78 Notes and Sketches. 



ciently brutal in character, the combatants often merci- 

 lessly belabouring each other with cudgels. In no quarter 

 perhaps were they so formidable or so systematically 

 kept up as in the district of Cromar, where the 

 periodical onsets between "the rough tykes of Tarland," 

 and "theLeochel men" seem to have been as regular in 

 their occurrence as the fairs in which the two parishes 

 were interested ; the fight being understood always to 

 end in one or other of the sides being driven off the 

 field vanquished. 



At the last century fair, the business transacted was 

 of an exceedingly miscellaneous kind. Live stock was 

 by no means the most important feature. All sorts of 

 household furnishings including chairs, stools, wooden 

 ladles, " caups," and barrels and brewing "bowies," 

 rough wicker " creels," and such like, were exhibited in 

 quantity by the wrights and coopers and other artificers, 

 so as the more strictly agricultural class might supply 

 their needs in such matters. Even ploughs and harrows 

 were taken to the fair for sale. On the other hand, 

 those who tilled the soil had the wool of their small 

 stocks of native sheep spun into yarn at home, and then 

 converted into webs of " fingrams" by the weaver, to be 

 taken to the fair and offered to such as would buy ; 

 their customers, to a large extent, were itinerant 

 "merchants," who picked up the fingrams at the annual 

 fairs in Aberdeenshire, and then found a market for 

 them in other parts of Scotland, or by getting them 

 exported abroad. And after the decline of the trade in 

 fingrams, when spinning worsted and knitting stockings 

 for " the factory merchant," mainly engaged the atten- 

 tion of women in the country, dealers in soft goods in. 

 Aberdeen and the other county towns, found it worth 

 while to shut shop for a day or two on the occurrence 

 of some of the principal annual fairs, in order that they 

 might cultivate business by exhibiting prints and other 

 fabrics there alongside the stocks of the regular pack- 

 men. 



