84 Wild Life, in a Southern County 



;md a little crowd assembles in the evening ; but the glory 

 of the true feast has departed. 



The elder men, nevertheless, yet reckon by the feast 

 day ; it is a fixed point in their calendar, which they con- 

 struct 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 ecclesias- 

 tical 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 accurately on the aver- 

 age 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 manufactories, have not touched 

 the traditional prestige of these gatherings. 



For instance, you may find a town which, by the 

 incidence of the railroad and the springing up of great 

 industries, has shot far ahead of the other sleepy little 

 places ; its population may treble, itself, its trade be ten 



