Fairs and Markets, Part Two

The last post about fairs and markets Fairs and Markets, Part One covered some information about the fairs in Dundee, Forfar, Glasterlaw, Glen Esk and some others.  This post looks in more detail about the famous Taranty Fair at Brechin, plus the markets of Arbroath – and other information. 

   One difficulty at looking at fairs and markets is that sites and dates inevitably changed over the course of time. At the end of this piece there is a snapshot of these events as they existed in 1846.

Taranty Fair, Brechin

   Taranty (Trinity) Fair was a very renowned fair and cattle market held on the common at Trinity near the burgh of Brechin. These days it still exists, but as a palimpsest of its previous existence, being held on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in June. It was different in the mid 19th century, as recalled in an article which included contributions by James Grant (whose father farmed at Clochtow, Forfar) in the Brechin Advertiser, 25th June 1929:

Then the Market ran for three days on Wednesday for sheep, Thursday for cattle, and Friday for horses. For a month prior to the market advance parties were in Brechin and district fixing up lodgings and getting accommodation for the large number of animals that were forward for the market, and after the fair was over it was some time before the town was cleared, for the attenders sometimes enjoyed themselves not wisely but too well… At the market the Town Council, being superiors of the fair, attended, and the constabulary, it appears, were then nominated by the trades or guilds of the city. From contemporary reports their services were not highly thought of, for a writer in the Brechin Advertiser in 1854 complains that instead of taking their proper positions throughout the market, they hung about Justice Hall… But on the whole the great fair seemed to pass off well, and if there were thimblers and pickpockets about the public were usually well warned… Compared with old days the market was now a shadow if what it used to be. The readier of access which people had to the towns, and development of transport had taken away the usefulness of those gatherings.

   But however much the market had dwindled since its Victorian heyday, it was still a red letter day for agricultural workers in Angus and beyond well into the 20th century as one contributor to Bothy Nichts and Days (p. 44) recalled:

Fowk biket fae a’ ower Angus and the Howe o’ the Mearns tae ging tae it.  Some hardy ploomen wid hae a goe at the boothboxers but it wisna offen they cud beat them, they a’ had nesty tricks, it wisna exactly Marquis o Queensberry rules.  The Toon Cooncil held coort in a hoose aside the muir and onybody gettin oot o hand wis fined on the spotor spend a nicht in the cells.  Ye wid get the eftirnuin aff for the local show, like the Fetterie show, aye held on a Wednesday.

  

   Despite the centuries long record of fairs and markets associated with Brechin, most recorded change occurred throughout the 19th century, partially to reflect changing patterns in local farming. (David Black, the historian of Brechin, documented these developments.) An act of the council, dated 25th March 1801, responded to local livestock dealers and farmers asking for a Trinity Muir spring market to be held on the third Wednesday of April, and this was first held on 15th April of that year. The council established a new market – or ‘Tryst’ – in 1819, and this new date was appointed to be held on the Tuesday preceding the last Wednesday of September every year. Again this was at the behest of the local farming community. By 1833 the August Lammas Muir had ‘dwindled to a petty fair’ and further changes were instituted.

   By the time David Black was writing the various fairs and markets of Brechin were still thriving, albeit those merchants who traded there were no longer the same.  Tuesday’s market was for grain, though there were cattle markets on that day in autumn and winter, with horse markets in February and March.  The great annual markets deserve to be described in detail as they capture a vanished mode of life:

The first Tuesday after Whitsunday, old style, is a great market day, chiefly for the hiring of country servants; and so is the first Tuesday after Martinmas, old style... Formerly these term markets were attended by chapmen, who formed a society amongst themselves, termed “The Chapmen of Angus”... These chapmen travelled in the country regularly, carrying their goods some in spring-carts, some on horseback... an inferior class, called packmen, travelled always on foot, and some of them carried immense packs on their backs... As the chapman waxed old and wealthy, he settled down as a merchant in some borough town.  The race is now all but wholly extinct. On a piece of ground of nearly 33 acres in extent...called Trinity, or more generally Tarnty Muir, a great fair is annually held for three days, commencing on the second Wednesday of June, to which cattle-dealers and horse-dealers resort from all parts of Scotland and some parts of England... There are other markets held on this ground in April, August, and September, but the June market is par excellence termed “the Trinity Fair”.  The April market, called the Spring Tryst, generally a large market, is held on the third Wednesday of that month...

   The size, dignity and importance of the markets on Trinity Muir was enforced zealously by the city’s officials and seems to have be a customary feature from early times, as again described by Black:

Every one who has witnessed the fairs... has noticed the array of halberds with which the council are guarded to the markets, and by means of which, when necessary, the decisions of the magistrates, given in the markets, are enforced.  The guard is furnished by the incorporations of the town, each sending two men at Trinity fair, and one man at Lammas fair.  The weapons with which the men are armed belong to the respective incorporations...

   Black then records an event in May 1683 when two of the guard staged a mutiny, one of whom was a noted troublemaker named David Duncanson who had come to the attention of the authorities several times before. 

   Records of Brechin’s markets stretch back to the reign of William the Lion (1165-1214) and beyond. A charter of William’s confirms a grant to the bishop and Culdees of the church of Brechin giving the right to hold a Sunday market. This confirmed a grant made by King David I and is repeated in later charters issued by Robert I and James II. The charter granted by David II in 1369 notes that the whole merchants inhabiting the City of Brechin had free ingress and egress to the waters of the South Esk and Tay for carrying their merchandise and prohibits the burgesses of Dundee and Montrose from interfering with these rights. The weekly market was moved from Sunday to Tuesday in the time of James III in the late 15th century. The Trinity Fair is first mentioned in records in the late 16th century.

St Thomas’ Fair in Arbroath and Auchmithie

      By way of contrast to Brechin’s high days, we can look at the festivities surrounding the fairs and markets on the coast at Arbroath, memorably described in J. S. Neish’s In the By-Ways of Life (p. 57).  One of the features of the celebration of St Thomas’s Day was an exodus of Arbroath folk along the coast to the village of Auchmithie.  Lucky Walkers was the name of a famed hostelry in the fishing village.  Neish describes the annual outing:

By an early hour the lads and lasses streamed out of town by the cliffs or Seaton Road...  At the foot of the brae [in Auchmithie] there stood a huge barn-like building, which was used as a fish-curing house.  On these festive occasions this shed... was extemporised into a ballroom... During the whole day the fishermen made short trips with their cobles round the small bay with freights of screeching half-frightened women, who eagerly invested their spare coppers in a sail.

   The author tells us that Lucky Walker herself and her staff were run off their feet all day, bringing fish and ale to the incomers.  But, like other honoured customs, progress put an end to the trade.  The coming of the railways meant that Arbroathians went further afield on their festive days and Lucky observed that ‘sin thae railways began her hoose was nae worth naething’. 

   By the late 19th century (according to the author of Arbroath, Past and Present), the market of St Thomas had practically ceased to exist. But in former times this ‘Auld Market’ was held on the 18th July, if a Saturday, or the first Saturday thereafter. Not just Auchmithie was a destination for holiday makers; locals also went to Lunan, East Haven, even Dundee.

   
   The history of the fairs and markets in Arbroath provide an exemplary guide to the changes which also occurred in other locations, for, although markets and fairs were a constant in communities for centuries, local needs frequently dictated changes. King William the Lion granted the right for Arbroath to hold a weekly market in the late 12th century, on Saturday. The burgesses in 1528 chose Tuesday as the new market day. By the time of the charter of James VI in 1599 the market was again being held on a Saturday and there were four annual markets: St Thomas’s Day, St Vigean’s Day, St John’s Day, and St Ninian’s Day. Two hundred years later the Old Statistical Account noted that there were three yearly fairs: 20th January (St Vigean’s), first Wednesday after Trinity Sunday (St Ninian’s), and 7th July (St Thomas a Beckett). The weekly market day was now Thursday (to which day it had been changed around 1742). By the time of the publication of the New Statistical Account in 1845 the fairs had shrunk to two in number and the weekly market day was once again Saturday. Late in the 19th century there were hiring markets held on the last Saturday of January, 26th May, 18th July, 22nd November (if these dates fell on Saturdays; if not, the Saturdays following).

Auchmithie, 1890.

Feeing Markets

   Feeing Markets for the hiring of farm labour at specific terms were, in a sense, the poor relations of fairs and markets held for the wider community. Despite this, and because of their necessity, many lingered well into the 20th century, although they were much diminished. Harry Brown recalled travelling with his father on the first Friday after 28th November 1934 to Kirriemuir to attend what he thought was be an agricultural feeing market, only to find that the square was nearly empty and the market a thing of the past in Kirrie. Other markets remained in Arbroath and Brechin, although agricultural workers from both these areas sometimes preferred to journey to the Forfar market in hope of work because they believed that it was a better place for wages (A Life on the Land, p. 9).  
According to the contributors who spoke to David Adams about the feeing process (Bothy Nichts and Days, pp. 46-47) the term times were Whitsunday (28th May) and Martinmas (28th November). Farm workers participating in this system were freed by current employers at lunchtime on the 28th and had three days to secure a job for the forthcoming term. Forfar, according to one source, was infamously name the Rogue’s Market, because it was the last recourse of farm workers who could not get a fee elsewhere: ‘onybody that cudna got a fee gaed there’. In latter years married farm workers feed once a year, at May term (an exception being at Dundee, where they feed at winter term). Single men feed every six months and were likely to move farms every few years if there was no promotion for them. The procedure for announcing your availability for service was sometimes quite specific. In Friock farm hands would line up in Gardyne Street ‘wi a strae in yere moo if ye hadna gotten a fee’. The fees given to feed farm workers now seem so miniscule as to suggest that they seem to below to an entirely different age rather than last century. A loun at a hiring market in 1921 would be likely to receive £20 for his first six month fee. A fifth horseman in the next decade could demand the princely sum of £38 for a sixmonth.

Selected Sources

Adams, David G., Bothy Nichts and Days, Farm Bothy Life in Angus and the Mearns (Edinburgh, 1992).

Black, David F., The History of Brechin to 1864 (2^nd. edn., Edinburgh, 1887).

Brown, Harry, ed. Orr, David G., A Life on the Land, Farming in Angus 1934-1994 (Balgavies, 2003).

Coutts, Walter, Historical Guide, Brechin and Neighbourhood (Brechin, 1889).

McBain, J. M., Arbroath, Past and Present (Arbroath, 1887).

Marwick, Sir James David, List of Fairs and Markets Now and Formerly Held in Scotland (Glasgow, 1890).

Maxwell, Alexander, The History of Old Dundee, Narrated out of the Town Council Register (Edinburgh & Dundee, 1884).

Miller, David, Arbroath and its Abbey, or the Early History of the Town and Abbey of Aberbrothock (Edinburgh, 1860).

Neish, In The By-Ways of Life: A Series of Sketches of Forfarshire Characters (Dundee, 1881).

Perry, David, ‘A New Look at Old Arbroath,’ Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal 4 (1998), 260-78.

Stirton, James, Thrums and its Glens, Historical Relics and Recollections (2^nd. edn., Kirriemuir, 1896).

Forfar Croft Market.

Fairs and Markets in Angus and the Mearns in 1846