinks, to lure him on to play cards, and finally to cheat him and pick his pockets in the most finished and approved fashion. For these gentry, and for the disorderly in general, there is a police-station on the ground, with cells all complete, and with local magistrates every morning to hear cases, and to consign prisoners, if necessary, to Winchester Gaol, sixteen miles away.

The third and fourth days are now given up to the Pleasure and Hop Fairs. One of the smaller trades connected with the malting and general agricultural industries is that of malt-shovel and barn-shovel making. These are wooden shovels of a peculiar shape, and are sold only at one stall. Another of the minor businesses is that of umbrella selling. The umbrellas are very fine and large, and of a kind that would make a marked man of any Londoner who should use one in town.

The Cheese Fair is now a small one, dealings generally being confined to local folks, who delight in{152} the Blackmore and ‘Blue Vinney’ cheeses of this and the adjoining counties. London dealers still attend the Hop Fair, in which many thousands of pounds’ worth of hops change hands to the drinking of much champagne, brought on to the ground by the cart-load, as in the brave days of yore. There are two distinct hop markets, the Farnham Row and the Country Side. Hops from Farnham, Bentley, Petersfield, Liphook, and other neighbouring places find a ready market. They are sold more exclusively by sample than formerly, and so only a few ‘pockets,’ as the tightly packed sacks are named, are visible. Round them dealers may be seen, rubbing the hops in their hands and smelling them with a knowing look, while the vendor cuts another sample out of the pocket for the next likely customer. He does this with a singular steel instrument called a ‘sample drawer.’ First a sharp and long-bladed knife is thrust into the hard mass, and two sides cut, and then the broad-bladed ‘drawer’ driven in and screwed tight, bringing out a compact square of hops to be tested.

By nine o’clock every night all the booths and stalls have to be closed, and stillness reigns over the scene, save for the cough of the sheep, the occasional lowing of the cattle, or the fretful whinnying of a wakeful horse. And when the last day of the Fair is done, the booths are all shut up and deserted, and desolation reigns again for a year.