LAND OF HIRING FAIRS

Evening Star, Issue 20585, 10 September 1930, Page 6

LAND OF HIRING FAIRS

LANCASHIRE LIVES IN THE PAST “Aye, lass, I tell thee, ’tis summat good, but baggin’ be best.” . . Though we five in 1930, Manchester, which was the scene of the fourth test, has many strange customs that persist through the years (says the ‘ Sydney Sun’). The early mill workers, whose clogs rattle like desultory firing, as they clatter over cobble-stoned streets on their way to the mills and work, still tend their “ jinnies.” Down the canal banks, where gaud-ily-coloured barges are pulled by jaded horses, they walk, their shawl-bedecked heads tossing a Lancashire sally at the boy mounted on the barge horse as he dismounts and unhitches to pass through a tunnel. “Be thee home,” they call, “ aye bo thee with thee fayther.” ■Hundreds of girls, with lumps of cotton adorning their garments, hurry along, past the Pomona, the Gore Brook, names derived —even as Gorton (Gore Town) and Blood Brook—from the times of the Lancashire wars. There are still hiring fairs, where labourers for farm work oh the broad meadow lands of Lancashire congregate for employers to feel their muscles and tost their stamina, with a view to employment; where all the gayest of colours are worn by the womenfolk at the roundabouts and side-shows, each vieing with the other in a primitive desire to show their best. Lancashire has lost none of her ageold delight, for even as'the Christmas Chibs stax-t their collections in February, for that one wild week in Blackpool, or a daring holiday in Llandudno —its Happy Valley— and Little Armes Head, they still preserve an age-old wonderment and delight, that to a stranger, is strange, but to a Lancashire man—his own.

In the little village of Gorton, for the payment of 2d a week, one can obtain tne services, of a professional “knocker-up,” a man whose role is to awaken the early mill-goer. Armed with a 20ft polo, with _ thin straight strands like umbrella wires, he rattles the uppermost. windows, at the time f pointed, and passes down the street e an old-time crier —ye old knocker-up. Even like cotton gatherers from Kentucky, the mill girls x’eturn to their homes in the* evening, whitened from head to foot with the loose and flying cotton dust, which clings to their dresses and shawls. ,

In Bolton, Manchester, Salford, and the outer suburbs of Stockport, Denton, and Reddish, the army of workers return to homes, where black-puddings are vended to eager seekers of nutriment. Strange is the diet of Manchester’s suburbs—honeycomb tripe an esteemed delicacy, its 1 ck puddings a thjng of joy, and the shops where red meats are sold not by the pound, but by the pence. Amongst the inill workers, men and women, their night relaxation is a sojourn in the local hostelry and an adjournment afterwards to the tripe s!> p. “ Aye, lads, and aye tell thee, tis summat good, hut baggin’ be best aye?”

Boeith Tarkington says that by 19S0 men will have discarded shjrts. At least a, good many of us will.