The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

These, which are called provincially Statitz, or Statice, are meetings for hiring of farm and household servants, “according to statutes made and provided,” and are held in certain central and convenient places. They are attended merely by farmers, and people who happen to want men or maid-servants, and by the servants themselves. By the latter they are looked forward to with much interest. They furnish occasion for a holiday. They are for the time their own masters, having left, or being about to leave their places, and either to re-engage themselves, or to seek new ones. They here meet their old acquaintances, and compare notes of the past year, of the character of the different places they have had; of what extraordinary has befallen them; and are full of new schemes and speculations as to where they shall go; what advance of wages they shall obtain; in what capacity they shall hire themselves. In many parts of the country he who offers himself as a shepherd appears with a lock of wool in his hat, placed under the band; the wagoner has a bit of whipcord stuck there; the groom a bit of sponge; the milkmaid in her bonnet a tuft of cow-hair; and the general run of farm-servants are conspicuous enough as to what they are, by their carters’-frocks, or slops, hob-nailed ankle boots, and out-of-door, half-waggish, half-sheepish looks.

It is a true country scene, to see all these rude sons of the soil collected together from their farm-yards and solitary fields, where, far from towns, they have gone whistling after the plough, sowing, or gathering in harvest; and the girls that have been scrubbing, churning, and milking, and occasionally helping in the hay or corn fields, here dressed out in their rustic finery, and shewing such robust forms and rosy faces as might astonish our over-delicate citizens. To see the farmers going amongst them, inquiring after their accomplishments and qualities, and cheapening them much as they would cheapen a horse; and their no less wary wives negotiating with the buxom damsels of the mop and pail. These matters all satisfactorily disposed of, and the Earnest, or money given on account of future services, or as it is otherwise called, the Fastening-penny, from its formerly being a penny, though now a shilling, being given, away go the farmers and farmeresses, and leave the lads and lasses to a day of jollity and fun. The swains lose no time in selecting each his chere-amie for the day; and the afternoon is spent in eating, flirting, drinking, and dancing, and then all separate their several ways, for at least another year.

Some of these Statutes in agricultural districts bring together a vast concourse of people. In Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and many other parts of the country, these statutes are held about Old Michaelmas-day, when all the servants, men and women, are at liberty from their servitude, and have a week’s holiday to attend the different neighbouring statutes, mops, or bull-roastings, as they are called. All work is at an end. Day-labourers are the only men who can be got to do out-of-doors offices; charwomen take the place of housemaids within; and good housewives are often at their wits’ end what to do. As you enter towns you find them swarming with the country lads and lasses, and oxen roasting in the streets; booths, shows, eating, treating, and dancing the order of the day. As you go along the highways you meet the young country people streaming along in their rustic finery to or from the towns; and when you arrive at a country inn, probably the door is barred and bolted, if it be towards evening,—the servants being all gone to be hired, the master to hire, and the mistress left alone, and no little afraid of the loose strolling fellows who are abroad at this unsettled time. I once went, when a boy, with my schoolmaster to Polesworth Statute, in Warwickshire, and well remember that such was the crowd, that although I saw a penny on the ground, and made many attempts to stoop down and pick it up, I found it impossible to do it. In Northumberland, Durham, and the south of Scotland, similar meetings are held, where the hinds hire their Bondagers.

FAIRS.

Statutes are places where the working class of the rural districts amuse themselves, but fairs are great sources of pleasure to all classes of country people. The farmers, and their wives and daughters; the villagers of all descriptions; the cottagers from the most secluded retreats; the squire and his family from the hall—all flock to the fair of their county town, and find some business to be transacted, and a world of pleasure to be enjoyed. There are cheese, cattle, horses, poultry, geese, and a hundred other things, to be sold; and multitudes of household articles, clothing, and trinkets to be bought; and, besides all this, a vast of seeing and being seen to be done. I will describe the great October Fair of Nottingham, called Goose-Fair, as a good specimen of a country fair on a large scale.

In the country, for many miles round, this fair is looked forward to by young and old with views of business and recreation for months; and what was done, and said, and seen at Goose-Fair; who was met there, and what matches were made, serve for conversation for months afterwards. The buyers and sellers of cheese, apples, onions, and a variety of other articles, are making their preparations to be there; some of them from distant counties; horse-jockeys are getting ready their strings of horses; young people are putting their wardrobes in order, and expecting all that such young people do expect on such occasions. In the town, two or three days before, the signs of the approaching fair increase. Huge caravans incessantly arrive, with their wild beasts, theatricals, dwarfs, giants, and other prodigies and wonders. Then come trotting in those light, neat covered wagons, containing the contents of sundry bazaars that are speedily to spring up. As you go out of the town at any end, you meet caravan after caravan, cart after cart, long troops of horses tied head and tail, and groups of those wild and peculiar-looking people, that are as necessary to a fair as flowers are to May;—all kinds of strollers, beggars, gipsies, singers, dancers, players on harps, Indian jugglers, Punch and Judy exhibitors, and similar wandering artists and professors.

For some days before the general fair commences, the horse-fair is going on. You recognise all the knowing-ones in horse-flesh from all the country round; country gentlemen and smart young farmers, and cunning jockeys with their long drab great coats, short old boots, and their jockey whips stuck carelessly under their arm. Horses of all kinds, light and heavy, full blood, half blood, and no blood at all, are ridden and driven to shew their action, along the pavement in all directions, as if the aim of the riders was to run over everybody they could, and break their own necks into the bargain.

Then on the authentic day of the fair, forth comes the procession of the corporation to proclaim the fair, and march up the market-place and down again in their scarlet robes, mayor and aldermen, the mace borne and the trumpet blown before them, and the beadles with their staves behind. Having made this procession to the wonder of all children, and sight-loving adults, they ascend into the Town-Hall, there, oddly enough, called the Exchange, and the crier proclaims the fair from the charter, at the prompting of the town-clerk. The fair is proclaimed, and is already in existence. There is the market-place, an area of six acres, jammed full of stalls, shows, bazaars, and people. From the earliest hour of the morning, wagons loaded with cheese have been arriving, which are now seen on one side of the market-place, pitched down in piles, and in quantities enough, one would think, to serve all England for a twelvemonth. There are the farmers, and their wives and daughters, well wrapped up in good market coats, with numerous capes, surveying with pride the workmanship of their hands, and the product of their summer’s dairy; and there are the dealers busy amongst it with their cheese-tasters, tasting and chaffering, and buying, and sending off their purchases by wagons to the wharfs. It is incredible in what a little time those great heaps of cheese vanish from the stones, and nuts and onions in abundance.

The whole market-place is now one mass of moving people, and unintermitted din. Wombwell’s Menagerie displays all its gigantic animals on its scenes; Holloway’s “Travelling Company of Comedians” are dancing with harlequin and clown in front of their locomotive theatre; wonderful women, and children, and animals; wonderful machinery, panoramas, and prodigies are displayed on all sides in pictorial enormity, and the united sounds of Wombwell’s fine band of musicians in their beef-eater costume, the band of Holloway, the smaller ones of other shows, and the bawlings, and invitings, and oratorical declamation of a dozen different showmen, with bellowing of gongs and clashing of cymbals, make up a sound enough to drive to distraction more swine than ran into the sea of Gennesaret, but which seems, notwithstanding, wonderfully delightful to ears grown weary of country quiet. It is curious to see the numbers pouring in and out of these places; to see the dense crowd of upturned faces collected before every show where there are antics playing, and clowns and fools talking nonsense for their entertainment. To hear the hearty laughs which follow their standing jokes, is to feel how cheaply pleasure can be furnished to hungry spirits.

But the crowd of fair-goers walking round and round this annual Babel! During the morning, business is the chief engrossment; but from noon till eleven or twelve o’clock at night, pleasure is the pursuit. The farmers’ daughters, who stood in their caped coats before their piles of cheese, are now metamorphosed into most extraordinary belles, and have found beaus as dashing as themselves. At all the stalls, purchases of gingerbread, sweetmeats, nuts and oranges, are going on; and through the bazaars—those modern additions to fairs, goes a perpetual stream of gay people, admiring the endless variety of things that are there displayed on either hand. Tea-caddies, workboxes of rosewood and pearl, china, cut-glass, drums and trumpets, and all kinds of toys; bracelets and necklaces, and all species of female trinkets; fans, and parlour bellows, figures in porcelain and painted wood; purses, musical boxes, and, in short, all the thousand contents of a bazaar.