Christening the novices at Stirbitch Fair

On the evening of horse fair day at Stourbridge Fair, dealers who had come to the fair for the first time were mock-christened in the parlour of the Robin Hood booth. The novice sat bareheaded and shoeless in an armchair between two sponsors while an officiator in a Cambridge gown, holding a bell and a book, chanted doggerel verses with the chorus “hoccius proxius mandamus” and gave him a comic name such as Nimble-heels or Stupid Stephen. The newcomer paid his dues in punch or wine before he could put his shoes back on. Hone’s septuagenarian correspondent recalled it from more than sixty years before, when the horse fair fell on the first Friday after the fair was proclaimed.