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mony is on no account dispensed with.

The ancient and received tradition affirms that the Soulters of Selkirk distinguished themselves in the battle of Flodden, eighty in number, and, headed by the townclerk, they joined their monarch on his entry into England. James, pleased with the appearance of this gallant troop, knighted the leader, William Brydom, upon the field of battle, from which few of the men of Selkirk were destined to return. They distinguished themselves in the conflict, and were almost all slain. The few survivors, on their return home, found by the side of Lady-Wood-Edge the corpse of a female, wife to one of their fellow comrades, with a child sucking at her breast. In memory of this last event, continues the tradition, the present arms of the burgh bear a female with a child in her arms, and seated on a sarcophagus, decorated with the Scottish lion.

LONDON ARMS.

The dagger which is quartered in the London arms was granted by Richard II., in commemoration of Sir William Walworth, who, having felled Wat Tyler to the ground with his mace, dispatched him afterwards with his dagger. The original weapon may be seen in the hand of the statue of Sir William Walworth, in Fishmongers' Hall.

ABLUTIONS OF THE ROMANS ON THE FIRST
OF APRIL.

The Romans, on the 1st of April, abstained from pleading causes, and the ladies, in particular, performed ablutions under myrtle trees, crowned themselves with its leaves, and offered sacrifices to Venus. This custom originated in a mythological story, that, as Venus was drying her wetted hair by a river side, she was perceived by Satyrs, whose gaze confused her :

"But soon with myrtles she her beauties veil'd,

From whence this annual custom was entail’d.”—OVID.

ORIGIN OF FAIRS.

A fair is a solemn or greater sort of market, granted to any town or city, by privilege, for the more speedy and commodious providing of such things as the subject needeth. Both the English and the French word for fairs seem to come from feria, because it is incident to a fair, that persons shall be privileged from being arrested or molested in it from any other debt than that contracted in the fair, or at least was promised to be paid there.

Fairs were first occasioned by the resort of people to the Feast of Dedication; and therefore, in most

places, the fairs by old custom were held on the same day with the wake or festival of the saint to whom the church was dedicated, and for the same reason kept it in the churchyard.

When bishops and abbots observed that crowds of people assembled to celebrate the festivities of their patron saints, they applied to the Crown for charters to hold fairs at those times, for the accommodation of strangers, and with a view to increase their own revenues by the tolls which their charters authorized them to levy at these fairs. Hence the multitude of attendants increased, some of whom were actuated by religious, and others by commercial views.

Our ancestors were particularly anxious to make fairs useful to the public, and not, as many suppose, a public nuisance. Fairs are not to be kept longer than the time allowed, on pain of being seized into the King's hands. No merchant is to sell goods and merchandise in a fair after it is ended, under the penalty of forfeiting double the value of the goods so sold. One-fourth goes to the prosecutor, and the rest to the King: 5 Edw. III., cap. 13. The citizens of London could not carry their goods to any fair or market out of London before 3 Henry VII., cap. 9, but by that statute they can take their merchandise to any market or fair in England.

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