[84] Mart, according to Skinner, is a fair, who considers it a contraction of market. Brand (Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 400) says that, had not mart been the general name for a fair, one might have been tempted to suppose it a contraction of Martin, the name of the saint whose day is commemorated.
Salt Silver.
—In the glossary to Kennett’s Parochial Antiquities (p. 496) is the following:—“Salt Silver.—One penny paid at the Feast of St. Martin, by the servile tenants to their lord, as a commutation for the service of carrying their lord’s salt from market to his larder.”
Buckinghamshire.
There is a house in Fenny Stratford, called St. Martin’s house, in the wall of which is a stone bearing the following inscription:—
“This house was settled on the parish officers of this town, for the annual observance of St. Martin’s Day.”—“Anno Domini 1752.”
The house is let at 5l. 4s. per annum, and the rent, after defraying the expense of repairs, is laid out in giving an entertainment to the inhabitants of the town.—Edwards, Old English Customs and Charities, 1842, p. 59.
Cambridgeshire.
Within the manor of Whitlesea there is a custom for the inhabitants to choose, on the Sunday next after the feast of St. Martin, two persons called storers, to oversee the public business, and likewise to provide a common bull, in consideration whereof they enjoy a certain pasture called Bull Grass; and the major part of the freeholders and copyholders at a meeting grant the grass every year to any person who will take it, to have the same from Lady-day till the corn is carried out of Coatsfield.—Blount’s Fragmenta Antiquitatis, 1815, p. 576.