"Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,"
and when her "sliding chariot" declined to stay for us
"By the rushy-fringèd bank,"
we would ignobly console ourselves with "a Shrewsbury cake of Palin's own make,"—such a delicious, melting-on-the-tongue concoction as Queen Bess was regaled withal and as suggested to Congreve, in his "Way of the World," the retort: "Why, brother Wilful of Salop, you may be as short as a Shrewsbury cake, if you please." The Simnel cake of which Herrick sings,—
"I'll to thee a Simnel bring,
'Gainst thou goest a mothering,"
is made only in the days approaching Christmas and Easter. It consists of minced fruit in a saffron-coloured crust, said to be exceeding tough, and on Mothering Sunday, in Mid-Lent, is taken as a gift to their mothers by children out at service, who, on this local festival, come home to be welcomed at the cost of the fatted calf, veal and rice-pudding being the regulation dinner. The ancient refrain: "A soule-cake, a soule-cake! Have mercy on all Christen soules for a soule-cake!" refers to yet another specialty of Shropshire ovens. On All Souls' Eve it used to be the custom to set out on the table a tower of these round flat cakes, every visitor reducing the pile by one. The residue, if residue there were, fell to the share of the poor ghosts.
The Quarry, in the bad old times, was often the scene of bull-baitings and bear-baitings and cock-fights. It is better to remember that the Whitsun Plays were performed here, for these were comely and edifying spectacles. In 1568, when Sir Henry Sidney favoured the Grammar School with a visit, there was "a noble stage playe played at Shrewsbury, the which was praysed greately, and the chyffe actor thereof was one Master Aston," being no less a personage than the head master.
A Quarry holiday that, by the grace of Sabrina, fell within the brief limits of our sojourn, was the Shrewsbury Floral Fête, vaunted on the pink program as "The Grandest Fête in the United Kingdom." Our landlady earnestly vouched for the truth of this description. "There is them who would have it as York Gala be the greatest, but York Gala, grand however, ben't so grand as this."
On Wednesday, August twenty-second, we took aristocratic tickets at two and six, for Wednesday is the day of the county families. Thursday is the shilling day, when, by train, by coach, by barge, by wagonette, by farmer's gig and carrier's cart, all the countryside comes streaming in. The weather had been watched with keen anxiety. "Rain spells ruin," the saying went; but it was clear and hot. Men, women, and children lay on the grass around their luncheon baskets—we had hardly expected this of the county families—all through the wide enclosure, making the most of every disk of shade. From the central bandstand and from the encircling tents—refreshment tents, flower tents, fruit tents, vegetable tents, bee-and-honey tents—drooped rows of languid pennons. The fountain in The Dingle sent up a silvery tree of spray, while the white and yellow water-lilies in its little pool blinked like sleepy children. Within the tents the heat was stifling, but a continuous flow of flushed humanity, as whist as in the County Store where even the awed shop girls are instructed to speak with bated breath, passed in admiring review the sumptuous masses of heavily fragrant flowers, the great black grapes almost bursting with wine, the luscious plums and cherries, the amazing platoons of plethoric onions, exaggerated potatoes, and preposterously elongated turnips and carrots, the model beehives and the jars of amber honey. The gold-medal exhibitors, perspiring but beaming, stood by their red-ticketed products, while the silver-medal folk viewed their blue tickets with a pleasant sense of superiority to the subdued white-ticket battalion and the invisible yellow-ticketers who were only "commended."
All the while successive bands—the Shropshire Imperial Yeomanry, His Majesty's Coldstream Guards, and His Majesty's Scots Guards—were merrily playing away, and presently the clamorous ringing of what might have been a sturdy dinner-bell called us to the Acrobatic Stand, about which the crowd soon became so dense, while the somersault artists converted their bodies into giddy playthings, that one rustic philosopher was heard to remark: "Well, we ain't seeing owt, but we're in t' show." Then came the horse-leaping, which was such a favourite feature that not even the miraculous performances of the King of the High Wire, and the ether-dancing feats of the Cee Mee Troupe availed to divide the multitude. When Rufus, to the deep but decorous delight of the Cheshire visitors, had outleaped all the rest, we swarmed across the Quarry and sat down on the grass to wait for the ascent of the monster balloons, those gigantic golden-brown puffs of gas that had been softly tugging at their bonds all the morning. The Shrewsbury had already made a number of captive ascents and finally achieved its "right away" in good order, rising majestically into the upper air until it hung like an orange on our furthest reach of vision, but the wayward Wulfruna broke her ropes on a captive trip and feloniously made off with several astonished passengers, among whose vanishing heads peered out the scared, ecstatic face of a small boy.