February 14.
OLD CANDLEMAS DAY.
Valentine.
Referring to vol. i. from p. 215 to 230, for information concerning the origin of this festival of lovers, and the manner wherein it is celebrated, a communication is subjoined concerning a custom now observed in Norfolk.
VALENTINE’S DAY AT LYNN.
For the Every-Day Book.
Independent of the homage paid to St. Valentine on this day at Lynn, (Norfolk,) it is in other respects a red-letter day amongst all classes of its inhabitants, being the commencement of its great annual mart. This mart was granted by a charter of Henry VIII., in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, “to begin on the day next after the feast of the purification of the blessed virgin Mary, and to continue six days next following,” (though now it is generally prolonged to a fortnight.) Since the alteration of the style, in 1752, it has been proclaimed on Valentine’s day. About noon, the mayor and corporation, preceded by a band of music, and attended by twelve decrepit old men, called from their dress “Red coats,” walk in procession to proclaim the mart, concluding by opening the antiquated, and almost obsolete court of “Piepowder.” Like most establishments of this nature, it is no longer attended for the purpose it was first granted, business having yielded to pleasure and amusement. Formerly Lynn mart and Stourbridge (Stirbitch) fair,[61] were the only places where small traders in this and the adjoining counties, supplied themselves with their respective goods. No transactions of this nature now take place, and the only remains to be perceived, are the “mart prices,” still issued by the grocers. Here the thrifty housewives, for twenty miles round, laid in their annual store of soap, starch, &c., and the booth of “Green” from Limehouse, was for three generations the emporium of such articles; but these no longer attend. A great deal of money is however spent, as immense numbers of persons assemble from all parts. Neither is their any lack of incitements to unburthen the pockets: animals of every description, tame and wild, giants and dwarfs, tumblers, jugglers, peep-shows, &c., all unite their attractive powers, in sounds more discordant than those which annoyed the ears of Hogarth’s “enraged musician.”
The year 1796 proved particularly unfortunate to some of the inhabitants of Marshland who visited the mart. On the evening of February 23, eleven persons, returning from the day’s visit, were drowned by the upsetting of a ferryboat; and on the preceding day a man from Tilney, going to see the wild beasts, and putting his hand to the lion’s mouth, had his arm greatly lacerated, and narrowly escaped being torn to pieces.
In the early part of the last century, an old building, which, before the reformation, had been a hall belonging to the guild of St. George, after being applied to various uses, was fitted up as a theatre, (and by a curious coincidence, where formerly had doubtless been exhibited, as was customary at the guild feasts, religious mysteries and pageants of the catholic age, again was exhibited the mysteries and pageants of the protestant age,) during the mart and a few weeks afterwards; but with no great success, as appears by an anecdote related of the celebrated George Alexander Stevens. Having in his youthful days performed here with a strolling company, who shared amongst them the receipts of the house, after several nights’ performance to nearly empty benches, while performing the part of Lorenzo, in Shakspeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” he thus facetiously parodied the speech of Lorenzo to Jessica, in the fifth act, as applicable to his distressed circumstances: