In the same play (v. 2. 2), the Princess says to her ladies, referring to the presents they have received:—
"Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart
If fairings come thus plentifully in."
It was so common a practice to buy presents at fairs that the word fairing, which originally meant presents thus bought, came to be used in a more general sense, as in this passage and many others that might be quoted.
In The Winters Tale (iv. 3. 109) the Clown says of the merry peddler Autolycus that "he haunts wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings." Later (iv. 4) we meet the rogue at the sheep-shearing, where he finds a good market for ribbons, gloves, and other "fairings," which the swains buy for their sweethearts; and when the festival is over he says: "I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting; they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a benediction to the buyer."
In 2 Henry IV. (iii. 2. 43) Shallow asks his cousin Silence, "How a good yoke of bullocks now at Stamford fair?" and Silence replies, "By my troth, I was not there." Later (v. 1. 26) Davy asks Shallow: "Sir, do you mean to stop any of William's wages, about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley fair?"
In Henry VIII. (v. 4. 73) the Chamberlain, seeing the crowd gathered to get a sight of the royal procession, exclaims:—
"Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here!
They grow still too; from all parts they are coming,
As if we kept a fair here."