page_title: Dudsday
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dudsday / History
caption_attribution_description: A view of Kilmarnock Cross, East Ayrshire, Scotland in 1840.
context_page_description: Dudsday, also Duds' day, or Dud's day was a hiring fair, a holiday, held at Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire, Scotland. Originally held at Martinmas that falls on November 11 it was later also held at Whitsun. At this fair farm servants etc would be hired. The name comes from the custom of farm Labourers purchasing new clothes or 'Duds' having been paid their wages for the previous half-year.
context_section_description: The term 'Dudsday' will be used for consistency. Later the name was applied to the spring hiring fair at Whitsun in Kilmarnock also and to other similar fairs held in other parts of Ayrshire for the same purpose. The Kilmarnock Dudsday ceased to be held after 1939, the name previously becoming also attached to hiring markets set at other dates than the traditional Dudsday.
  These fairs were eagerly looked forward to by merchants and were especially busy for the shopkeepers and the taverns. Farm labourers hoped to either renew or gain better employment at these Dudsday fairs. The 'Ayr Advertiser' for 21 October 1920 records of a hiring event that "There were not a great many single men engaged, a large proportion of them preferring to wait till Dudd's Day."
  Archibald McKay in his 1880 'History of Kilmarnock' makes mention of several fairs such as 'Fastern's E'en' (Shrove Tuesday) but gives no reference to Dudsday or any tradition of hiring fairs.
caption: Kilmarnock Cross in 1840.
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