Fill ouen full of flawnes [custards baked in paste], Ginnie, passe not for sleepe,
to morow thy father his wake day will keepe.
A certain sort of wake-cake in Staffordshire has passed into a proverb. As short as Marchington wake-cake is applied figuratively to a woman’s temper!
Mops or Hiring Fairs
Beside the purely merry-making fairs were the Hiring, or Statute fairs, held usually in the autumn, often about Martinmas, Nov. 11; but these, too, have mostly developed into pleasure fairs. The young men and girls who came to seek places as farm-labourers and maid-servants, used to stand, clad in their ‘Sunday best’, on either side of the principal street, the men wearing emblems of service in their hats. Thus the plough-boy or carter had a piece of whip-cord; the shepherd a lock of wool; and the cowherd a tuft of cow-hair. It is said that the name Mop which is widely used in the Midlands instead of Stattis [Statutes] is derived from this old custom of carrying the badge of office, and refers to the mop borne by the servant-girls. The contracts made between employer and employed at the Mop were binding for the following twelve months. A fee, formerly termed in the northern counties the God’s-penny, but later more generally the fastening-penny, was given by the employer to the servant as earnest-money. It varied in amount from one shilling to a pound. If the servant changed his or her mind before entering the service, he or she returned the God’s-penny to the employer; and on the other hand, if the employer changed his mind and refused to take the servant, he forfeited the fee. The relative merits of various ‘places’, and warnings against ‘bad meat houses’, i.e. houses where scant rations prevailed, were transmitted to new generations of servants in doggerel verses repeated at the hirings, such as: Bradford breedless, Harnham heedless, Shaftee pick at the craa; Capheaton’s a wee bonny place, But Wallin’ton bangs [excels] them aa (Nhb.).
A Runaway Mop was a statute hiring-fair held a few weeks after the customary ones, said to be composed of servants who had been hired at a previous fair, and had run away from their situations. In the Evesham Journal of October 16, 1897, there appeared an announcement stating that ‘The runaway mop [at Stratford-on-Avon] will be held on October 22nd’. A Mop Fair is still held in Stratford-on-Avon. In the Daily Sketch of October 14, 1912, appeared an illustration entitled ‘Roasting the Ox at Stratford Mop Fair’, with this note appended: ‘The Stratford-on-Avon Mop Fair, which dates from the reign of King John, was held on Saturday. Six excursion trains ran from London, and specials arrived from many towns. The ox-roasting in the streets was one of the principal sights of the Fair, seven bullocks and a dozen pigs being spitted.’
The children’s singing game: Here comes the lady of the land, With sons and daughters in her hand; Pray, do you want a servant to-day? &c., is probably an outgrowth of the Hiring-fairs, an imitation of customs once in vogue on these occasions, either derived directly from the Fairs or from dramatic representations of them acted at Harvest Homes.
[3] Mr. J. R. G. Aubrey of the Comberton Bakery, Kidderminster, to whom I wrote concerning this custom, kindly furnished me with the following information: ‘As far as I know round here the custom is dead or nearly so. I make perhaps 300 to 400 ... I think up North the custom is fairly brisk, but they call theirs the Twelfth Cakes. Coventry makes a fair quantity.’ July 24, 1912.