The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-04-21
TIE HIRING FAIRS OF ENGLAND
The Passing of m Ancient md Pic
turesaue Custom.

Among the passing phases Of country
| life. as one is reminded by the advent of
March. is the hiring that once through
out all England was the ordinary means
| OF engaging farm servants Its name and
| date varied with the locality In the
| south district of Lincolnshire ii is GUS
| tomary to hold stats or statute fair
| as early in the year as January. the ser
wants entering on their engagements on
| April lG. The Cambridgeshire hirinEs take
place at Wisbech during September. The
'mops'' of the midland and western coun-
| ties were held some in May, but most in
the autumn. But in every one of them
| the system is dying out. and the hiring
| fair is going the way of the horse ana
! sheep and general fairs-that is to say,
| IL is ceasing to exist Like a great many
other old institutions 1t has beea ruined
by the cheap press Your rustic Is well
aware that for a sixpenny advertisement
he can at any time make known his wish
for a change.
The ancient custom dies hardest among
the tenacious Mortimer, and hear that
the first of March hirings was very well
| attended indeed. Ploughmen, naturally
enough, were in high spirits. the wages
commanded being satisfactory to them.
Sixteen shillings week was given in
cash, and of course this was in addition
to the payment in kind which have always
bulked largely in the North. and include
such solid perquiSites as rent free cot
tage, from a thousand TO fifteen hundred
yards of potatoes. and various measures
of corn Payment In kind is always tend
ing toward disuse, and the Feeling is
that hours of labor should be very def
nitely fixed and remuneration be in mon
ey, the bond between master and man be-
ing only what Carlyle called the cash
neXuS. 1t is quite a new idea in agr!-
culture.
If we remember that it was the loss Of
indirect advantages such as that of COM
nat % "a pa Of
once famous British yeoman and COM
PEELED so many sales in the late eight
zenith and carly nineteenth century, we
may well LOOK .Fith suspicion upon this
general craving for hard cash. One
would not like to see the Northern rus
tic spoiled In an age which shows so
many signs OF decadence 1t is good to
see that his figure is as burly, his voice
as strong as ever; 1t is good to hear him
at those hirings exclaiming with pleased
surprise, the while energetically shak-
again and again with variations as you
saunter down where master and man
have been negotiating. rs that zee,
Johnny? 'Eh, Mary hinny; surely that s
not 'ee? Throughout the year they do
not depend so much on cider (which is
nearly always hard and of great alcoholic
strength and beer. the home brewed four
ale varying as the Southern rustic. Cider
is very good drinking. but not the cider
they drink-.'Her be rare good zider mus
ter, thick. and bitter" and ale not to be
despised. but not the wayside home brew
ed of the Eastern counties. The North
erner is safer with his milk all the year
round. varied by "a bit Of burst at
the hirings-
The Northern peasant woman has very
greatly changed in recent years. '-Verd-
ant Green can SCARCELY be called an an
cient work, and IL seems to the writer
that the bondager remained up to quite
recently as she was described in that
amusing volume. | remember her as a
very buXom woman, supported on legs
like two stout pillars, her frock very
short. showing her leggins and wooden
clogs. She wore a bongrace. too; that
from certain ballads in the Roxburgh col
lection seems at one time to have been
common to all over England. 1t was a
funny shaped bonnet. with a projection
that resembed the hood of a carriage.
and for short it was called ugly But
the bondager of today, who calls herself
an outworker. has departed sadly from
this model Not even in the fields will
she wear an ugly. ana she comes to the
wair with a gentee hat and veil to it.
while her hair is over her ears and curled
round her eyebrows quite in the manner
OF genteel shop-girl or barmaid. And
this was not the worst of it.
One of my correspondents. who is a
most trustworthy observer of peasant life,
draws attention to silly and pernicious
habit of theirs in the following words:
II am certain only quarter of the wo-
" all the middle-aged ones. They are in
the most frightfully anaemic and dyspep-
tic condition, and very few but had most
of their teeth out They looked more deli
cate than the town girls. Many of them
had the most exquisite compilations mag
Unable, but not of the kind we associate
with good health. To get the extraordi-
nary pallor and the faint pink they eat
quantities of raw oatmeal. starch. rice.
cts, until it is impossible for them to
digest decent meal