II.
A Village Fair in Suffolk.
(Golden Hours, 1871.)
"The booths whitening the village green
Where Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen;
Sign beyond sign in close array unfurled,
Picturing at large the wonders of the world;
And far and wide, over the vicar's pale,
Black hoods and scarlet crossing hill and dale,
All, all abroad, and music in the gale."
To dwell far from the great stream of life is ever the fate of the agricultural labourer, and this is why he naturally tends to barbarism. The early Christians had such a sense of his shortcomings in this respect that they used the term "pagani" the country people, to express the state of mental and spiritual ignorance. But the Fair helped to send a few rays of knowledge into his poor benighted mind, and to keep alive those social qualities which in his case often seemed in danger of dying out. At the fair he discovered that there was a world beyond his village, and infinitely wonderful things in it. And even the sports, brutal as many seem -to us now, brought out a spirit of emulation and kept up a sense of self-respect, which was a real good in men, whose souls were in danger of being crushed by daily drudgery and unintermitting toil.
But better than all was the opportunity it afforded for the reunion of families early broken by the exigencies of a dire poverty. The elder boys and girls cheered their labours all the year by the thought of seeing their parents and their brothers and sisters at the Wake, as it is frequently called. Who has read Bloomfield's simple ballad of "Richard and Kate, or Fair Day," and not been touched as the poet recalled scenes which he doubtless witnessed, and which drew out the best feelings of his heart? Richard, an aged Suffolk labourer, sets off with Kate, his good old wife, to the Fair:—
"At length arriv'd amidst the throng,
Grandchildren bawling hemm'd them round,
And dragg'd them by the skirts along
Where gingerbread bestrew'd the ground.
And soon the aged couple spy'd
Their lusty sons and daughters dear;
When Richard, thus exulting, cried—
'Didn't I tell you they'd be here?'"
After . enjoying themselves watching the various scenes of amusement, a happy family party, in which
"Twas good to see the honest strife,
Which should contribute most to please;"
his faithful Kate warns her partner that it is time to depart.
"The children want an hour, ye see,
To talk a bit before we go."
Then they wander into the fields, the little ones toppling on the green and bowling their fairings down the hill.
"Richard with pride beheld the scene,
Nor could he for his life sit still.······
(Then raising high his mug and voice)
'An old man's weakness don't despise!
I love you well, my girls and boys;
God bless you all;'—so said his eyes—
For, as he spoke, a big round drop
Fell bounding on his ample sleeve;
A witness which he could not stop,
A witness which all hearts believe."
Thou, Filial Piety, wert there;
And round the ring, benignly bright,
Dwelt in the luscious half-shed tear.
And in the parting word—Good-night."
Last autumn we stayed at a Suffolk village not a dozen miles from Honnington, where Bloomfield was born, and from Sapiston, where he worked as a farmer's boy. If you object to broken rest, do not take up your abode in a village on the night before the fair. It may be a place in which you could enjoy delicious slumbers every other night in the year, but on that particular morning you will infallibly wake long before daybreak conscious of much unpleasant bustle. There is the constant creaking of wheels coming into the village, but what is worse, a noise as the noise of a city full of undertakers—tap, tap, tap; rap-a-tap-tap. Heavy elephantine feet have been passing and repassing ever since it was light, and when at last you rise and look out of the window, behold! the little triangular market-place is full of canvas and gipsy carts. Cheery-faced country people are busy setting out their wares, while dark, sallow-visaged, inscrutable-looking men stand idly about, probably speculating on the gains their round-abouts, their shows, and their pistol galleries will bring in. By degrees the visitors arrive—boys and girls with shining morning faces, bent upon a day's fun; the elders, too, in the best spirits, and loud in their mutual greetings.
Later on in the day we thread the line of little booths, and think how many generations of Hodges and Mollies, arrayed in new smocks and blazing ribbons, have found in them a source of delight, the mere anticipation of which was enough to sweeten the monotony of their existence from year's end to year's end.
We look at those stores of dolls and whips and whistles, and think how in every age the children have looked forward to fair day as a day redolent with joyful surprises, when some good fairy seemed to load their little hands with all that heart could wish, or brightest fancy ever could conceive.
How we hate the tin whistle's shrill, brain-piercing noise! Yet when we reflect that, for aught we know, the little Saxon ploughboy blew it in the same reckless defiant way beneath the Norman keep, we are compelled to respect it as satisfying a perennial want of boy-nature.
Still more to be venerated is the "darling dolly." Was there ever an age in the world's history in which the "puppa" did not exist in some form or other?—incipient maternal love ever needing something to nurture it and to gratify it. No one could have invented the doll; it must have been the spontaneous creation of girl-nature, tying up a heap of rags into the semblance of a baby.
Shall we then despise the village fair, which showered blessings on the little ones, and provided them with many a happy illusion ere the hard realities of life had dulled their small imaginations? Nay, rather let us pause with delight before the gingerbread stall, and the good-stuff stall, and think how many little mouths have watered as they surveyed those wonderful figures in gingerbread, those piles of hardbake, those bottles of bull's-eyes, those sticks of sugar-candy. Wonderful figures in gingerbread, did we say? Yes, indeed, for why are they so large, and some of them actually gilt? Know ye not that these gingerbreads are the most ancient relics of the fair? They are the true fairings, being nothing else originally than representations of the patron saint of the Church, in honour of whose dedication the fair was held.
Alas! there is a falling off in all these things, but we make bold to say gingerbread and bull's-eyes and sugar candy never can and never will go out of fashion as long as there are boys and girls to eat them.
Yet we must admit it does require some imagination to invest that line of stalls, so strongly suggestive of the Lowther Arcade in petto with the halo of antiquity, especially when, coming to that ancient institution the roundabout, instead of our old friend the hobby-horse, we find it a circle of bicycles, with such legends as these:—"Go on, Joseph," "Going to the Derby," "Patronized by the Nobility," etc.
How that bicycle roundabout speaks of the mutability of all things! Bicycles, indeed, in place of the greasy pole, the jumping in sacks, the bull-baiting, the bear-baiting, the fighting with quarter-staves, the boxing and wrestling, and all the other sports suggestive of rough, strong, sturdy old England!
Nevertheless, the bicycle roundabout affords plenty of fun. Little boys, and young damsels in all the ugly glories of modern female costume, seat themselves on chairs fixed on the roundabout, while young men mount the saddles, and work the bicycles with a will. Round flies the merry circle—old men and children, lads and lassies—while Jacko,the monkey, climbs the many-coloured pole in the centre, and, gravely seated on the cross-beam, surveys the crowd, and cynic-like, doubtless, cogitates on the weakness and folly of the human race. "There they go," thinks he, "madly pursuing a dream. One follows the other, and they please themselves with believing 'tis a splendid race, but they are no more racers than the old mill-horse; they career round the circle, only to end where they began."
But what are those two long funnels which stretch right athwart the centre of the market-place? In front of each is a screen ornamented with martial pictures depicting heroic deeds at Alma and Inkermann. In the centre of each screen a huge hole gapes, and around it a group of men and boys have gathered to spend hours in the slowest fun imaginable.
From time to time one challenges the other to a shot, and then receiving the gun from its fat, imperturbable owner, he fires it off down the tube. A loud click announces the arrival of the ball at the other end, when, if it has hit its aim, the marksman is entitled to a second shot. If not, the crowd wait stolidly until some one else is smitten with a desire to waste a penny. Thus it goes on for hours—click, click, a dull, monotonous game—but it pleases our rustic friends, and why should it displease us?
And now as evening advances the flaring little lights bring out all the latent beauties of the cheap toys and the still cheaper crockery. You see piles of hideous-looking ornaments, and wonder at the bad taste that can buy such rubbish and call it pretty.
From the village inn comes the sound of music, and, passing the door, all may see a rustic Adonis dancing a jig on the sanded floor to the squeaky notes of the village fiddler. Later on the merriment increases, but it is time for all right-minded people to go home.
"'Good-night,' says Harry; 'Good-night,' says Mary
'Good-night' says Dolly to John;
'Good-night,' says Sue; 'Good-night,' says Hugh;
'Good-night,' says every one.
Some walked, and some did run,
Some loitered on the way,
And bound themselves with true love knots
To meet the next holiday."