It occurred at precisely the
same period of the year,--the same week; the only difference being, that
Monday and Tuesday are the Whitsun festival days, whereas, in
Massachusetts, Wednesday was "Election day," and the acme of the
merry-making.
I passed through Tranmere yesterday forenoon, and lingered awhile to see
the sports. The greatest peculiarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that
they seemed not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on no
holiday suits,--a grimy people, as at all times, heavy, obtuse, with
thick beer in their blood. Coarse, rough-complexioned women and girls
were intermingled, the girls with no maiden trimness in their attire,
large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been washed that day. All the
enjoyment was of an exceedingly sombre character, so far as I saw it,
though there was a richer variety of sports than at similar festivals in
America. There were wooden horses, revolving in circles, to be ridden a
certain number of rounds for a penny; also swinging cars gorgeously
painted, and the newest named after Lord Raglan; and four cars balancing
one another, and turned by a winch; and people with targets and rifles,--
the principal aim being to hit an apple bobbing on a string before the
target; other guns for shooting at the distance of a foot or two, for a
prize of filberts; and a game much in fashion, of throwing heavy sticks
at earthen mugs suspended on lines, three throws for a penny.
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