FAIRS (foire, from Lat, forum, a market place, or ferice, holidays), great. periodical markets, some of which are chiefly devoted to one kind of merchandise, while others, of a wider scope, afford opportunity for most of the sales and purchases of a district. F. have long been regularly held in most parts of Europe and in many parts ofAsia; but as they belong rather to a state of things which is passing away, than to modern civiliza tion, they have not been established or have not acquired the same importance in America. In Europe, they appear to have originated in the church festivals, which were found to afford convenient opportunities for commercial transactions, the concourse of people being such as took place upon no other occasion. This origin of F. is commemorated in their German name messen, which is derived from the word employed to denote the most solemn part of the church service. See MASS. Some festivals, from circumstances of place and season, speedily acquired a much greater commercial importance than others, and began, therefore, to be frequented by buyers and sellers even from remote parts of the world. When the ordinary means of communication between countries and of the exchange of commodities were very limited, F. were of great use. Princes and the magistrates of free cities found it to their advantage to encourage them, and many privileges were granted to them, which in some places still subsist. Courts of summary jurisdiction—commonly called pie poudre, from the dusty feet of the suitors—were established distinct from the ordinary courts of the county or city, for the determination of questions which might arise during the fair. In connection with all thig, the practice was necessarily adopted of publicly proclaiming the commencement and duration of the fair, and this still subsists where scarcely any other vestige remains of the old privileges of F., and where they have ceased to be of any real. use to the com munity, and might, perhaps, with advantage to all the interests of society, be now abolished, as in the case of seine of the annual F. still held in , the great cities of Britain.
In western goods exposed for sale at F. are chiefly those in respect of which there is a frequent change of fashion.. Provisions are seldom an article of Merchandise in them; and while in some parts of the continent persons of all ranks still wait for the great yearly F. to make their principal purchases of clothing and of manufactured article§ of every things its corn, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, oil, etc., are seldom seen in them. It is otherwise, however, in places on the outskirts of civilization; and almost all the produce of great provinces is sold, and all the inhabitants require is bought at such F. as those of Kiachta and Nishnij-Novgorod. The British F. really of much use at the present day are chiefly those at which cattle are exposed for sale; of these some held on the borders of the Scottish highlands, and elsewhere in Scotland, are frequented by buyers and sellers from all parts of the kingdom, and bring together the breeders of cattle and the graziers, by whom the animals are to be fed for the butcher. Such are the F., or trysts, as they
are called, at Falkirk, Donne, Edinburgh, etc. At other great yearly F. in the south of Scotland, lambs and wool are sold; and F. chiefly for the sale of the annual produce of pastoral districts are common in almost all parts of the world.
The greatest F. in the world are the Easter and Michaelmas F. at Leipsic. These are not to be confounded with the Leipsic book-fair, which is chiefly an occasion for the settlement of accounts among booksellers and publishers. Next to the Leipsic F., those of Frankfurt-on-the-Maine are the most important in Germany. The F. of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and of Brunswick in Germany, of Zurzach in Switzerland, Pesth in Hungary, Sinigaglia and Bergamo in Italy, Beaucaire and Lyon in France, and Nijni-Novgorod (q.v.) in Russia, are among the most important in Europe. After the great F. of Leipsic, that called the fair of St. Peter and St. Paul at Nijui-Novgorod is the greatest in the world, and is frequented by buyers and sellers from different parts of Europe, and of northern and central Asia. The F. of Tanta in upper Egypt, of Kiachta in the south of Siberia, of Irbit, also in Siberia, of Mecca in Arabia, and of Hurdwar in western India, arc also of very great importance, and are the most considerate F. out of Europe. That of Kiachta is a sort of barter-market, where almost all the commercial transactions between the Russian and Chinese empires take place. The F. in Britain have latterly sunk for the most part to insignificance, and in many instances have entirely dis appeared. They were gatherings adapted to a comparatively backward state of society, when the provincial stores of goods were few, and the means of communication defective. The prevalence of good roads, populous towns with dealers in miscellaneous wares, and other tokens of advancement, have superseded the necessity for the ordinary class of F., and in consequence they have in some cases degenerated into scenes of merriment; such was Bartholomew fair, London, now extinct; also Greenwich fair, Glasgow fair, and Donnybrook fair, near Dublin; this last being likewise either extinct, or nearly so. The boisterous merriments at these F. were of old the devices employed as likely to attract a great concourse of people; hence each fair had its sport or drollery— football, wrestling, yawning, cudgel-playing, throwing at cocks, sack races, flying dragons, grinning through horse-collars, mock-giants, monstrous fishes, soaped pigs, smoking matches, eating hot hasty-pudding, whistling, wheel-barrow races. M. Bottin, the author of a statistical View of the Fairs of France, says that on examining his work it will appear that they were placed for the most part on the frontiers of the kingdom, or on the marches of ancient provinces; or at the foot of high mountains, at the beginning or end of the snow-season, which for months shuts up the inhabitants in their valleys; or in the neighborhood of famous cathedrals or churches frequented by flocks of pilgrims; or in the middle of rich pastures. A fair in the north of Scotland, held in June, when the nights are very short, began at sunset, and ended an hour after sunrise; it was called "sleepy market."