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  • All the Fun of the Fair June 8, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback

    ugly face

    This is an early nineteenth-century list (1826) of the things that folk got up to in a fair at Hungerford. It sounds so much better than those fairs that appear on the edges of American films, or the dreadful ‘carnivals’ that Beach was dragged to as a child. The writer comes back, time and time, again to the joy everyone shares and how much the folk laugh.

    Hot Tea Drinking

    Competitors: old women

    Game: whichever contestant can drink hot tea the quickest wins snuff

     

    Hunt the Pig

    Competitors: rowdy young folk

    Game: a pig has its rear end soaped and then is loosed with the crowd chasing it. You can only use one hand to hold the pig by the soapy tail.

    Sack Tie Race

    Competitors: eleven or so (men?) are handpicked

    Game: the competitors are placed in a sack that is tied around their neck, they then have to race in groups of eleven for five hundred yards and the winner receives… cheese.

    Ugly Grinning Competition

    Competitors: All, though a special ‘old woman’ category

    Game: the contestant has to put their head through a horse collar and make the ugliest face possible

    Donkey Racing

    Competitors: neighbours

    Game: you must ride your neighbours donkey to a given destination, while he rides yours. The prize is a hat or a jacket or some other piece of clothing.

    Running

    Competitors: girls

    Game: a simple race with ‘smocks’ as the prize!

    Conjoined enemies ***this one is horrific***

    Competitors: a duck and an owl

    Game: the two birds are tied together and thrown in a lake, the owl tries to kill the duck and the duck tries to escape by diving into the lake, the owl is momentarily stilled, then begins to kill again…

    Greasy Pole

    Competitors: hardy young folk

    Game: a piece of bacon is placed on top of a greased pole, and the competitors climb the pole together. An able climber can normally keep himself level until he releases one hand to grab the ham, at which point he comes crashing down on those climbing below him with hilarious results.

    Backswording

    Competitors: young men

    Game: your left hand is tied to your side and you are given a stout stick in the right hand. You win by making your opponent bleed from the head (!). The game was played with such skill that sometimes it would take half an hour before a player received a blow.

    Other fun of the fair games: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com We have previously featured smoking races.

    On mature reflection hot tea drinking probably wins it.

    Source: Everyday Book, 1399-1402

    Lisa L writes in 30 Jun 2016, ‘Your post about early 19th century fair amusements reminded me of this story I found in the Oxford Journal for May 6, 1780.  It contains a few additional games and pastimes.  (The jingling match particularly charmed me.)  No “conjoined enemies” to be found, thank God.  That’s nearly as bad as the nightmare-inducing “Gander pulling” from, I think, a slightly later era.’

    lsia

    Bruce T, 30 Jun 2016: The craziest ones I know of take place on the Great Plains and in the Southwest. They’re called a “Rattlesnake Roundups” and are the basis for the fairs. Oklahoma and Texas seem to be the heart of the sport. Thousands of rattlesnakes are caught and released into large pens where the “rattlesnake rodeos” take place, with prizes given for numbers of snakes dispatched, overall size, length, and weight. “The Simpsons” TV show had an episode that parodied the roundups called “Whacking Day”. Greased pig contests are still common at county and town fairs here. When I was a boy and adolescent,  there was a wrestling bear known as “Victor” who toured on the wrestling and fair circuit. The promoter offered five hundred dollars to anyone who could last a three minute round with the bear. Victor was muzzled and had his claws clipped, but a man is no match for a two hundred and fifty pound black bear. Victor’s owner didn’t have to pay up very often. Victor was kept for a couple years at a town about fifty miles south of me, where a low rent wrestling circuit was based. I had the pleasure of watching Victor shame more than a few drunken locals who went to “Rassle the bahr.” It was a right of passage for the lunkheads in the region. It seems to me Victor has his own Wikipedia entry as he toured the nation for years. Finally, no fair of the early-mid 20th century worth it’s stripes would tour without some washed up boxer or wrestler willing take on all comers for fifty dollar prize for lasting three rounds. My Grandfather once got talked into to going up against one of these fellows when he was in his late teens. He described the ring as normal, with one exception, on the far side there was curtain draping the boxer’s dressing area. Grandpa was a tall, quick, strong young man, by the end of round two, the old boxer was gassed. They came out for the third and in Grandpa’s words, “The fella bum rushed me, pushed me up against the curtain, and that’s all I remember”. Grandpa had been bopped in the head by someone behind the curtain. The fairground was about three miles above Grandpa’s house and the crowd packed with his friends. A riot broke out as the boxer hadn’t thrown a punch in the clinch by the curtain and everyone knew something hinky had happened from behind the curtain The local State Police detachment was brought in by train from ten miles away, but didn’t arrive before a good chunk of the stalls and carnival equipment were burned to the ground. Grandpa got his fifty dollars from a friend who’d jumped from the crowd, cold-cocked the promoter and grabbed the money box, setting off the riot. A local doctor, a family friend, had to sneak Grandpa and a couple of the instigators out in his car to keep them from being arrested. Ironically I’m very close friends with the great-Grandson of the man who started the riot. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, Beach.

    Southern Man, 8 Jan 2017: I once read of a Renaissance Italian sport (Siena) where competitors raced to head butt a dangling cat to death… People don’t change.