The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles

by James Lane Allen

III

It was not until about the year 1840 that the fair began to touch-the heart of the whole people. Before this time there had been no amphitheatre, no music, no booths, no side-shows, no ladies. A fair without ladies! How could the people love it, or ever come to look upon it as their greatest annual occasion for love-making?

An interesting commentary on the social decorum [141] of this period is furnished in the fact that for some twenty years after the institution of the fair no woman put her foot upon the ground. She was thought a bold woman, doing a bold deed, who one day took a friend and, under the escort of gentlemen, drove in her own carriage to witness the showing of her own fat cattle; for she was herself one of the most practical and successful of Kentucky farmers. But where one of the sex has been, may not all the sex—may not all the world—safely follow? From the date of this event, and the appearance of women on the grounds, the tide of popular favor set in steadily towards the fair.

For, as an immediate consequence, seats must be provided. Here one happens upon a curious bit of local history—the evolution of the amphitheatre among the Kentuckians. At the earliest fairs the first form of the amphitheatre had been a rope stretched from tree to tree, while the spectators stood around on the outside, or sat on the grass or in their vehicles. The immediate result of the necessity for providing comfortable seats for the now increasing crowd, was to select as a place for holding the fair such a site as the ancient Greeks might have chosen for building a theatre. Sometimes this was the head of a deep ravine, around the sides of which seats were constructed, while the bottom below served as the arena for the exhibition of the stock, which was led in and out through the mouth of the hollow. At [142] other times advantage was taken of a natural sink and semicircular hill-side. The slope was sodded and terraced with rows of seats, and the spectators looked down upon the circular basin at the bottom. But clearly enough the sun played havoc with the complexions of the ladies, and a sudden drenching shower was still one of the uncomfortable dispensations of Providence. Therefore a roofed wooden structure of temporary seats made its appearance, designed after the fashion of those used by the travelling show, and finally out of this form came the closed circular amphitheatre, modelled on the plan of the Colosseum. Thus first among the Kentuckians, if I mistake not, one saw the English cattle-show, which meantime was gathering about itself many characteristics of the English fair, wedded strangely enough to the temple of a Roman holiday. By-and-by we shall see this form of amphitheatre torn down and supplanted by another, which recalls the ancient circus or race-course—a modification corresponding with a change in the character of the later fair.

The most desirable spot for building the old circular amphitheatre was some beautiful tract of level ground containing from five to twenty acres, and situated near a flourishing town and its ramifying turnpikes. This tract must be enclosed by a high wooden paling, with here and there entrance gates for stock and pedestrians and vehicles, guarded by [143] [144] [145] gate-keepers. And within this enclosure appeared in quick succession all the varied accessories that went to make up a typical Kentucky fair near the close of the old social regime; that is, before the outbreak of the Civil War.

CATTLE AT LEXINGTON FAIR.

Here were found the hundreds of neat stalls for the different kinds of stock; the gay booths under the colonnade of the amphitheatre for refreshments; the spacious cottages for women and invalids and children; the platforms of the quack-doctors; the floral hall and the pagoda-like structure for the musicians and the judges; the tables and seats for private dining; the high swings and the turnabouts; the tests of the strength of limb and lung; the gaudy awnings for the lemonade venders; the huge brown hogsheads for iced-water, with bright tin cups dangling from the rim; the circus; and, finally, all those tented spectacles of the marvellous, the mysterious, and the monstrous which were to draw popular attention to the Kentucky fair, as they had been the particular delight of the fair-going thousands in England hundreds of years before.

For you will remember that the Kentucky fair has ceased by this time to be a cattle-show. It has ceased to be simply a place for the annual competitive exhibition of stock of all kinds, which, by-the-way, is beginning to make the country famous. It has ceased to be even the harvest-home of the Bluegrass Region, the mild autumnal saturnalia of its [146] rural population. Whatever the people can discover or invent is indeed here; or whatever they own, or can produce from the bountiful earth, or take from orchard or flower-garden, or make in dairy, kitchen, or loom-room. But the fair is more than all this now. It has become the great yearly pleasure-ground of the people assembled for a week's festivities. It is what the European fair of old was—the season of the happiest and most general intercourse between country and town. Here the characteristic virtues and vices of the local civilization will be found in open flower side by side, and types and manners painted to the eye in vividest colorings.

Crowded picture of a time gone by! Bright glancing pageantry of life, moving on with feasting and music and love-making to the very edge of the awful precipice, over which its social system and its richly nurtured ideals will be dashed to pieces below!—why not pause an instant over its innocent mirth, and quick, awful tragedies?