‘ The Mop. 103 
feast day ; it is a fixed point in their calendar, which 
they construct every year, of local events. Such and 
such a fair is calculated to fall so many days after 
the first full moon in a particular month; and 
another fair falls so long after that. An old man 
will thus tell you the dates of every fair and feast in 
all the villages and little towns ten or fifteen miles 
round about. He quite ignores the modern system 
of reckoning time, going by the ancient ecclesiastical 
calendar and the moon. How deeply the ancient 
method must have impressed itself into the life of 
these people to still remain a kind of instinct at this 
late day ! 
The feasts are in some cases identified with certain 
well-recognised events in the calendar of nature ; 
such as the ripening of cherries. It may be noticed 
that these, chancing thus to correspond pretty ac- 
curately on the average with the state of fruit, are 
kept up more vigorously than those which have no 
such aid to the memory. The Lady Day fair and 
Michaelmas fair at the adjacent market town are the 
two best recognised holidays of the year. The fair 
is sometimes called ‘the mop,’ and stalwart girls will 
walk eight or nine miles rather than miss it. Maid- 
servants in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday 
on fair day. These two main fairs are the Bank 
Holidays of rural life. It is curious to observe that 
the developments of the age, railroads and manufac- 
