In Ireland, this season is celebrated by the making of the Michaelmas cake. A lady’s ring is mixed in the dough, and, when the cake is baked it is cut into sections and distributed to the unmarried people at table, and the person who gets the slice with the ring “is sure to be married before next Michaelmas.”—N. & Q. 3rd S. vol. ix. p. 520.
Oct. 2.] GOOSE FAIR.
Oct. 2.]
GOOSE FAIR.
Nottingham.
The origin of this fair arose from the large quantities of geese which were driven up from the fens of Lincolnshire for sale at this fair, which is on the 2nd of October, when geese are just in season. Persons now living can remember seeing fifteen or twenty thousand geese in the market-place, each flock attended by a gooseherd with a crook, which he dexterously threw round the neck of any goose, and brought it out for inspection by the customer. A street on the Lincolnshire side of the town is still called Goosegate, and the flavour of the goose is fully appreciated by the good people of Nottingham, as, on the fair day, one is sure to be found on the table of twenty-nine out of a hundred of the better class of the inhabitants.—N. & Q. 1st S., vol. vi. p. 563.
A writer in Jour. of the Arch. Assoc. (1853, vol. viii. p. 236), alluding to the customs allowed at Nottingham, says that the mayor of Nottingham formerly appears to have given a feast of hot roast geese on the last day of his mayoralty previous to the election of his successor.
Lancashire.
At Great Crosby, a suburban village about seven miles from Liverpool, early in October, every year there is held a local festival, which is called the “Goose Fair.” The feast takes place when the harvest is gathered in about that part of the country, and so it forms a sort of “harvest-home” gathering for the agriculturists of the neighbourhood. It is said also that, at this particular period, geese are finer and fatter after feeding on the stubble-fields than at any other time. Curious to say, however, the bird in question is seldom, if ever, eaten at these feasts.—N. & Q. 3rd S. vol. iii. p. 158, and vol. iv. p. 82.