Our Little Lady / Six Hundred Years Ago

by Emily Sarah Holt

Chapter Five.

The Dumb Playmates.

Out into the Michaelmas fair our friends went.

In these days, when fairs have quite changed their character, we cannot easily form a notion of what they once were. The fair, held in every town four times a year, was a very important matter. There were much fewer shops than now; and not only in the town, but from all the surrounding villages people flocked to the fair, to lay in food and clothes and all sorts of necessaries, enough to last till the next fair-day. They had very little fresh butcher’s meat, and very few vegetables except what they grew themselves; so they ate numbers of things salted which we have fresh. Not only salt fish and salt neat, but salt cabbage formed a great part of their diet. The consequence of all this salt food was that they suffered dreadfully from scurvy. But they did not run to the doctor, for except in rare instances there was no doctor to run to! All doctors were clergymen then, and there were very few of them. In the large towns there were apothecaries, or chemists, who often prescribed for people; and there were “wise women” who knew a good deal about herbs, and sometimes gave good medicines, along with a great deal of foolish nonsense in the way of charms and all sorts of silly fancies. At that time, ladies were taught a good deal about medicine, and a benevolent lady was often the doctor for a large neighbourhood. But we are wandering away from the Michaelmas fair, and we must come back.

The fair was a very busy scene. In some places it was hard work to get along at all. The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available. And what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was far away.

Avice’s first business was to lay in a stock of salt meat and salt fish. Very little of either was used fresh, for it was not obtainable: and still less would have been used so far as fish is concerned, had not the law, alike of the Church and of the State, compelled it to be eaten throughout Lent, and on every Friday in the year. Little enough fish would anybody have touched then, but for that provision. Avice bought half of a salted calf, which cost a shilling; five hundred herrings, at half-a-crown; a bushel of salt, at threepence (which was dear); twenty-five stock-fish, at two shillings; a quarter of a sheep, at fourpence; a quarter of wheat, at six shillings; a quarter of oats, at five shillings; half a quarter of salt cabbage, at five shillings; and five pounds of figs, at three-halfpence a pound. This was her provision for the three months which would elapse before the Christmas fair. She then went to the drapery stalls, and laid in two hoods, for herself and Bertha, at a shilling each; ten ells of russet, to serve for two gowns, at eighteen-pence the ell; twelve ells of serge, at three-halfpence the ell; two pairs of shoes, at fourpence each. The russet was intended for their best dresses; the serge for common. Considering how very little went to make a garment, it seems likely that our ancestors wove their stuff a good deal wider than we do. Avice also laid in a few other articles of different kinds: a brass pot, which cost her 2 shillings 2 pence; five pounds of tallow, at three-halfpence a pound, and as many of wax at sixpence; wax was largely used for a variety of objects. Her last and costliest purchase she would have been better without. It was a painted and gilded image of Saint Katherine, and cost fifteen shillings. But Avice, though a good woman according to her light, had enjoyed very little light, and did not understand half so well as we do that she might go straight to God through the new and living way opened upon the cross, without the intervention of any mediator except the Lord Jesus. She thought she must pray through a saint; and she had no idea of praying unless she could see something to pray to. Her old image had lost much of its paint, and half an arm, and its nose was hopelessly damaged. Therefore, as she must have one, poor Avice thought it best to buy a new one, rather than have her old saint tinkered up. Alas for the gods or the mediators who require to be tinkered!

By the time that these purchases were made, and the goods brought home, it was not far from the supper hour; and Bertha prepared that meal by boiling a dish of salt cabbage from one of the barrels. This, with black bread and ale, made their supper.

The meal was just ready, and Avice had put away her carding, having finished that kind of work for the day, when a rap at the door was followed by the lifting of the latch, and the old smith put in his head.

“Any room for a man, have ye?”