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,’
‘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 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.