Fairground

“ There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. ”

“ After payin' our two fares, a little gate sort o' turned round and let us in to the Columbian World's Fair—that marvellous city of magic; and anon, if not a little before, the Adminstration Buildin' hove up in front of us.
All the descriptions in the World can't give no idee of the wonderful proportions of the buildin's and the charm of the surroundin's. The minute you pass the gate you are overwhelmed with the greatness, charm, and nobility, the impressive, onspeakable aspect of the buildin's. ”

“ In the same way if I cannot see a real world's fair I can enjoy myself thoroughly at an old-fashioned country fair where the exhibits are those of honest people who are trying to excel in their own way. But when we have an entertainment nowadays we must import talent, and when we have a fall fair we must have a midway and circus stunts by hamfatters, who would be hooted in the places [Pg 304] where such performances really belong. ”

“ The fair is held out-doors, and people come from all parts of the world, bringing curious things to sell. They have their booths in the public squares, and it is merry and noisy from morning till night. There are Spaniards and French and Swiss and Italians, and just such people as I've read you about in my Stories of all Nations, and they look exactly like the pictures I've shown you so often. The fair lasts a fortnight, and at the end of it is Carnival. Then there are bands of music everywhere, and processions march through all the streets, and oh, dear me, Clytie! ”

“ The end of the Fair we find thus described in the London Chronicle of January 15th, 1789, “Perhaps the breaking up of the fair upon the Thames last Tuesday night below bridge, exceeded every [59] idea that could be formed of it, as it was not until after the dusk of the evening that the busy crowd was persuaded of the approach of a thaw. This, however, with the crackling of some ice about eight o’clock, made the whole a scene of the most perfect confusion; as men, beasts, booths, turnabouts, puppet-shows, &c., &c., were all in motion, and pouring towards the shore on each side. ”

“ Bartholomew, the first day of the fair in the year 1305, the traders and pleasure-seekers, the friars and the jesters, clothiers, tumblers, walkers upon stilts, hurried across the grass of Smithfield from the side on which the fair was being held, to the Gallows under the Elms, where officers of state and a great concourse of men awaited a most welcome spectacle. ”

“ If we have an entertainment we import singers and elocutionists, and if we have a fall fair it must be an imitation World's Fair. The lion's skin of city attractions is being stretched out in every direction, and we can see long ears peeping from under every corner of it. ”

“ The last day of the fair is the horse-fair, where the whole is closed with both horse and foot races, to divert the meaner sort of people only, for nothing considerable is offered of that kind. Thus ends the whole fair, and in less than a week more, there is scarce any sign left that there has been such a thing there, except by the heaps of dung and straw and other rubbish which is left behind, trod into the earth, and which is as good as a summer’s fallow for dunging the land ”

“ I hear folks talkin' about the fair every year, and I laugh to myself and I say, 'You folks don't know what a fair is.' And I set out there on my porch fair week and watch the buggies and wagons goin' by in the mornin' and comin' home at night, and I git right happy, thinkin' about the time when me and Abram and the children used to go over the same road to the fair, but a mighty different sort of fair from what they have nowadays. One thing is, honey, they have the fairs too soon. ”

“ Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in [Pg 123] sight, backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and pennon. ”

“ The delightful locality of the Fair, the bright sunbeams playing upon the many-coloured tents, the joyous laughter of the people, untouched by debauchery, and unseduced by the gross pleasures of the appetite ”

“ The fair is sometimes called ‘the mop,’ and stalwart girls will walk eight or nine miles rather than miss it. Maidservants in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday on fair day. These two main fairs are the Bank Holidays of rural life. ”

“ These fairs often last more than a month, and they are impatiently looked forward to by all the country nobles, whom they enable for a while to breathe as it were the odour of fashionable town life. Balls, theatres, shopping, music, horse races—what a world of pleasures in the compass of a few days! ”

“ When the fair began, the potter placed all the gipsy’s wares on a stall with his own, and marked them with very high prices, but had he asked three times as much he could have got it, for there were some rich folk from the big houses who came to the fair, and they at once bought them all up, declaring that such pots and jugs they had never seen. ”

“ So early as the close of the seventeenth century, one hundred and fifty years before the fair was abolished, we find endeavours being made, in emulation of the Puritans, to banish every kind of amusement from Bartholomew Fair, and limit it to the purposes of an annual market. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The priory was indeed built on the site of the gallows; but in that suburban gathering-place of the people—place of executions, place of tournaments, place of markets, place of daily sport, place of the great annual fair—one gallows-tree was not enough to satisfy a justice that loved vengeance and had slight regard for life. ”

“ Although the Fair was officially known as a World’s Fair, and it did contain honorable contributions from many foreign countries, it was, in a sense that no other exhibition has been before, a nation’s fair. ”

“ In most of the country towns and villages there are special fairs for farm servants, both male and female, to resort to; and many farmers’ sons and daughters attend them as well. These fairs give abundant opportunity for association and intimacy between young men and women. ”

“ Most of the streets of the fair have elegant light arcades on each side, supported in front by cast-iron columns, where purchasers can walk about, well sheltered in all kinds of weather. The stalls are generally very handsome, and in some instances extend from street to street, so as to leave two fronts. They present nothing of the confusion of an ordinary fair; the goods of every kind are as neatly [298] ranged as in the shops of a city. ”

“ Many such fairs are still held in every county, and they connect the present day very closely with the life of bygone days. It is "all the fun of the fair" which draws people to them mostly nowadays, but in some of them there is still important business done; people are attracted to them for trade as well as for pleasure.
3. Some of these fairs are held in big towns, such as Lincoln and Carlisle. At Barnet a great horse fair is held every year in September. But some big fairs are held away from any large town, [Pg 119] such as the big sheep fair at Weyhill, in Hampshire. ”

“ Tradition asserts that this fair originated at the completion of the building of the church—at the completion of which the workmen held a fair in the churchyard, blowing cows’ horns in their rejoicings. There can be no doubt, however, that in many cases where the true origin of many of our old fairs has in the course of years been forgotten, another has been invented in its place, and handed down with every mark apparently of plausibility. ”

“ In short, when every booth in the fair combined in itself the attractions of all the rest, and so perplexes with its irresistible merit the rapt imagination of the half-holiday school boys who have got but sixpence to spend upon the whole, that they eye the outsides of each in a state of pleasing despair, till their leave of absence is expired twice over, and then return home filled with visions of giants and gingerbread nuts, and dream all night long of what they have not seen. ”

“ The fair must be advertised largely, like a circus, special rates on all lines of transportation. Every day must be a special day. A different parade, finishing at the entrance to the fair, should be held every afternoon—never in the morning. ”

“ The country campaign of the troupe was soon at an end, and we set off for the metropolis, to perform at the fairs which are held in its vicinity. The greater part of our theatrical property was sent on direct, to be in a state of preparation for the opening of the fairs; while a detachment of the company travelled slowly on, foraging among the villages. I was amused with the desultory, hap-hazard kind of life we led; here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Sometimes revelling in ale-houses; sometimes feasting under hedges in the green fields. ”

“ This World's Fair, which has recently been brought to a close, evinced to the millions of visitors, who were drawn by its multitudinous attractions to the White City from every section of this country, and from almost every quarter of the globe that it eclipsed in grandeur and excellence all of the previous universal expositions; for everything that good taste and modern genius could suggest and accomplish, was brought into play. ”

“ Moreover, the trades-folk of the town were obliged to close their shops during the days of the fair, and to bring their goods to the fair, so that the toll-owner might gain good profit withal.
We can imagine, or try to imagine, the roads and streets leading to the market-place thronged with traders and chapmen, the sellers of ribbons and cakes, minstrels and morris-dancers, smock-frocked peasants and sombre-clad monks and friars. Then a horn was sounded, and the lord of the manor, or the bishop's bailiff, or the mayor of the town proclaimed the fair ”

“ Men who raised horses and cattle took their best specimens to the fair to show them for prizes.
Then there were to be automobile races and horse races, and there were many amusements from the big merry-go-round to the little tents and booths where one could throw baseballs at dolls or toss rings over canes. There were also booths and tents where candy, ice-cream, lemonade and cider were sold, as well as places to eat.
"Oh, it's wonderful!" cried Nan, as she and her brothers, her sister, Harry and her father got out of their automobile and walked through the big gates into the fair grounds. ”

“ And it wuz a dretful interestin' sight—the farm-house, the barns, the well, the old windmill, the long fields a-stretchin' back, and fenced off, with different crops on 'em, the good-lookin' men and wimmen, and the horses, with their glossy hides and silky manes and tails, and all made of different kinds of seeds and grasses. It wuz a sight to see the crowd that stood before that from mornin' till night, and you ask ten folks what impressed 'em the most at the Fair, and more'n half on 'em would most likely say that it wuz that seed picter in the Illinois Buildin'. ”

“ To see the world on wheels—to see the latest, newest vanity of the Great Fair—is my ambition. Turning a corner, we enter a gateway adjoining the hotel; we pass the mystic portal, we pay the inevitable shilling, throw ourselves upon the mercies of the movable barrier, and find ourselves there. ”

“ In addition to the pleasures and social diversions which that annual rural festival—the county fair—affords, it is an educational force that is not sufficiently appreciated by those who live beyond the reach of its spell. ”

“ If a dancing bear had waddled through the fair, he could not have had half the number of people after him. But like most of those who envy the lot of their neighbours, these good folks only saw the outside of things, and knew not the misery which was covered by this fair external show. ”

“ We have lost our rural cohesion because we have been attracted by the town and the city, and we have allowed the town and the city to do our work. I think it would not be difficult to organize a pageant, or something of the kind, at a county fair, that would make the ordinary vaudeville or sideshow or gim-crack look cheap and ridiculous and not worth one's while. ”

“ I have been able to trace only two shows to this fair in 1702, namely Barnes and Finley’s and Miller’s, which stood opposite to the former, and presented “an excellent droll called Crispin and Crispianus: or, A Shoemaker a Prince; with the best machines, singing and dancing ever yet in the fair.” A great concourse of people attended from all parts of the metropolis; an injudicious attempt on the part of the local authorities to exclude persons of immoral character, which has always been found impracticable in places of public amusement, resulted in a serious riot. ”