The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 2 (of 3) / or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac

by William Hone

February 14.

OLD CANDLEMAS DAY.

Valentine.

Referring to vol. i. from p. 215 to 230, for information concerning the origin of this festival of lovers, and the manner wherein it is celebrated, a communication is subjoined concerning a custom now observed in Norfolk.

VALENTINE’S DAY AT LYNN.

For the Every-Day Book.

Independent of the homage paid to St. Valentine on this day at Lynn, (Norfolk,) it is in other respects a red-letter day amongst all classes of its inhabitants, being the commencement of its great annual mart. This mart was granted by a charter of Henry VIII., in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, “to begin on the day next after the feast of the purification of the blessed virgin Mary, and to continue six days next following,” (though now it is generally prolonged to a fortnight.) Since the alteration of the style, in 1752, it has been proclaimed on Valentine’s day. About noon, the mayor and corporation, preceded by a band of music, and attended by twelve decrepit old men, called from their dress “Red coats,” walk in procession to proclaim the mart, concluding by opening the antiquated, and almost obsolete court of “Piepowder.” Like most establishments of this nature, it is no longer attended for the purpose it was first granted, business having yielded to pleasure and amusement. Formerly Lynn mart and Stourbridge (Stirbitch) fair,[61] were the only places where small traders in this and the adjoining counties, supplied themselves with their respective goods. No transactions of this nature now take place, and the only remains to be perceived, are the “mart prices,” still issued by the grocers. Here the thrifty housewives, for twenty miles round, laid in their annual store of soap, starch, &c., and the booth of “Green” from Limehouse, was for three generations the emporium of such articles; but these no longer attend. A great deal of money is however spent, as immense numbers of persons assemble from all parts. Neither is their any lack of incitements to unburthen the pockets: animals of every description, tame and wild, giants and dwarfs, tumblers, jugglers, peep-shows, &c., all unite their attractive powers, in sounds more discordant than those which annoyed the ears of Hogarth’s “enraged musician.”

The year 1796 proved particularly unfortunate to some of the inhabitants of Marshland who visited the mart. On the evening of February 23, eleven persons, returning from the day’s visit, were drowned by the upsetting of a ferryboat; and on the preceding day a man from Tilney, going to see the wild beasts, and putting his hand to the lion’s mouth, had his arm greatly lacerated, and narrowly escaped being torn to pieces.

In the early part of the last century, an old building, which, before the reformation, had been a hall belonging to the guild of St. George, after being applied to various uses, was fitted up as a theatre, (and by a curious coincidence, where formerly had doubtless been exhibited, as was customary at the guild feasts, religious mysteries and pageants of the catholic age, again was exhibited the mysteries and pageants of the protestant age,) during the mart and a few weeks afterwards; but with no great success, as appears by an anecdote related of the celebrated George Alexander Stevens. Having in his youthful days performed here with a strolling company, who shared amongst them the receipts of the house, after several nights’ performance to nearly empty benches, while performing the part of Lorenzo, in Shakspeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” he thus facetiously parodied the speech of Lorenzo to Jessica, in the fifth act, as applicable to his distressed circumstances:

“Oh Jessica! in such a night as this we came to town,
And since that night we’ve shar’d but half a crown;
Let you and I then bid these folks good night,
For if we longer stay, they’ll starve us quite.”

This neglect of the drama is not, however, to be attributed to the visitors or the inhabitants at the present day, a very elegant and commodious theatre having been erected in 1814, at a considerable expense, in another part of the town. But even here, a fatality attends our catholic ancestors, indicative of the instability of all sublunary affairs. The theatre has been erected on the site of the cloisters and cemetery of the grey friars’ monastery, the tall, slender tower of which is still standing near, and is the only one remaining out of ten monasteries found in Lynn at the dissolution; where, but for the lustful rapacity of that tyrannical “defender of the faith,” Henry VIII., this sacred asylum of our departed ancestors would not have been profaned, nor their mouldering particles disturbed, by a building as opposite to the one originally erected, as darkness is to light. Thus time, instead of consecrating, so entirely obliterates our veneration for the things of yesterday, that the reflecting mind cannot forbear to exclaim with the moralist of old,—“Sic transit gloria mundi.”

K.

David Love, of Nottingham, Aged 74, A. D. 1824.

David Love, of Nottingham,
Aged 74, A. D. 1824.

“Here’s David’s likeness for his book,
All those who buy may at it look,
As he is in his present state,
Now printed from a copper-plate.”

These lines are beneath the portrait from whence the above [engraving] is taken. It is a very faithful likeness of David Love, only a little too erect:—not quite enough of the stoop of the old man of 76 in it,—but it is a face and a figure which will be recognised by thousands in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The race of the old minstrels has been long extinct;—that of the ballad-singers is fast following it—yet David is both one and the other. He is a bard and a caroller,—a wight who has wandered over as many hills and dales as any of the minstrels and troubadours of old;—a man who has sung, when he had cause enough for crying—who has seen many ups and downs, and has seldom failed to put his trials and hardships into rhyme. He is the poet of poverty and patience—teaching experience. He has seen the

“huts where poor men lie”

all his life; yet he has never ceased to chant as he proceeded on his painful pilgrimage, like the “nightingale with a thorn in her breast.” It is true, he does not carry his harp to accompany his strains, but he carries his life, “The Life, Adventures, and Experience of David Love, written by Himself. Fifth edition:” and well doth it deserve both its title and sale. A curious, eventful story of a poor man’s it is. First he is a poor parent-deserted lad; then he has wormed himself into good service, and afterwards into a coal-pit, where he breaks his bones and almost crushes out life; then he is a traveller, a shopkeeper, a soldier fighting against the Highland rebels; he falls in love, gets into wedlock and a workhouse, is never in despair, and never out of trouble; with a heart so buoyant, that, like a cork on a boisterous flood, however he might be plunged into the depths, he is sure to rise again to the surface, and in all places and cases still pours out his rhymes—pictures of scenes around him, strange cabins and strange groups, love verses, acrostics, hymns, &c.

“I have composed many rhymes,
On various subjects, and the times,
And call’d the trials of prisoners’ crimes
The cash to bring;
When old I grew, composed hymns,
And them did sing.”

So David sped, and so he speeds now in his 77th year, only that his travels have left him finally fixed at Nottingham. His wars and his loves have vanished; his circle of action has annually become more and more contracted; till, at length, the town includes the whole field of his perambulations, and even that is almost more than his tottering frame can traverse. Yet there he is! and the stranger who visits Nottingham will be almost sure to see him, as represented in the [print], crossing the market-place, with a parcel of loose papers in his hand;—a rhyming account of the last Goose Fair, a flood, an execution, or one of David’s own marriages,—for be it known to thee, gentle reader, that David Love has been a true son of the family of the Loves. He has not sung his amatory lays for naught; he has captivated the hearts of no less than three damsels, and he has various and memorable experience in wives.

David, like many of our modern geniuses, is a Scotchman. He tells us that he was born near Edinburgh, but the precise place he affects not to know. The fact is, he is not very strong in his faith that, as he has tasted the sweets of a parish, he cannot be removed, and thinks it best to keep his birth-place secret: but the spot is Torriburn, on the Forth, the Scotch Highgate. David “has been to mair toons na Torriburn,” as the Scotch say, when they intimate that they are not to be gulled.

After sustaining many characters in the drama of life whilst yet very young, a schoolmaster among the rest, he fairly flung himself and his genius upon the world, and rambled from place to place in Scotland, calling around him all the young ears and love-darting eyes by his original ballads. It was a dangerous life, and David did not escape scatheless.

“At length so very bold I grew,
My songs exposed to public view,
And crowds of people round me drew,
I was so funny;
From side to side I nimbly flew
To catch the money.”

And he caught not only money, but matrimony,—and such a wife! alas! for poor David!

“As she always will rule the roast,
I’d better be tied to a post,
And whipped to death,
Than with her tongue to be so tossed,
And bear her wrath.
She called me both rogue and fool,
And over me she strove to rule;
I sat on the repenting stool—
There tears I shed;
Sad my complaint, I said, O dool!
That e’er I wed.”

The next step evidently enough was enlisting, which he did into the duke of Buccleugh’s regiment; where, he says, he distinguished himself by writing a song in compliment of the regiment and its noble commander, concluding with,

“Now, at the last, what do you think
Of the author, David Love?”

And whenever the duke and the officers saw him, they were sure to point, and say, “What do you think of the author, David Love?” These seem to have been David’s golden days. Not only—

“One hand the pen, and one the sword did wield,”

but he was also an actor of plays for the amusement of the officers. However, his discharge came, and adventures crowded thickly upon him. He traversed England in all directions, married a second and a third time, figured away in London and Edinburgh, and finally in Nottingham, with ballads and rhymes of his own composing; saw the inside of a prison, was all but hanged for his suspicious and nomadic poverty, and after all, by his own showing, is now to be classed with the most favoured of mortals:—

“I am now 76 years of age, and I both see and hear as well as I did thirty years ago. My wife is aged about fifty, and has been the space of a year in tolerable health. She works hard at her silk-wheel, to assist me; is an excellent housewife; gossips none: cleanly in cooking, famous at washing, good at sewing, marking, and mending her own and children’s clothes. For making markets none can equal her. Consults me in every thing, to find if I think it right, before she proceeds to buy provisions, or clothes; strives to please me in every thing; and always studies my welfare, rejoicing when I am in health, grieved when I am pained or uneasy. She is my tender nurse to nourish me, my skilful doctress to administer relief when I am in sickness or in pain; in short, a better wife a poor man never had.”

Truly, David, I think so too! A happy man art thou to be possessed of such an incomparable helpmate; and still happier that, unlike many a prouder bard, thou art sensible of thy blessings.

To show that although our minstrel often invokes the muse to paltry subjects for paltry gains, yet he can sometimes soar into a higher region, I give the following:—

THE CHILD’S DREAM.
The substance thereof being founded on fact

I’ll tell you who I saw last night,
As I lay sleeping on my bed;
A shining creature all in light,
To me she seemed a heavenly maid.

I meet her tripping o’er the dew,
Fine as a queen of May, mamma;
She saw, she smiled, she to me flew,
And bade me come away, mamma.

I looked, I loved, I blushed awhile,
Oh! how could I say no, mamma?
She spoke so sweet, so sweet did smile,
I was obliged to go, mamma.

For love my tender heart beguiled,
I felt unusual flames, mamma;
My inward fancy turned so wild,
So very strange my dream, mamma.

Indeed I was, I know not how,
Oh had you only been with me;
Such wonders opened to my view,
As few but holy angels see.

Methought we wandered in a grove,
All green with pleasant fields, mamma;
In joyful measures on we move,
As music rapture yields, mamma.

She took me in her snow-white hand,
Then led me through the air, mamma.
Far higher above sea and land,
Than ever eagles were, mamma.

The sea and land, with all their store,
Of rivers, woods, and lofty hills,
Indeed they did appear no more
Than little streams or purling rills.

I sought my dear papa’s estate,
But found it not at all, mamma;
The world in whole seemed not so great
As half a cannon-ball, mamma.

We saw the sun but like a star,
The moon was like a mustard seed;
Like Elias in his fiery car,
All glorious winged with light’ning speed.

Swift as our thoughts, oh joyful day.
We glanced through all the boundless spheres;
Their music sounding all the way,
Heaven sweetly rushing in our ears,

Now opens, and all we saw before
Were lost entirely to our view;
The former things are now no more,
To us all things appeared new.

No death is there, nor sorrow there,
E’er to disturb the heavenly bliss,
For death, sin, hell, and sorrow are,
Entirely lost in the abyss.

With wintry storms the ground ne’er pines
Clothed in eternal bloom, mamma;
For there the sun of glory shines,
And all the just with him, mamma.

I saw my sister Anna there,
A virgin in her youthful prime;
More than on earth her features fair,
And like the holy angels’ fine.

Her robe was all a flowing stream
Of silver dipt in light, mamma,
But ah! it ’woke me from my dream,
It shone so strong and bright, mamma.

With this specimen of David’s poetical faculties, I leave him to the kind consideration of the well disposed.

January, 1826.

M. T.

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