Nottingham Goose Fair

Nottingham’s great holiday fair was held on 2, 3 and 4 October, straight after Michaelmas. A note in the Table Book, added to a poem about the Nottingham rhymer David Love, suggested it took its name from its timing and from the great number of geese killed and eaten. Popular tradition gave a different origin: a farmer who had brought up his three sons shut away from all women took them to the fair, told them the young women walking by in white were geese, and all three at once begged him to buy them one. Goose Fair is still held in Nottingham every October.