Fragments of Two Centuries Part 12

The condition of the rural peasantry a hundred years ago fell immeasurably short of the opportunities for recreation afforded at the present time, but there were not a few bright spots in the year, which, whatever we may think of the manner of the enjoyment, did afford very pleasant antic.i.p.ations and memories to even the peasant folk in the villages. By custom these periodical feasts, for they generally resolved themselves into that, became a.s.sociated with certain seasons, and of these none held a more important place than the annual Michaelmas "Statty," that is, the annual statute fair, of some central village or town where, to quote an old Hertfordshire ballad,

There's dancing and singing And fiddling and ringing, With good beef and pudding, And plenty of beer.

Hither came the lads and la.s.ses just free from a year's hiring and--the lads with whip-cord or horse-hair banding round their hats to indicate their accomplishments with horses, &c.--ready to enter upon a fresh engagement with the old or with a new master for the coming twelve months. Sturb.i.t.c.h fair is not the only place which has been proclaimed by dignified officials, for in the old time many country fairs, which had no Mayor and Corporation to fall back upon, were thought of sufficient importance to engage the services of the Town Crier or Beadle, and in some places this was the kind of proclamation that ushered in the fair:--

O yez! O yez! the fair is begun, There shall be no arrest, till the fair is done.

Arrest for debt should, I suppose, be understood, for the Stocks invariably received as much company as they could hold on such occasions.

In some cases the "Statty," or fair, was proclaimed by printed notice issued by the chief constable of the hundred, and others even by those responsible for obtaining situations for pauper children, to whose interest it was that such a convenient means of bringing people together should be kept up. In the year 1788 I find the Royston Parish Committee pa.s.sing this resolution:--

"Ordered that for the future such Boys and Girls as are in the Workhouse and fit for service be taken to the Neighbouring Statutes for the purpose of letting them for service."

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Generally each printed announcement by the Chief Constable of a statute fair for hiring within his hundred concluded with the intimation--"Dinner on Table at two o'clock, price 2s. 6d. each." From the last named item I conclude that the dinner on the table was intended for employers who could afford the 2s. 6d., and also, I believe, for the parish constables of the hundred whose "2s. 6d. for the constabel's fest" so frequently occurs in parish accounts. A number of these announcements before me all end in a similar strain, but I give one specimen below--

PUCKERIDGE STATUTE FOR HIRING SERVANTS, will be held at the BELL INN, On FRIDAY, the 23RD of SEPTEMBER, 1796, _THOMAS PRIOR, Chief Constable._ Dinner on the Table at Two o'clock.

May-day observances may perhaps appear a too hackneyed topic for a place in these Glimpses, and yet they were very different from present day observances. The "May-dolling" by children in the streets of Royston as every first of May comes round is clearly a survival of the more picturesque mummeries of the past. There is this in common, in all the procession of Mayers through the ages, that their outward equipment has always sought some little bit of promise of greenery from nature's springtide, and rather a large piece of the human nature which runs to seed in the oriental "backsheesh"--a picturesque combination of blessing and begging. The "Mayers' song," and its setting in this district, was something like the following:--At an early hour in the morning a part of the townspeople would parade the town singing the Mayers' song, carrying large branches of may or other greenery, a piece of which was affixed to the door of the most likely houses to return the compliment. Sometimes delicate compliments or otherwise were paid to the servants of the house, and, if not in favour with the Mayers, the former would find on opening the door in the morning, not the greeting of a branch of "may" but a spiteful bunch of stinging nettles!--a circ.u.mstance which caused servants to take a special interest in what they would find at their door as an omen of good fortune.

During the day the Mayers' procession went on in a more business-like form, with sundry masked figures, men with painted faces--one wearing an artificial hump on his back, with a birch broom in his hand, and the other in a woman's dress in tatters and carrying a ladle--acting the parts of "mad Moll and her husband." Two other men, one gaudily dressed up in ribbons and swathed in coloured bandages and {99} carrying a sword, and another attired as a lady in a white dress and ribbons, played the part of the "Lord and Lady." Other attendants upon these followed in similar, but less imposing, attire. With fiddle, clarionet, fife and drum, a substantial contribution from the townspeople was acknowledged with music and dancing, and a variety of clownish tricks of Mad Moll and her Husband.

We thus see that the chubby-fisted little fellows who, not possessing even a doll, rig out a little stump of an old sailor or soldier, or even a bunch of greenery on a stick, as well as the girls who now promenade their dolls of varying degrees of respectability, have an historical background of some dignity, when, on the morning of the first of May, they line our streets and reflect the glories of the past to an unsentimental generation which knows nothing of "Mad Moll and her husband."

The following are some verses of the Mayers' song--

Remember us poor Mayers all, And thus we do begin, To lead our lives in righteousness, Or else we die in sin.

A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands, It is but a sprout, But it's well budded out.

by the work of our Lord's hands.

The moon shines bright and the stars give light, A little before it is day; So G.o.d bless you all, both great and small, And send you a joyful May!

Plough Monday and its interesting connection with the return of the season for field work of the husbandman, and its modern relic of perambulating the streets with a plough for largess, has practically pa.s.sed away as a custom and has long since lost its sentiment. Another curious observance connected with the harvest was in full swing at the time of which I am writing; viz., the "hockey" load, or harvest home.

Many persons living remember the intense excitement which centred around the precincts of the farmhouse and its approaches, when it was known that the last load of corn was coming home! Generally a small portion, enough to fill the body of the cart, was left for the last load. Upon this the men rode home, shouting "merry, merry, harvest home," which was a well understood challenge to all and sundry to bring out their water! Through the village the light load rattled along at a great pace, while from behind every wall, tree, or gatepost along the route, men, women and even children, armed with such utensils as came ready to hand, sent after the flying rustics a shower of water {100} which continually increased in volume as the hockey load reached the farm-yard, where capacious buckets and pails charged from the horse pond brought up a climax of indescribable fun and merriment!

The next in order of the seasons, manners, and customs are the summer and autumn feasts and fairs. Of the fair held at Anstey, the following is an announcement of seventy years ago--

ANSTEY FAIR, ON THURSDAY, JULY 15TH, 1817.

A Tea Kettle to be Bowled for by Women.

A Gown to be Smoked for by Women.

A Shift to be Run for by Women.

A Share to be Ploughed for by Men, at Mr. Hoy's at the Bell, at Anstey.

How far smoking by women was a habit, or how far it was a device to contribute to the fun of the fair, cannot very well be determined--probably there was in it a little of both. The following poetical announcement is another type--

_A Muslin Gown-piece_, with needle work in, For Girls to run for; for the first that comes in: To _Sing for Ribbons_, and _Bowl for a Cheese_; To _Smoke for Tobacco_, and _Shoot_--if you please; For a _Waistcoat_ or _Bridle_, there's a.s.ses to run; And a _Hog to be Hunted_, to make up the fun!

The regulation of licensed houses was not quite so strictly attended to under the Dogberry _regime_ as we have it to-day. On the occasion of the Royston fairs, more particularly Ash Wednesday, and I think Michaelmas, a tippler could obtain beer at almost any house around the bottom of the Warren, and even when the supervision became less lax, within the memory of many persons living, the private residents had got so much accustomed to the practice, that they kept it up by a colourable deference to the law which led them to sell a person a piece of straw for the price of a pint of beer and then give them the beer!

So rooted had this habit become under the laxity of the old system that many persons, I believe, deluded themselves with the belief that somehow or other they were only exercising their birthright conferred by charter in ages that are gone! Charters did sometimes grant some curious things, but I believe I am right in saying that the charters conferred upon the monks, who were the original governors of Royston, contain no such easy way of evading the licensing laws of the 19th century! This kind of thing happened at other "feasts" and looks a little more like barter than charter.

In some other respects, however, the old Dogberry _regime_ was more strict than the present. Thus for the Fifth of November in {101} the first quarter of this century we find the following for Royston--

"Ordered that notice be given that the law will be enforced against all persons detected in letting off squibs, crackers, or other fireworks in the street or any other part of this town, and that the constable be ordered to inform against any person so offending."

Stage plays were not unknown, and whether by strolling players or some local thespians "She stoops to Conquer" was a favourite among ambitious flights, with a lively tail end of such t.i.t-bits as "Bombastes Furioso," "The Devil to pay," and "The transformations of Mad Moll," &c.

Intimately bound up with manners and customs was, of course, the lingering belief in witches, fairies, brownies, drolls, and all the uncanny beings which George Stephenson's "puffing billy" has frightened away into the dark corners of the earth! The subject is too broad for general reference here, but there are a few local remnants of the "black arts" which stamped their devotees as being in league with the evil one.

During the last century, when such large numbers of felons for various crimes found their way to the gallows, there appears to have been an idea prevalent that if any woman would agree to marry a man under the gallows he would be ent.i.tled to pardon, and under the influence of this curious notion, a man executed at Cambridge in 1787, just before the fatal moment arrived, seeing a woman in the crowd whom he knew, called out to her "Won't you save my life?" This tragic fashion of popping the question was not effectual in this case, for the man was hung!

The use of charms for curing diseases was of course in operation.

Perhaps the most unique of these was the plan apparently adopted by the "celebrated skilful woman at Shepreth." Who the skilful woman of Shepreth was I am unable to say, but we may perhaps infer the nature of her fame and skill from the fact on record that a man, who was said to be one of her descendants, did in 1774, when called in to see a butcher who had run a meat hook into his hand, carefully dress the offending hook from day to day with healing ointment, &c., and left the man's hand alone till it got so bad that a surgeon was called in and had to perform an operation!

There were later examples of the remarkably skilful woman of Shepreth--the "wise woman" at Fulbourn; "The wise woman in the Falcon Yard," at Cambridge; and I have no doubt almost every village had at least by repute its wise woman who could, for a consideration, unravel all mysteries about stolen property, malicious injuries, and a host of things amenable to the black art often vulgarly called witchcraft, in the name of which perfectly innocent creatures had in a previous age got a ducking in a horse pond, if nothing worse!

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When pretenders of this stamp, and more innocent and less designing individuals, who were guilty of nothing worse than an imperfect use of herbal medicine, were suspected of evil influences, it is not surprising that the studious who ventured to investigate the mysteries lying beyond the common run of information should get a share of that peculiar homage which ignorance paid to knowledge. There were, here and there, individuals, the record of whose eccentricity opens up for us vistas into the marvellous domain of magic and mystery which cast its glamour of romance over the old world of the alchemist in pursuit of the philosopher's stone. One of the most remarkable of latter-day disciples of Peter Woulfe, of whom some interesting particulars are given in Timbs' _Modern Eccentrics_, has a peculiar claim to notice here, if only for having for many years pursued his studies and experiments in the neighbourhood of Hitchin.

As late as 1825, twenty years after the death of Peter Woulfe, who was thought to be the last of the true believers in alchemy, Sir Richard Phillips visited an alchemist at Lilley, near Hitchin, named Kellerman, who was believed by some of his neighbours to have discovered the philosopher's stone, and the universal solvent! His room was a realization of Tenier's "Alchemist." The floor was strewed with retorts, crucibles, alembics, jars, and bottles of various shapes, inter-mingled with old books. This worthy had not only bettered all the work of his predecessors, but had, after repeated failures, at last made gold; and, what was more, he could make as much more as he pleased, even to the extent of paying off the National Debt! In justification of his singular pursuits, Kellerman quoted Roger and Francis Bacon, Paracelsus, Boyle, Boerhave, Woulfe, and others, and claimed that he had discovered the "blacker than black" of Appollonious Tya.n.u.s, which was the powder of projection for producing gold! It further appeared that Kellerman had lived in these premises at Lilley twenty-three years, during fourteen of which he had pursued his alchemical studies, keeping eight a.s.sistants to superintend his crucibles, two at a time relieving each other every six hours; that he had exposed some preparation to intense heat for many months at a time, but that all his crucibles had burst except one, which Kellerman said contained the "Blacker than Black." One of his a.s.sistants, however, protested that no gold had ever been found; and so, even persevering old Kellerman, the last of his race, who dared to speculate with the iron horse just behind him, disappears from the scene, discredited by the Phillistines, who calculate but never dream!

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CHAPTER X.

TRADE, AGRICULTURE AND MARKET ORDINARIES.

One of the most interesting, as well as significant things about old-time studies, is the evolution of industry, from the stage, when each domestic hearth was a factory of some sort, to vast cotton mills and iron foundries. Time was when the wool from the sheep's back was made into cloth in every house in Royston, then the finishing processes of fulling and dyeing were made a business of elsewhere, then with the introduction of machinery the hand-loom disappeared from our cottages to special centres; next the spinning disappeared; then the combing, and last of all the wool-sorting went too, leaving nothing but sheep shearing of what was a complete local industry, with as many centres as there were formerly houses to work in and families to work.

The only thing that is dimly visible in these Glimpses, of that universal woollen industry, is the picturesque figure of our great-grand-mother at the spinning wheel--not merely as a piece of domestic economy, but as a wage-earning tool employing children as well as adults, just as straw plaiting became in this and the adjoining Bedfordshire district when the spinning industry disappeared.

In 1768, the first year in which any disburs.e.m.e.nts are mentioned in the Royston parish books, the first item was the granting of a spinning wheel to Nan Dodkin by the Vestry. Weaving proper had ceased at this date, but a great deal of business was done in Royston towards the end of last century in the "hemp dressing, sack weaving and rope making branches," as I learn from an auctioneer's announcement of a property sale in 1773.

During the reign of George III. hand-spinning was an industry throughout this district, and at most cottage doors in the villages could be seen wheels busily turning, up to about 1825. The pay was not great, but the employment was more seemly than that of dragging mothers of families and young girls into the fields as one often sees {104} them at the present time. The evidence of the spinning industry is conclusive from the parish accounts alone in such entries as--

"Ordered that Thomas C---- and his family be permitted to leave the Workhouse, the Overseers to buy them a pair of old blankets and a new Wheel."