Besides the harvest-home there was also observed another feast of a
similar character in the spring, when the sheep were shorn. A
plentiful dinner was given by the farmer to the shearers and their
friends, and a table was often set in the open village for the young
people and children. Tusser, who wrote a book upon _Five Hundred
Points of Husbandry_, did not forget the treats which ought to be
given to the labourers, and alludes to the sheep-shearing festival
in the following lines–
“Wife, make us a dinner; spare flesh, neither corn,
Make wafers and cakes, for our sheep must be shorn;
At sheep-shearing, neighbours none other things crave,
But good cheer and welcome like neighbours to have.”
We have in many villages and towns a feast called “the Wakes,” which
is one of the oldest of our English festivals. The day of “the
Wakes” is the festival of the Saint to whom the parish church is
dedicated, and it is so called because, on the previous night, or
vigil, the people used to watch, or “wake,” in the church till the
morning dawned. It was the custom for the inhabitants of the parish
to keep open house Sport Clocks on that day, and to entertain all their relations
and friends who came to them from a distance. In early times the
people used to make booths and tents with the boughs of trees near
to the church, and were directed to celebrate the feast in them with
thanksgiving and prayer. By degrees they began to forget their
prayers, and remembered only the feasting, and other abuses crept
in, so at last the “waking” on the eve of the festival was
suppressed. But these primitive feasts were the origin of most of
our fairs, which are generally held on the dedication festival of
the parish church.[13] The neighbours from the adjoining villages
used to attend the wakes, so the peddlers and hawkers came to find a
market for their wares. Their stalls began to multiply, until at
last an immense fair sprang into existence, which owed its origin
entirely to the religious festival of “the wakes.” Fairs have
degenerated like many other good things, and we can hardly realize
their vastness in the middle ages. The circuit of a fair sometimes
was very great, and it would have been impossible in those days to
carry on the trade of the country without them. The great
Stourbridge Fair, near Cambridge, I have described in my former book
on _English Villages_. The booths were planted in a cornfield, and
the circuit of the fair, which was one of the largest in Europe, was
over three miles. All kinds of sports were held on these occasions:
plays, comedies, tragedies, bull-baiting, &c., and King James was
very wroth with the undergraduates of Cambridge who would insist
upon frequenting Stourbridge Fair rather than attend to their
studies.
The “Wakes,” or village feast, was a great day for all sports and
pastimes. A writer in the _Spectator_ describes the “country wake”
which he witnessed at Bath. The green was covered with a crowd of
all ages and both sexes, decked out in holiday attire, and divided
into several parties, “all of them endeavouring to show themselves
in those exercises wherein they excelled.” In one place there was a
ring of cudgel-players, in another a football match, in another a
ring of wrestlers. The prize for the men was a hat, and for the
women, who had their own contests, a smock. Running and leaping also
found a place in the programme. In Berkshire back-sword play and
wrestling were the favourite amusements for vigorous youths, and men
strove hard to win the honour of being champion and the prizes which
were offered on the occasion. There were “cheap jacks,” and endless
booths containing all kinds of fairings, ribands, gingerbread cakes,
and shows, with huge pictures hung outside of giants and wild
Indians, pink-eyed ladies, live lions, and deformities of all kinds.
There were minor sports, such as climbing the pole, jumping in
sacks, rolling wheelbarrows blindfolded, donkey races, muzzling in a
flour-tub, &c.; but the back-sword play was the chief and most
serious part of the programme.
