Feeing Fairs

John Boyd described himself as a ploughman and farm servant on his children’s birth certificates and looking at the varied birthplaces of the Boyd children it is obvious that the family moved around the county from year to year. It is very possible that John Boyd, like hundreds of thousands of other agricultural labourers, gained his employment by means of the local feeing, tryst, mop or hiring fairs.
                                                                                           

For centuries in the British Isles farm workers would make their way to the nearest hiring fair in order to find employment for the following six or twelve months . In Scotland, where these fairs were known as feeing or tryst fairs, most hirings were for a six month period and were often held near to the Whitsun and Martinmas quarter days. Ploughmen and shepherds, milk maids and domestic servants, hinds and carters would all gather at the local fair in the hope of securing employment for the coming season. Those looking for work would display some form of identification which indicated their line of work, this varied from region to region; in some areas emblems were worn in the hat band whilst in other areas these symbols were worn on the smock or lapel and in yet other areas the symbols were carried e.g. a spade carried by a potato picker, a crook by a shepherd etc. Once wages and conditions had been discussed it was customary for the farmer to give a down-payment to the farm servant to secure his services, this was known as ‘arles’. Arles was given to bind and secure the agreement between worker and employer.

Thomas Hardy mentions the hiring fairs in many of his novels and essays – Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd , The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Dorsetshire Labourer to name a few – he gives this description in Far from the Madding Crowd:

Two months passed away. We are brought on to a day in February, on which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town of Casterbridge.

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon Chance- all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.

In The Kingdom of Kippen: Its History and Traditions by William Chrystal published in 1903, Chrystal describes how the feeing fairs “are looked upon as the great half-yearly holidays of the farm” consequently they were the place where the farm servants let their hair down. Numerous newspaper reports of the time described the brawls and drunken behaviour which appeared synonymous with feeing fairs. Chrystal states:

Many of both sexes visit these fairs purposely for an engagement, but the majority, having been previously hired, go merely on pleasure bent, and join in forming a merry, spirit-stirring spectacle in which there is the very extreme of gaiety. Everywhere along the public street the swarming, streaming mass shout and jostle each other in riotous merriment and during the day "shows" and merry-go-rounds, if available, receive generous support.

The Dumfries and Galloway Standard on Wednesday 25 March 1857 reported that at the Castle Douglas Hiring Fair

 the town was more than usually crowded, principally by farm–servants desirous of changing place – male servants taking new engagements readily received fees varying from £9 to £10 for the half year

although the newspaper was

sorry to observe that a considerable number of the lads and lasses had imbibed too freely of strong drinks, but there was fortunately no attempt at disturbance, and the market closed in perfect quiet and order.

All that remains of this traditional method of employment are the annual fairs with their sideshows which are now solely for the purpose of profit and family entertainment.

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Once the farm workers had found themselves employment for the following year all that remained was for the family to move in to their latest tied cottage. In his essay The Dorsetshire Labourer, Hardy describes the sight seen in every rural community in the country on quarter days:  

The goods are built up on the waggon to a well-nigh unvarying pattern, which is probably as peculiar to the country labourer as the hexagon to the bee. The dresser, with its finger-marks and domestic evidences thick upon it, stands importantly in front, over the backs of the shaft horses, in its erect and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant, which must not be handled slightingly or overturned. The hive of bees is slung up to the axle of the waggon, and alongside it the cooking pot or crock, within which are stowed the roots of garden flowers. Barrels are largely used for crockery, and budding gooseberry bushes are suspended by the roots; while on the top of the furniture a circular nest is made of the bed and bedding for the matron and children, who sit there through the journey.

Broadside ballads were published portraying the lot of the farm workers and the method of hiring in rural areas, this extract from “Country Hirings” was written at the end of the 19^th century:

The farmer and the servants together used to dine,

But now they're in the parlour, with their pudding,

beef, and wine,

The masters and the mistress, their sons and daugh-

ters are alone,

And they will eat the beef, & you may eat the bone.

Servant men, stand up for wages,

When to the hirings you do go,

For you must work all sorts of weather,

Both cold, wet and snow.

It is, of course, impossible to state categorically that John Boyd was employed using the feeing fair system but his yearly movements from one hamlet to another do suggest he used that method of gaining employment.