UNRECORDED. NOT IN ESTC, OCLC or COPAC.
A seemingly unique handbill advertising a fair at a West Sussex pub listing a variety of games and public spectacles.
“If unto merriment inclin’d,
You here no doubt good Fun will find.
And at the Sheffield’s Arms may meet,
A plenty both to Drink and Eat.“
The handbill lists the various activities that will take place at the summer “Diversions” at the Sheffield Arms, a pub at Sheffield Green near East Grinstead in West Sussex in the south of England. The activities include: “A Cudgeling Match for a Hat”, “Grinning through a Horse-Collar, for a pound of Tobacco” [an activity sometimes referred to as gurning], “Diving in a Pail of Water, after an Orange, by Boys, for Buckles”, “A set of Cups & Saucers to be run for, by 4 Old Women”, “A Race by Men, in sacks, for a Cheese”, “An Ass Race, for a Shoulder of Mutton: - the Owner not to ride his Ass, and the last that comes in to be the Winner.”
This kind of public spectacle - fuelled no doubt by alcohol - would no doubt have been very popular and was part of a long English tradition of fairs and fetes that stretched back hundreds of years and which still continues today with many of the activities listed above still performed (see for example Gloucestershire cheese rolling and the World Gurning Championships at the Egremont Crab Fair). These festivities harked back many centuries and promoted ideas of misrule and upheaval of order. These same ideas were examined by Jez Butterworth in his 2009 play Jerusalem which takes place on the the day of the local country fair in “Flintock”, based on the village of Pewsey, in Wiltshire.
This type of fair can be seen as a sort of quasi-public theatrical performance and fairs themselves (such as Bartholomew Fair) were often drawn upon by writers as rich sources for intrigue and subversion of order.
