Date: 1888
A fair in the olden time was a very different thing to that which the present generation has witnessed.  Now, it is a mere collection of gin gerbread stalls, and here and there a locomotive playhouse ; but some hundred years ago, a great portion of the mercantile wealth of the king dom found its Avay, en grosse, or, as Ave should say now, wholesa'e, to these receptacles of every useful article, and thence was distributed in small parcels, or retail, east, Avest, north, and south.  The two main ob jects of this fair, after the one of bringing crowds to the shrine of St. Bartholomew, were for the collection and disposal of Avoollen cloths and cattle.